Afghanistan Focus Shifting to Political Leadership of Fractious Rebel Alliance

The seven gray-bearded leaders of the Afghan moujahedeen resistance were surrounded by turbaned security men clutching AK-47 rifles in this border city as they announced the formation of a new shadow government of the interim Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

It was, the political leaders told their audience in Persian, an important step toward unity among the splintered political parties in exile, through which the United States and Pakistan have funneled billions of dollars’ worth of arms and food to the Islamic guerrillas fighting the estimated 115,000 Soviet troops in neighboring Afghanistan for nine years.

But the bodyguards seemed to be there principally to protect each leader from the private armies of the others. And, rather than promoting unity, the new government appeared to be yet another cause of friction within the resistance.

As the moujahedeen score significant military victories inside Afghanistan, the scene at the headquarters of the seven-party alliance was, according to several senior party members, symbolic of the political disunity that many say could easily lead to chaos, and perhaps even civil war, in Afghanistan after the Soviets complete their troop pullout next February.

As the “prime minister” of the interim government, a fundamentalist engineer named Ahmad Shah, announced the list of 14 new “Cabinet ministers,” a highly educated leader of one of the seven parties commented just outside the room, “This whole thing is absurd. I am in the alliance, and I think it’s absurd.

“These parties simply do not represent the Afghan people. These old leaders are only trying to hold onto their power and wealth, now that it looks like all the guns and aid will stop coming.”

The alliance is a loose union of seven ideologically diverse parties formed with the advice and encouragement of the U.S. and Pakistani governments. And it has been the backbone of the $2-billion CIA covert supply line that has funneled more than a million assault rifles, thousands of mortars and rockets and hundreds of anti-aircraft Stinger missiles to the moujahedeen commanders inside Afghanistan since 1984.

Because of their role, the parties have acquired vast power and wealth. All seven leaders arrived at the meeting June 19 in late-model Japanese-made jeeps.

Now, however, as the CIA program winds down, the actual power has begun to shift from the political leaders in Peshawar to their military commanders, who are retaking vast areas of Afghanistan as the Soviets abandon them.

“These old men, who have grown rich and powerful only because of the American aid, now are merely trying to hold onto their power,” said Said Ibrahim Gailani, whose uncle, Syed Ahmad Gailani, was installed at the meeting as the new chairman of the moujahedeen alliance.

“The only answer is to convene a loya jirga (grand assembly of tribal elders) and let them decide the future of Afghanistan,” Gailani advised. “Otherwise, there will be seven to eight more years of civil war, and Afghanistan will become like Beirut.”

Not as Alarmist

Independent analysts and diplomats in Pakistan are not as alarmist. Several said they welcomed the formation of the new government as “at least a step in the right direction of unity.” But they concede that there are only two options to bring peace to Afghanistan--broaden the alliance’s political base to make it representative of the majority of Afghans or convene the national jirga to choose new leaders.

“There has got to be something there to move into place when Kabul falls,” said one diplomat, who, like most Western observers, believes that the government in the Afghan capital will collapse within months of the completion of the Soviet withdrawal.

“There’ll be conflict, no doubt about it, and some bloodshed--but not on the large scale many people are talking about. I don’t see another Lebanon,” the diplomat said. “Through this alliance alone, these leaders have been working more closely together than ever before. . . . And besides, this is simply meant as a transitional government.”

The United States, which has been criticized by other Western nations recently for creating the divided alliance, has told its allies that it never intended to influence Afghanistan’s political future.

“We’re smart enough to know we’re too dumb to select the right leader for Afghanistan after the Russians leave,” one U.S. official said. “It’s too easy to repeat the mistakes of the Soviets and the British.

“All we can be sure of is that the future government of Afghanistan, no matter who takes over, will be nationalist, Islamic, vehemently opposed to Soviet intervention--and we will be happy with it.”

Other veteran analysts of the Afghan war are not as confident. Specifically, they point to the deep rift that has emerged between the moujahedeen’s moderate and fundamentalist Islamic parties, the latter led by a former student named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The Fiercest Fighters

Few Afghans in Peshawar will openly criticize Hekmatyar, whose Hizb-i-Islami Party members not only have been the fiercest fighters in the war but are also suspected of having had a hand in several recent killings of moderate Afghan leaders in Peshawar.

Some officials at the State Department describe Hekmatyar as, at worst, another version of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and, at best, a “dangerous Islamic fascist.” And some analysts warn that a Kabul government headed by him would deprive women of all rights and strain relations with the United States.

Hekmatyar’s aides, such as his articulate spokesman Nawab Salim, called such talk “deliberate and hypocritical character assassination” aimed at a man to whom America has entrusted most of the weapons and aid that it supplied to the moujahedeen.

Western scholars in Pakistan agree that Hekmatyar, a member of the Sunni sect of Islam, is nowhere near as extremist as Khomeini, a Shia Muslim. They also note that Hekmatyar, although likely to play some role in the new government, has little popular support among Afghan peasants and will lose most of his power when the supply of U.S. arms is cut off.

In defense of the U.S. decision to use Hekmatyar as the principal arms conduit, another analyst noted that the principal U.S. criterion was “who is killing the most Russians, not who is saying the nicest things about America.”

Rejecting the Khomeini analogy, Hekmatyar’s spokesman said, “Afghanistan’s Islamic revolution will be a unique one. We don’t see a model for us in the world. Under our new government, Afghanistan will be a free, independent, genuinely nonaligned, progressive, self-reliant Islamic state.”

“The Americans,” he said, “should have no reason to fear.”

But several of the moderate moujahedeen leaders say they themselves are afraid.

Noting that the fundamentalists dominate the newly formed interim government, Gailani, nephew of the alliance’s new chairman, said, “If these seven parties go into power in Afghanistan, there will be a civil war for a long, long time.

“The seven parties are pulling Afghanistan one way, and the movement to hold a jirga of the tribal elders is pulling people the other. I am afraid that if the political parties win out, Afghanistan will move backward.”

An illustration of Gailani’s position came moments after the alliance meeting broke up. A reporter who was invited to interview the new “foreign minister,” Ustad Najiullah, asked him to explain the new government’s policy toward the United States.

“I do not have any unique ideas,” he replied. “The foreign policy will be determined by the alliance. I will only implement it.”

What, then, are the alliance’s policies toward the United States?

“Our government is and will be an Islamic government, and it will be nonaligned,” Najiullah said. “We will consider Islam in every aspect of foreign policy. That is all.”

Attacking such leadership, Abdul Haq, the moujahedeen’s highly respected military commander of the Kabul region, said, “Our great military achievements of the last several weeks will all be negated if we fail to create a broad-based political leadership and program for the future.

“It’s a very Byzantine situation right now. Nobody knows what each other wants. There is no real unity among the politicians and, even so, the alliance is not enough. What we need is the unity of Afghans--not just the political leaders. Otherwise, all of the blood that the Afghan people have spilled for the last 10 years will be meaningless.”