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This article is the second of the author’s series of commentary articles in Afghanistan
“Internal Causes” and “External Causes” of the Chaos in Afghanistan
After the “One” of the Afghanistan series went online, someone said, “How did you connect with Pakistan?” In the case of Afghanistan, Afghan’s domestic cause is the basis of change, and it cannot be touched by our “Batie” buddies, right? External causes are the conditions of change, isn’t it just the US emperor Soviet revisionism? What’s the matter with Pakistan?
In fact, this is the misunderstanding of most critics today.
If you want to talk about the Taliban, you really have to start with Pakistan. Don’t you want to talk about “internal factors”? In fact, the “internal cause” of Afghanistan first depends on the Pashtuns, but as mentioned in the previous article: Don’t most of the Pashtuns live in Pakistan? Most of “Pashtunistan” is also in Pakistan. The city with the largest population of Pashtun citizens is not Kabul (traditionally this city is mostly Tajik residents, and the influx of refugees in troubled times has caused changes in the population composition, but until now it is far from “Pashtunization”), not Kandahar, It is not even Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Khyber Pashtun province, but Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city (2.4 million Pashtuns in 2017) (Note 1). And the most densely populated area of Pashtun “poor, lower and middle peasants” is also Waziristan in Pakistan-the birthplace of the Taliban. To talk about “internal factors”, can you bypass these places?
And to talk about “external factors,” Pakistan cannot avoid it. Not to mention that the Taliban was born in Pakistan. Didn’t the two rises of the Taliban both penetrated into Afghanistan from Pakistan and then drove into Kabul for a long time? After 2007, the Taliban appeared in two factions, the Afghan Taliban (Ata) and the Pakistani Taliban (Bata), but this is a political division rather than a geographical division. Not to mention that Bata has always been active in Pakistan, but he also appeared in Afghanistan, that is, Ata. Until this final offensive, its highest institution has always been the “Quetta Shura” located in Pakistan.
The former Soviet Union and Afghanistan have a long border. In 1979, one hundred thousand Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. They crossed the border directly from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and the air without any intermediary. If the United States wants to intervene in Afghanistan, a landlocked country with no coastline thousands of miles away, it can only cooperate with Pakistan. Before the war with the Taliban due to the September 11 incident in 2001, the United States had not had a single soldier in Afghanistan, except for the provision of anti-Soviet weapons through Pakistan and the cooperation between the CIA and the ISI. And Pakistan has entered Afghanistan on a large scale.
The Rise and Fall of the “Kabul Butcher”
As early as 1990, ISI attempted to change the practice of broadly supporting the anti-Soviet factions, focusing on supporting the Pashtuns and extremist Islamic activist Gulbudin Shikmatyar who fled to Pakistan in 1974, and hoped that he would “be Pakistan’s interests conquered and ruled Afghanistan”, but it was postponed due to the opposition of the United States. In the spring of 1992, Najibullah, who had lost his support from the Soviet Union, agreed to hand over power. Just as several resistance groups reached the “Peshawar Agreement” to negotiate the formation of a coalition government, Hikmatyar, who was clearly supported by Pakistan, refused to negotiate and left alone. Marching into Kabul and attacking other factions led to a full-scale civil war.
At that time, all factions had war actions that harmed civilians, and there was also the problem of poor military discipline, burning, killing, and plundering. However, only Hikmatyar specifically used superior firepower to indiscriminately bombard civilian areas in the center of the capital. It is said that this battle alone caused 50,000 civilian deaths. Hikmatyar himself also earned the nickname “The Butcher of Kabul”. The great escape after the catastrophe caused the population of Kabul to drop from 2 million to 500,000, and 80% of the city was destroyed. War correspondents who have been to the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan reported that the ruins of Kabul at the time were worse than Sarajevo, which had been besieged and bombed for several years.
Why does Heath’s “deliberately targeting civilians”? There are two explanations: one is out of “faith” and he wants to retaliate against the residents of Kabul who had “cooperated with the Soviet Union.” He once told a reporter from The New York Times that Afghanistan “has already had 1.5 million martyrs. We are ready to provide as many lives as possible to establish a true Islamic Republic.” The second is to “substitute terror for obedience”, “by proving that Rabbani and Masood cannot protect the people to undermine the Rabbani government.” Indeed, if the massacre cannot be stopped, people who cannot bear the horrible torture will think that instead of letting a group of people kill each other endlessly and endlessly harm the people, it is better to have the most ruthless butcher after killing his opponent, and perhaps he will be able to live well. ! This is also a “people’s choice”. To tell the truth with no theoretical depth: in fact, the Taliban was able to win two surprises later, and such “choices” were important reasons.
His actions at the time were also approved by the Pakistani military. Some scholars believe: “Without the logistical support of the intelligence services of the three services and the supply of a large number of rockets, Hekmatyar’s forces would not be able to target and destroy half of Kabul.”
