Afghanistan (32 page)

While the original Taliban regime saw its legitimacy erode prior to its rapid collapse in 2001, it still retained at least the nominal allegiance of the informal patronage-based networks of mullahs and other religious figures that cut across Pushtun Afghanistan and into Pakistan’s borderlands of the FATA, Baluchistan, and North West Frontier Province. When the Taliban were defeated, the majority of these religious figures did not flee into Pakistan. They remained where they were, central pillars (in the absence of effective secular authority) of Afghan society. Neither Kabul nor their foreign supporters came after them to remove them.

The Afghan ulema have better internal links and an ability to mobilize Afghans, through the mosques, than does Kabul. The inability to win over much of the Afghan ulema to the government and their continued opposition to the foreign presence (largely from its cultural impacts) raises a cloud over the legitimacy of the government. The trends are not running in favor of the religious practices of old Afghanistan: “Older alims retire, the new ones are graduates of Pakistani madrassas,” said Haroun Mir, an Afghan political observer.
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Another pro-Western Afghan scholar said in 2008: “In my mosque in Kabul, every Friday the sermon is about the evils of the foreign presence and the need to banish them. Goodness knows what they preach down south. In Egypt, where they have state-controlled ulema, they would end up in jail or at least lose their financial support from the government for such preaching. In
Kabul, it is simply accepted.” The Afghan government and its foreign supporters are losing—or, frequently, not even participating in—one of the most important parts of the battle of ideas, that taking place in the mosques throughout Sunni Afghanistan.

One of the most capable networks in Pushtun-speaking Afghanistan, ulema linked by their madrassa educations or Deobandi-influenced teachings in Pakistan, is effectively controlled by the insurgents. Despite this, it is likely that in 2008–10 only a minority of the Pushtun ulema supported the insurgency.
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Many have strong links to Kabul or anti-insurgent sources of patronage. Others, with ties to the Sufic brotherhoods, oppose the insurgents. As the Taliban increasingly overcame or penetrated the Sufic brotherhoods that were part of traditional religious practice in southern Afghanistan in 2008–10, this has reduced their capability to organize resistance to them.
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Mullahs continue to resist the insurgents for many reasons.
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But all of these alike have often been targeted for assassination.
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The days when power of the village mullah or a madrassa’s maulavi was limited to the moral, not the political, realm are unlikely to return to Pushtu-speaking Afghanistan, especially in the light of the continued weakness of secular and tribal leadership in many areas and Kabul’s inability to assert effective secular governance or provide any sort of service at the grassroots level.
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The local mullahs in Pushtun Afghanistan, because this group provided much of the resistance leadership in the war against the Soviets as well as grassroots leadership under the Taliban, have not reverted to being the subject of jokes as they were in the Golden Age. The Pushtun ulema of rural Afghanistan remained in their villages after the Taliban leadership fled to Pakistan in 2001–02. These mullahs were marginalized and became bitter and resentful. They did not see themselves as benefiting from the new political order the Bonn process put in place. Kabul had little interest in or capability for outreach. The US seemed intent on sending as many Afghans as possible to Guantanamo. In many cases, it was the mullahs’ contacts and networks—which they maintained when their previous allies the Taliban leadership ran across the border—that turned what started as a cross-border insurgency in 2003–04 into one which by 2008–10 had a grip on districts throughout Pushtun Afghanistan.

