By Nushin Arbabzadah, Guest Contributor
Security in Afghanistan is usually depicted as a neat conflict between two parties: the Taliban and the NATO-backed Kabul administration. The January 28th London Conference echoed this view, focusing on the Taliban and formulating a peace package directed to them. But the reality of the security threat on the ground in Afghanistan is much more complex and doesn’t fit into this simple model. This is because an infrastructure for staging rebellions, creating irregular militias, and fighting the central government and rival rebel groups was laid down in the years of jihad in the 1980s and has since remained intact. This infrastructure has made the switch from the life of a civilian to that of a rebel an easy one. As a consequence, the current Afghan government finds itself in the same position as the regimes that preceded it, having no monopoly of violence and being threatened by irregular militias operating independently of the central government and each other. The Taliban are only the best known of such rebel groups, but there are many others whose existence depends on a range of ideological and material interests.
The relationship between the central government, the local populations, and the militias is complex and varies from region to region. In some regions, such as in northern Qunduz Province, the government has allowed militia groups to operate freely as long as they keep the Taliban under control and do not pose an open threat to government interests. Elsewhere, such as more recently in northern Baghlan and western Herat Provinces, irregular militias have been engaged in armed rebellions against both the government and the Taliban. The local populations in such rebel-controlled regions are already familiar with living under the command of rebel leaders and their gunmen. A majority of Afghans have had some form of experience with living in territories under control of rebel leaders who were in charge of vast regions of the country between in the war years of the 1980s and early 90s. Even though they are not in the official army, these rebel leaders are usually called ‘commanders’ and often take charge of all public affairs in territories under their command, shaping them in line with their personal taste and preferences. After three decades of running her own private militia, the country’s only known female rebel leader, ‘Commander Kaftar’ gave up violence in 2007. The fact that Afghan society has a place for the figure of the rebel (or yaaghee in local terminology) further complicates the situation.
Examples of contemporary rebel leaders illustrate the fact that mundane causes can trigger a switch from a civilian life to one of a rebel’s, while little time or efforts are needed to start a rebellion. After all, the infrastructure for recruiting men and acquiring weapons is already in place, with these practicalities aided by the cultural familiarity of the rebel figure. ‘Commander Mirwais’, who is presently operating in Baghlan Province, is a case in point. Mirwais was a civilian who had been offered a reconstruction contract worth $200,000 to be carried out in his native Baghlan, but the police chief in charge of the province failed to hand over the cash to Mirwais. This was one example of widespread corruption in the police force and in Baghlan it triggered an armed rebellion. Cheated out of his money, Mirawais followed the path of many a yaghee before him, taking to the mountains, and leading an armed a rebellion with an ad hoc militia of sympathizers. Presently, Mirwais’s rebellion is directed against both the Afghan government and the Taliban. More recently, the Afghan Central Intelligence Department distributed arms to the local population, encouraging them to fight against Mirwais and his men. The young men took the arms but instead chose to join the rebellion rather than fight it. For youths deprived of opportunities, leading a rebel’s existence offers many advantages. Members of a rebel group are entitled to an equal share of profit gained through criminal activities presented as legitimate acts of rebellion against the government. Such activities include ransacking highway police posts for weapons and selling them to interested parties—which include drug smugglers, Taliban insurgents, or members of other rebel groups. The economy of yaghee life has been in place for decades: the switch from regular civilian life to one of a rebel is easy.
The story of ‘Commander Yahya Akbari’ is another example of how serious rebellions can be triggered by mundane causes. Yahya Akbari was a former jihadi commander who had laid down arms in 2001 and since then served in public positions of authority, including as mayor of Herat city and as director of the Herat Public Utilities Department. Then a change of governor in Herat Province in 2001 presented Yahya Akbari with a problem when the new governor rejected his request for promotion to a higher office in the provincial bureaucracy. As a consequence, Yahya Akbari went down the familiar path of rebellion, forming an ad hoc militia and starting an armed struggle against the government. His rebellion lasted three years and involved the usual combination of criminal activity and political violence; both were presented as legitimate acts of resistance against the government. It took a combined ground and air operation involving Afghan and NATO troops to curb his rebellion, as result of which Yayha Akbari died in fall of 2009.
The relationship between the yaaghee and the civilian population varies from province to province. Sometimes the civilian population instigates the creation of a rebel group in order for rebels to fight a more serious enemy. This happened in the northern Qunduz Province when four months ago, local elders belonging to the Qalay Zal district approached a former commander, requesting him to start an armed struggle against the Taliban. The Taliban had moved to the north in order to sabotage NATO’s new logistical supply route, which is now running through Central Asia via highways in northern Afghanistan. The elders of Qalay Zal found their new Taliban rulers too oppressive and sought help from a former mujahedin commander called Nabi Gichi. The latter had laid down arms in 2001 after the government offered him a lucrative financial package, allowing the former commander to open a restaurant in the border town of Hairatan. But after eight years of leading a regular civilian life, he resumed fighting at the request of the local population. Gichi’s ad hoc militia of 120 men managed to force the Taliban out of the district in 28 days. After all, they had decades of experience in guerrilla warfare and possessed and Kalashnikovs and PK machine-guns.
The core challenge of security in Afghanistan is that there is a well-established infrastructure for rebellion against the central government and rival groups. This structure developed in the 1980s and is now being used by a new generation of rebels who have joined older and experienced leaders. The fact that the figure of the rebel or yaaghee is a culturally familiar one also allows them to co-exist with civilian populations without encountering serious resistance or problems of legitimacy. The Taliban are only the most familiar face of this phenomenon in Afghanistan, though in reality there are many more groups who operate in the country, independent from each other or of a central command. The simple model of a Taliban versus government conflict, recently reinforced by the January 2010 London Conference, ignores this more fragmentary reality of security in Afghanistan. Far from a coherent ideological Taliban movement, the yaaghee system reveals insecurity as unpredictable and capricious, allowing rebellion to even be triggered by personal slights to individuals who are able to make use of preexisting cultural and logistical structures of rebellion.
Raised in Afghanistan and educated in Europe, Nushin Arbabzadah is a former BBC journalist and currently a visiting scholar at UCLA.
