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Published
by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. CLICK FOR NEWSPAPER DELIVERY
Wednesday, September 26, 2001
Loyalties and rivalries shift in Afghanistan
Washington's friends were sometimes sworn enemies
By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press
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Associated Press
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Northern Alliance fighters visit the tomb of the late leader Ahmed Shah Massood on Tuesday. Massood died from wounds he received in a suicide bombing attack.
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QUETTA, Pakistan - To figure out who is on Washington's side in Afghanistan is a bewildering task. There's a man who once declared a war of his own on America, and another who played host to Osama bin Laden when he first came to Afghanistan.
The shifting forces in a country steeped in tribal rivalries now boil down to the Taliban militia and the northern alliance - currently the United States' only identifiable friend in Afghanistan.
The northern alliance, which has resisted the Taliban since it seized power exactly five years ago today, is headed by a sixtyish scholar and poet named Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is still recognized as Afghanistan's president by the United States and other Western powers, and holds Afghanistan's U.N. seat. Rabbani studied at Egypt's pre-eminent Islamic university, Al Azhar, and his followers call him "teacher."
Then there's his deputy prime minister, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. He heads Islamic Unity, the only opposition party whose membership is largely Pashtun. Sixty percent of Afghanistan's 21 million people - and most of the roughly 30,000 Taliban fighters - are Pashtuns.
Sayyaf and the Taliban have shared similar views. Like Osama bin Laden, the Taliban's guest and prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on America, Sayyaf has loudly protested the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam's holiest shrines. He has even offered to wage war to remove the Americans.
During the nine-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Sayyaf's party got millions in Saudi aid, but the money was cut off when he backed Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.
It was Sayyaf's party that attracted most of the so-called Afghan Arabs - Middle Eastern Muslims who came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
After the Taliban took over, Sayyaf remained loyal to Rabbani. Most of the Afghan Arabs became the backbone of bin Laden's al-Qaida group, propping up the Taliban, but even though they are now at war with his northern alliance, Sayyaf has never denounced them.
During the Soviet occupation, bin Laden and many other Afghan Arabs joined an Islamic party led by Younus Khalis, who is now pro-Taliban.
A notable victim of Afghanistan's power shifts is Haji Abdul Qadir. As governor of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, Qadir welcomed bin Laden when he arrived from Sudan in May 1996 aboard a chartered flight with his wives, children and about 130 followers.
Then the Taliban overran Nangarhar province and drove out Qadir. The governor fled to Pakistan, while bin Laden stayed.
After taking control of Kabul in September 1996, the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered bin Laden and his entourage to move to southern Kandahar, the heart of Taliban territory. Omar, who rarely travels outside Kandahar, apparently didn't know bin Laden, and said he wanted him close by.
The divisions within Islam further complicate the picture.
Within the anti-Taliban alliance is Hezb-e-Wahadat, a party of minority Shiite Muslims who are despised by Sayyaf, the deputy prime minister. He considers Shiites to be outside the pale of Islam.
In the 1990s the two groups fought a war in Kabul that killed thousands of people and ruined entire neighborhoods. Witnesses at the time said Sayyaf's troops would capture Shiite areas, kill the men and rape the women.
While the Taliban are largely Pashtun, the alliance is an ethnic patchwork. Rabbani is a Tajik, the Shiites are Hazara. Rashid Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek and a former general in the communist army of President Najibullah, who was ousted by Islamic insurgents in 1992 and hanged by the Taliban four years later.
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a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.
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