Today, traditional Afghan religious practices demonstrate only a limited ability to reassert themselves, especially in Pushtun Afghanistan, where the past three decades of violence have caused great disruption and social damage. Moreover, the intervening decades have seen the rise of Islamist demands for the enforcement of the Sharia (Islamic law) in Afghanistan as well as throughout the Muslim world. The Sunni response to the Shia Iranian Revolution as well as the rise of militant religious power in Afghanistan over the years has also hurt traditional Afghan Islam’s ability to re-assert itself. Perhaps more significantly, there has been limited aid or governmental assistance reaching traditional Afghan Islam. Deobandi and Wahabi influences that had been strong among Afghans in the refugee camps in Pakistan starting 30 years ago have not faded in Pushtun Afghanistan despite the defeat of the Taliban in 2001. Mullahs that are followers continue to receive outside funding. The Deobandi funding comes from religious parties in Pakistan, many with links to the ISI. Wahabi funding comes largely from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, either directly or through NGOs. In many cases, covertly pro-insurgent Afghan ulema have been able to make common cause with conservative Afghan or Islamist religious leaders, including those in Kabul that are supporters of the government or members of parliament. They have been able to use shared concern over Afghan culture being threatened by exposure to foreign influence and a realization that an effective secular government would undercut their power.

Whoever “wins” the conflict over Afghanistan’s religion will determine what form of Islamic practice will help shape Afghan government and society. Political Islam is far from a dynamic and revolutionary force: rather, it currently serves as a conservative force, motivating parliamentary and judiciary opposition to the Karzai government, filling a vacuum that existed in the absence of a tradition of parliamentary loyal opposition and waving the nationalist flag to oppose foreign-backed social changes. What has given the issue of the direction of Afghan religion additional importance is the religious basis, through Sharia law, of the secular legal system of Afghanistan. Chief Justice Faisal Ahmad Shinwari (who held that post in 2001–06) and his allies aimed to make the judiciary a bastion
of religious conservatism against socio-political change. This changed with the appointment of Karzai allies to judicial positions.

Religion also has a direct impact on how dispute resolution reaches the Afghan grassroots. In much of rural Afghanistan, dispute resolution falls not to the largely distrusted or nonexistent state-run judicial process; rather, the local population administers traditional justice themselves, through the hoqooq (a specialist land-and-water-rights body), jirga, shura, or other local organizations. While the centralization of power in Kabul and its state institutions under the constitutions had led to these subnational institutions being undervalued and unsupported after the fall of the Taliban, they were by 2008–10 receiving more support from aid donors. In some areas, especially in the omnipresent land and water disputes, the mediative role of
sayids
(descendants of the Prophet Mohammed) continues as it has for centuries. In other areas, the mantle of conflict resolution has been taken up by the insurgents, who have come in and offered their own rough justice—with a veneer of Sharia law for acceptability included—administered by local insurgent shuras or, more often, individual mullahs—seldom with the qualifications to be a
qazi
(Islamic jurist)—or insurgent commanders, often from outside the local area.
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The insurgents have targeted
jirgas, shuras
, mediation, and other local approaches to dispute resolution as unIslamic, as such traditional justice undercuts their claim to totalitarian authority.

There is no Afghan tradition of state-supported ulema. Indeed, the size of the Afghan ulema, an estimated quarter million, would make such state support unfeasible. Kabul has tried to instill loyalty by forming ulema councils at a national and provincial level. The National Ulema-e-Shura (NUS) (Council of Clerics), a group of 100 religious leaders from around the country, meets monthly in Kabul and provides Karzai with a stamp of approval on many issues. The clerics are financed directly from Mr. Karzai’s office, according to the secretary of the council, Fazel Ahmad Manawi (a Karzai ally, former deputy chief justice, and a member of the 2009 Independent Election Commission).
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Each province is supposed to have a comparable organization, although not all are apparently active. These efforts have not been terribly effective, with some exceptions such as the Kandahar council which includes religious leadership figures
related to Karzai and senior ulema respected by all sides in the conflict. Kandahar’s and Nangarhar’s Ulema-e-Shura have been active, issuing
fatwas
against the insurgents and especially suicide bombing. In return, their members have been targeted for assassination, deterring ulema in areas within the reach of the insurgency from cooperating with the government or from preaching anti-insurgent messages. Ulema seen as having links to Kabul have been targeted, and many have been murdered by insurgents.
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In some areas, such as Uruzgan province, the security situation is too dangerous for the council to operate. Elsewhere, such as Paktika province, the council was formed by local ulema who complained they received no support (or help with security) from Kabul.