However, at that time, Hikmatyar’s strength was unable to achieve “one of the most ruthless butchers killed his opponent”; and his indiscriminate killing has deepened his crisis. Originally, Pakistan hoped that he could eliminate, or at least defeat, Uzbek Dostum supported by Uzbekistan, Tajik Masood and Rabbani supported by Tajikistan, and Shiite Hazaras supported by Iran to establish in Afghanistan. A pro-Pakistani regime dominated by Pashtuns. However, without the support of the United States (after winning the Cold War and before 9/11, the United States‘ interest in Inner Asia was greatly reduced, and its support for the “Palatinate Railway” was not as supportive as it was during the anti-Soviet period), the “Northern Alliance” also supported by neighboring countries “With Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with their backs, victory threatens Kabul, and defeat will retreat to the north. It cannot be eliminated at all. On the contrary, the indiscriminate and indiscriminate killing made the Pashtuns hate Hikmatyar. In this case, the fickle Hitler could only make peace with his opponent, the internationally recognized Rabbani government, and formed a short-lived coalition government with Rabbani as the president and Hitler as the prime minister.
However, such a coalition did not benefit any party: Pakistan did not want this Pashtun government as a supporting role. The Pashtuns already hated him because of his indiscriminate killings, and Rabbani was originally frightened by the Pashtuns. At the same time, they also want to win the support of the Pashtuns with the help of the alliance with Historian. Unexpectedly, after ISI withdrew its support, His military advantage was no longer there. The Pashtuns who were angered by His indiscriminate killings did not increase their favor with the government because of Rabbani’s compromise with Hess. On the contrary, it caused Massoud and others to treat Raba. Nepal is detached from Germany.
“We created the Taliban”?
At this time, the new choice of the Pakistani military-the Taliban is on the scene.
In the previous article, we talked about observers raising the question of Pakistan’s “prosperity against terrorism or anti-terrorism”. In fact, before the 9/11 incident made the United States determined to eliminate the Taliban, Pakistan, at least some people in the Pakistani military and ISI did not shy away from their support for the Taliban. In 1998, Musharraf, who served as the chief of staff of the Pakistan Army (later became president), claimed in his memoirs that “our side and the Taliban desperately defeated the anti-Taliban forces” (Note 2). From 1993 to 1996, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Nahilullah Babar even boasted that “we created the Taliban” (Note 3). According to research, between 1994 and 1999, approximately 80,000 to 100,000 Pakistanis were trained by the Pakistani military and the intelligence services of the three services and fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan (Note 4). The so-called “sudden rise” of the Taliban, what is hard to explain under such circumstances?
In all fairness, I don’t think Pakistan will “support terror”, nor do I think the boasting of police and military personnel is so credible. As we will mention later, the Taliban originally had its social soil as a rebel force, and it could not have been “created” by the government. As a normal country, no matter whether it is a democratic government, an autocratic government, or even a terrifying government such as the Nazis, it is impossible to hope to see anarchy, non-government (not to mention anti-government) “civil” terrorist acts in its own jurisdiction. Sit big. Even if there may be situations in international politics that use terrorist organizations in enemy countries for their own benefit, terrorist organizations like the Taliban that also do evil in Pakistan’s own country cannot be accepted by the rulers and people of the country as a whole. However, it is entirely possible that there are other plans in “counter-terrorism” that will adversely affect counter-terrorism. The Pakistani military may not have “created” the Taliban, but it is logical that the imperial court used Liangshan heroes to “conquer the Liao” in “Water Margin” to promote misfortune.
The Pakistani military supported Hikmatiar’s unilateral failure to seize power. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan after the disintegration of the Soviet Union also supported Uzbek Dostum and Tajik Masood in resistance. After two years of fighting among the heroes, there is still no answer. ISI is again looking for new agents.
At that time, there had been a long-standing non-governmental Islamic “theological school” in the Pashtun Mountains of Pakistan, which cultivated a large number of fanatical “theological students”, and the Pashto language was the Taliban. Using a metaphor that is not difficult for the Chinese to understand, these people are like the “Boxers” in the late Qing Dynasty or the “Red Guards” in the Cultural Revolution. Take chestnuts from the fire for the government. In September 1994, ISI organized them for military training. In October, this little-known armed force came to the fore and rushed from Pakistan’s “Northwest Frontier Province” to Afghanistan like a tiger descending a mountain, smashing cities all the way to the rear of Hekmatyar. Hekmatyar used to train with them in Pakistan in the past, and they were all enthusiastic about fighting for Pakistan-Pashtun. Heath did not expect that he would be abandoned by his boss, let alone that his “comrades” would stabbed him from the back. Before his army, there was Masood and then the Taliban. They were defeated in the first battle. The Tajiks wanted revenge, but the Pashtuns did not wait to see him. He had to leave his relatives and had to flee away from home. Then Rabbani Masood’s Tajik-dominated government forces were also defeated by the Taliban and evacuated from Kabul and retreated to the north. The Taliban occupied the capital and most of the country. On September 27, 1996, the “Islamic Emir of Afghanistan” was established.
1. Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. “TABLE 11 – POPULATION BY MOTHER TONGUE, SEX AND RURAL/ URBAN” (PDF). Retrieved 28 July 2021.
2. Musharraf, Pervez (2006). In the Line of Fire: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster. p. 209.
3. https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-isis-great-game-in-afghanistan/
4. Maley, William (2009). The Afghanistan Wars: Second Edition. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 288
Note: This article only represents the author’s own views.