Asia Times: King's men can't put Afghans together again


	October 25, 2001	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

King's men can't put Afghans together again
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

ISLAMABAD - Non-Taliban representatives, including tribal chiefs, Islamic clerics and Afghan commanders, began a fresh round of talks on Wednesday in Peshawar to discuss a formula to form a broad-based post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

However, missing from the discussions was a delegation sent by former Afghan monarch Zahir Shah, tipped in some quarters as a pivotal figure in any post-Taliban settlement. The four members of the delegation have returned to Rome, where the king has lived in exile since 1973, with empty hands, as most of the former Afghan resistance movement leaders see no role for Zahir Shah.

The delegation attended two jirga (councils) over the past few days, but failed to muster sufficient support for Zahir Shah, and a final decision on the king's role is due to be made at the current meeting. The delegation skipped this gathering as a face-saving measure in view of expected widespread opposition.

Before leaving Pakistan, the leader of the delegation, Hedayat Amin Arsala, spoke to Asia Times Online in Islamabad, and although he tried to give the impression that his mission remained successful, he admitted that they had not discussed the idea of a broad-based administration with the Pakistani government.

Arsala said that "friends in Peshawar" will play their role in representing the king's interests, including Syed Ahmed Gailani, whom he said is " very much part of our structure". Gailani led the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, one of a number of militias that fought the Soviet invaders from 1979 to 1989, and who has close links with the monarch. Delegates at the jirga are expected to discuss the formation of a broad-based multi-ethnic government and the composition of a 120-man interim council to oversee the transition of power in the event of the fall of the Taliban. The United Nations has already ruled out providing peacekeepers in this scenario, making it important to ensure a quick and bloodless transfer of power.

There have been reports of the king himself visiting Pakistan to shore up support, but these have been dismissed as unlikely given the mood at the recent two jirga. These meetings were attended by most of the former resistance movement leaders, including Gailani, Abdul Haq and representatives of the Hizb-i-Islami (Yunus Khalis), the Hizb-i-Islami (Gulbadin Hekamtyar) and the Hizb-i-Wehdat (Karim Khalili). A further nearly 50 commanders who were a part of the Afghan resistance movement against the Soviets attended. In particular, Yunus Khalis and Gulbadin were strongly opposed to a role for the 86-year-old Zahir Shah, whom they view as an American puppet.

President Burhanudin Rabbani, head of the Northern Alliance forces fighting the Taliban, has aspirations of being the next Afghan head of state. General Muhammad Fahim, who replaced assassinated Ahmad Shah Masoud as commander of the Northern Alliance troops, Abdul Rashid Dostum, head of an Uzbek militia within the Northern Alliance, and Ismail Khan, former governor of Afghanistan's western provinces and a famed commander from the anti-Soviet occupation era, also want powerful roles in any new administration. These aspirations are reported as already causing cracks within the Northern Alliance.

Also looming large on the scene is former Afghan commander Abdul Haq, who returned recently from exile in the United Arab Emirates to Pakistan. He has a personal grudge against the Taliban, who are believed to have assassinated his wife and son in Peshawar last year in an apparent attempt to curb his influence in the eastern regions of Afghanistan. Indeed, this week there have been reports that Haq, an ethnic Pashtun like the Taliban, has managed to woo some support away from the Taliban. Huq is believed to be the only commander in favor of Zahir Shah.

Gailani, too, is certain to emerge as an important figure. Also Pashtun, like the majority of Afghans, he has a personal grudge against the Taliban. Gul Agha, a member of Gailani's National Islamic Front of Afghanistan who was the governor of Kandahar province, was killed by the Taliban when they took power in 1996.

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