Tribes threaten union between No. Alliance and exiled king

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In potential setback for U.S. strategy, powerful tribes resent king's union with northern alliance

By Kathy Gannon, Associated Press, 10/2/2001 15:46

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) He was king once, and they were ready to support him again.

But now, powerful tribal leaders who hold sway along the Pakistan-Afghan border are upset by the exiled Afghan monarch's apparent decision to align himself with a U.S.- and Russian-backed northern alliance trying to topple the ruling Taliban.

If these fiercely independent tribesmen from Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group withdraw support for the 86-year-old Mohammad Zaher Shah, it would be a serious setback to Washington's strategy for wiping out Osama bin Laden's terror network in Afghanistan.

''The king now has an alliance with the northern alliance, and this force is a military force. How can you bring peace with a military force? It is not possible,'' said Sayed Jalal Siddiqi Adakhiel, a tribal elder from Afghanistan's southeastern Paktia province, which also happens to be a bin Laden stronghold.

He and other tribal leaders move with relative ease across the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Adakhiel spoke to The Associated Press in this Pakistani border area city.

Exploiting unrest among Afghan tribes is one option being studied by the United States to undermine the Taliban because they are harboring bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

An administration memo circulated to President Bush's advisers last weekend set out White House policy supporting any group willing to fight terrorism. U.S. officials said the memo marks the first broad outlines of Bush's plans to bolster groups opposing the Taliban.

Those groups could include Afghan tribes whose leaders are disenchanted with the Taliban for having usurped the authority of the tribal chief and given it to the mullahs, or Islamic clerics.

The king, in exile in Rome since 1973, has been seen by many tribal leaders as a unifying force someone who could call a national council, or loya jirga, of all Afghan factions to establish a new government.

Now, all that is in doubt after Zaher Shah and the northern alliance agreed Monday in Rome to convene the council. To the tribal leaders, the king has struck a deal with the devil.

Adakhiel's tribe is considered a major player and one of eight major tribes that held their own council one week ago. There they agreed that the exiled king would be welcomed back. Then they learned of the alliance with the northern alliance and held a second meeting to condemn it.

Many tribal chiefs may dislike the Taliban. But they regard the northern alliance as little more than agents of foreign powers. Many alliance leaders have been forever discredited because of the anarchy that swept Afghanistan when they were in power.

The alliance also includes powerful communist-era generals. Mohammed Fahim, the man who last month replaced slain alliance chief Ahmed Shah Massood, was deputy to Najibullah when he served as Afghanistan's intelligence chief. Najibullah later was Afghanistan's last communist president.

The king is welcome, said another tribesman, Abdul Razzak, from eastern Nangarhar province, ''but now the United States and Russia want to impose him on us, and that is a problem.''

''If people inside Afghanistan think that the king is being imposed on them by the outside and by non-Muslims, they will support the Taliban,'' he said.

Those comments underscore the difficulty the United States and its allies will face in trying to replace the Taliban.

A Western expert on Afghanistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said any Afghan government must have the tribes' support. They are traditionally powerful, well armed and ready to fight, and the Taliban, the ousted king and the northern alliance are all competing for their loyalty.

The Taliban have offered a power-sharing deal, and have invited some of the more powerful tribes to send a representative to Kandahar, the seat of the Taliban regime, Adakhiel said.

The Taliban have also sent Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former guerrilla commander and U.S. ally during the nine-year Soviet occupation, to eastern Paktia province to try to hold its quarrelsome tribes together.

Afghans have traditionally resisted governments imposed by foreigners. They rose up against a Soviet-imposed administration under Babrak Karmal, forcing Moscow to withdraw its troops in 1989.

''If we now let the king come to Afghanistan with America's and Russia's support how is that any different from Karmal?'' asked Adakhiel.



