Back To The Trenches?

For all the talk about the great progress being made in Afghanistan there are still some who don't believe it. Among the doubters are the warlords in the north of the country, the murderous thugs and villains who we once called the Northern Alliance. According to a report in Asia Times, these Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara warlords are placing their bets on guns, not on Karzai:

Much of the world's attention on Afghanistan is now focused on the country's Pashtun-dominated south and east, where Taliban fighters are battling North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops and US-led coalition forces. But there is a different kind of tension in northern Afghanistan.

Illegal ethnic-Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara militias in the north appear to be using the threat of a resurgent Taliban as an excuse to hoard weapons and more forcefully protect their interests, such as ruling over land they have controlled since the Taliban's collapse or defending drug export routes that are a major source of income.

Experts say the entrenchment of the militias, who once fought together against the Taliban, reflects divisions and mistrust among regional commanders of different ethnicities which - if left unchecked - could exacerbate tensions in the country at a time when its security situation is already on a razor's edge. "Obviously, what is happening in the north is really the growing Balkanization of the country," said Sam Zia-Zarifi, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch and field researcher in Afghanistan who has monitored programs by the United Nations and Afghan government to disarm the militias.

Christopher Langton, an expert on conflict and defense diplomacy at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that amid a perceived spread of the Taliban-led insurgency during the past two years, as well as disturbances further north and heavy fighting in the south, some former United Front commanders have decided unilaterally that they may need weapons in the future.

After decades of war, Langton describes Afghanistan as "a country based around armed groups". He says it is naive for anybody to think such a situation could be changed by a voluntary program to disarm and disband militia.

Langton says fears among non-Pashtun commanders in the north have been heightened by recent overtures in Kabul about bringing moderate Taliban into the government - an issue he says is closer to reality now than ever before.