The Afghan government has also used ministries to create positions for ulema on the government payroll to ensure loyalty. Starting in 2007, the Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs in Kabul has in effect put more “conservative” mullahs from some Pushtun tribes on the government payroll. But this has been seen more as a concession to appease the Taliban culture than an attempt to affect what is preached in the mosques on Fridays.

However, the Karzai government has tried to get its message across through the mosques, for example by sending a message on International Women’s Day to be preached; however, as the imams tend to add their own interpretation at the end, the results may not be as Kabul intended. Many Afghans see the government’s interaction with religion as inept and ineffective.

The religious dimension of Afghanistan’s conflicts is too important to be conceded to the enemy. Much of the post-2001 outside aid to Afghanistan has failed to make life better for the average Afghan in that it has tended to avoid agriculture and religion, the two areas of life that Afghans depend on for material and spiritual well-being. The purely secular approaches that the West is most comfortable with do not connect with this world where religion is central to life and society and is at the heart of the challenge posed by terrorists, insurgents, and narcotics traffickers alike. Religion (like agricultural development) was too often ignored by aid donors post-2001 despite their shared importance to the daily lives of Afghans at grassroots level. In practice, this has meant
that in much of Pushtun-speaking Afghanistan, what is preached in the mosque reflects outside influence and hostility to Kabul’s non-Muslim foreign supporters. The Sufic brotherhoods and their networks received some outside support but have been unable to demonstrate strength comparable to the Deobandi-influenced networks that have allowed the insurgents to mobilize ulema throughout Afghanistan. In the words of US political philosopher Michael Novak, “Mere secular force will not do when the fundamental battle is spiritual.”
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Corruption

Afghanistan has never been free of corruption.
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Yet it was much less prevalent in the generation preceding the 1978 Communist takeover. And despite the inflow of aid rubles and dollars in the Cold War years, Afghanistan’s relative isolation from the international economy and the relatively small number of educated Afghans involved in this process kept overall corruption in check. Because this relatively small group of people had to work together over the course of their lifetimes, reputation was all-important, making officials less likely to be tempted by bribes or building personal patronage at the expense of governance. “When I was a junior officer in the Royal Afghan Army, stationed at Kargha, someone lost one submachine gun; they turned the place upside down looking for it and its loss ended peoples’ careers,” nostalgically recalled Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak in 2008.
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“Corruption of leaders (entirely unacceptable), administrative corruption, road tolls and illegality, and connection with narcotics”
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was overwhelming Afghanistan in 2008–10, according to Interior minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar, appointed to the position in large part because of his personal reputation for rectitude. The threat to Afghanistan from corruption is different from anything that was seen in the past. President Karzai has been forthright in recognizing the problem corruption causes for Afghanistan’s future and has spoken strongly against it.
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Yet Karzai himself is frequently identified as contributing to corruption, benefiting from fraudulent 2009 election results and tolerating the unchecked activities of his family and clients in Kandahar and adjacent provinces that have reportedly involved them in land, narcotics, and other questionable
dealing. By 2009, polling showed that 85 percent of Afghans considered corruption a problem, already up from 72 percent in 2007.
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Yet, in another poll, more than half the population said they had no personal experience of corruption.
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The recent rise in corruption challenges the very legitimacy of Afghan governmental institutions, threatening the country’s future. It has undercut the ability of Afghans and foreign supporters alike to create effective Afghan political and societal institutions. This widespread corruption creates a destructive game of beggar-my-neighbor through shady resource allocation, with different groups and localities competing against each other. This widespread corruption has also hurt economic growth and development, diverting resources away from where they are needed. “The difference is between
baksheesh
[traditional gift-giving and wheel-greasing] and high level corruption. Provincial and police chiefs are deeply on the take,” according to US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in 2008.
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