-- Anonymous, October 02, 2001

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http://www.boston.com/dailynews/275/world/Deep_divides_over_former_kin g_:.shtml

Deep divides over former king run through Afghan refugee districts

By Brian Murphy, Associated Press, 10/2/2001 01:49

GOLSHAHR, Iran (AP) An Afghan refugee pulled aside the black chador covering her lips and spat when she mentioned her homeland's exiled king and the idea of his eventual return.

''He disgusts me. He is worse than even the Taliban,'' snarled Bibi Zahra Husseini, who fled to Iran 15 years ago during the 1979-89 war between Soviet invaders and U.S.-backed guerrillas some of whom regrouped as the Taliban militia that now rule most of the country with a medieval-style Islamic code.

''What does the king know of our suffering? He lives in luxury and we are like poor orphans without a country,'' she said Monday in the refugee district of Golshahr, or ''city of flowers,'' a shabby warren of shops and mud-brick homes outside the northeastern city of Mashhad.

On another street, a fruit-seller pledged to head back to Afghanistan immediately if the Taliban are ousted and the elderly former monarch, Mohammad Zahir Shah, returns from his luxurious villa outside Rome to try to unify the brutalized country.

''We need his wisdom,'' said Malang Kaffash, who crossed the border into Iran two years ago. ''Our country so much needs wisdom.''

Savior or Western puppet: Deep divisions about the ex-king run through the largest Afghan refugee community in the world. The more than 2 million Afghans in Iran can do nothing but watch the unfolding showdown between the United States and the Taliban, who shelter the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden.

But the apparent discord over the former king could eventually draw the attention of forces seeking to topple the Taliban. It could suggest problems ahead in winning widespread popular support for using the 86-year-old ex-monarch as a rallying point for a new leadership nearly three decades after he was driven from the throne.

A U.S. congressional delegation met near Rome on Sunday with the former king and members of the Northern Alliance, a militia that controls about 10 percent of Afghanistan. Anti-Taliban forces encouraged by the United States see Zahir as a potential stabilizing figure if the Taliban is crushed.

''We have a common struggle against terrorism,'' said the ex-monarch, whose 1973 ouster set the stage for a pro-Kremlin government and the 1979 Soviet invasion.

Many Afghans in exile look back on Zahir's four-decade reign as a rare time of peace. French-educated, he sought to introduce a constitutional monarchy and liberal, secular reforms, guaranteeing rights for women and jailing hundreds of Muslim extremists he feared would block him.

His moves antagonized many Muslim conservatives, and analysts fault him as well for letting squabbles inside the royal family and inner circle go unresolved.

On July 17, 1973, a cousin took power while Zahir was vacationing off southern Italy. Critics note he was largely silent during the Soviet invasion, one of the darkest times for his homeland.

Today, the Taliban are trying to stamp out any support for the king within Afghanistan.

Six men were arrested by Taliban authorities for distributing pamphlets supporting the United States and Afghanistan's exiled king a crime that could be punishable by death. Top clerics from three provinces decreed Sunday that any Afghans believed to sympathize with the former king should be heavily fined and have their houses burned down.

Many Afghans in Iran openly curse bin Laden and the Taliban. But their opinions of Zahir are as different as the offerings in the shops of the refugee areas: a string of gold merchants next to a butcher displaying only chicken feet for soup stock.

''America is responsible for creating the Taliban and now they are trying to bring back the king,'' shouted Mohammad Reza Yaquobi, who fled to Iran just after the Soviet military streamed south. ''How can we accept that? Replacing the Taliban with the king is just replacing one tyrant for another.''

A shopkeeper, selling everything from clocks to old Chinese-made sewing machines, wondered if returning the king would present a knotty compromise: accepting a Western-protected leadership for a genuine chance at peace.

''I think most will be willing to make this deal,'' said Khodavad Gholami. ''But some will never tolerate the king. I'm afraid that we could be right back fighting again.''

Haji Ahmad, 73, left Afghanistan when the king was still in power. He now sells individual cigarettes from a cardboard box he totes around Golshahr.

''If the king can give us back our country, why not let him try?'' he said. ''Could it get worse than this Taliban evil?''

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2001


Taliban commanders 'about to mutiny' By Alex Spillius in Peshawar (Filed: 03/10/2001)

TALIBAN military commanders in key border provinces of Afghanistan are plotting to mutiny against the regime, former allies from the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union said yesterday.

Anti-Taliban leaders based in neighbouring Pakistan say they are in touch with the commanders, who are their tribal cousins or former brothers-in-arms in the struggle against the Soviet occupation. The commanders are reported to be holding regular meetings in their villages and camps and are ready to move against the Taliban at any time.

The threat of American military action and the Taliban's refusal to give up Osama bin Laden means the commanders are no longer willing to operate under Taliban command as they have for five years.

Former unit leaders based in Peshawar are also said to be preparing to come out of retirement and cross the border to combat the Taliban in a belt of eastern provinces bordering Pakistan.

"These provinces are very vulnerable. They are in walking distance of the border and we can easily get our weapons in. They are the gateway to Kabul, and once we start, the Taliban will easily fall apart," said Qazi Amin Waqar, a former mujahideen leader and minister in the government ousted by the Taliban in 1996.

He and other exiled opposition leaders communicate regularly with associates inside Afghanistan by satellite telephone or via messengers travelling up to 12 hours by foot across the mountainous frontier. "It is just a matter of timing; they are ready for the word to go," said Qazi Amin.

The uprising would probably begin in and around Jalalabad, his home city and capital of Nangarhar province, and spread west into Kabul and south into Paktia and Paktika provinces, where the Taliban has already agreed to devolve authority to tribal elders to try to hold on to power.

The provinces are dominated by the same Pathan ethnic group as the southern-based Taliban, but have an independent tribal tradition that has never more than tolerated the militia's control.

The movement's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, recognises that his regime may soon be ousted and forced into fighting a guerrilla war. The Taliban's adversaries realise that fear of American military attacks has created an unrepeatable opportunity to topple the puritanical regime.

Pakistani newspapers have reported efforts by Ismail Khan, another former anti-Soviet leader now exiled in Iran, to attack Kandahar, the headquarters of the Taliban in the south. Western powers are said to have encouraged him to use old contacts to exploit divisions within the Taliban.

Afghans based in Peshawar have been told in telephone calls from friends in Kandahar that most Taliban officials have fled to the hills and that Mullah Omar has left the city in fear of his life and never spends two nights in one place.

The Americans have made it clear that they do not want to be seen as the sponsor of any one particular force, especially the Northern Alliance. Though it has provided the only active resistance to the Taliban for the past five years, the alliance, thanks to its support from the hated Russians, has scant credibility in areas beyond its control.

Qazi Amin said: "Once we have got rid of the Taliban the other problem, Osama bin Laden, will be taken care of. We will not tolerate foreign terrorists on Afghan soil."

Sayed Ishaq Gilani, an Afghan patrician and major supporter of efforts to bring back former King Zahir Shah to lead a government of national unity, said: "People are mobilising. The commanders are meeting day and night. They are planning attacks on the Taliban.

"They have the guns and ammunition. They have contacted me and asked for political and financial support. I have passed this message on to representatives of Western countries here.

"We don't need much. For the price of two to three cruise missiles we could take care of this. It would be so much cheaper for the US and better for our country than if they invade. There is a danger that any new government would be seen as a new puppet and we don't want any more puppets in Afghanistan."

Mohammed Nadir, 75, a village head from Paktia, arrived in Peshawar by road at the weekend to consult Mr Sayed. He said: "Everyone opposes the Taliban. We never liked them but we accepted them for the sake of peace.

"But now there are no schools, no hospitals, no order to life, and little food. I have come here to discuss the crisis but the people are ready to rise up."

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2001


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