Afghan Unity Serves Whom?

The joint war on terrorism in Afghanistan promoted better U.S.-Russian relations. Now the opposite may be happening: Traditional Afghan fractiousness is straining the international coalition.

The head of the transitional Afghan government, Hamid Karzai, recently traveled to many world capitals seeking support, but he bypassed Moscow. Karzai represents a faction of anti-Taliban Pashtuns. Many of these Pashtuns fought against Russian forces in the 1980s and many genuinely hate Russia.

Instead of Karzai, the new Afghan defense minister, General Muhammed Fahim, came to Moscow this week. Fahim was received very warmly and had a lengthy and friendly audience with President Vladimir Putin.

In the 1980s, Fahim became a general while fighting Karzai's Pashtuns under Soviet command. After Soviet forces left Afghanistan, Fahim (an ethnic Tajik) served the Tajik warlord Ahmad Shah Massood as a military expert and soon became his chief of staff. In September, Massood was assassinated and Fahim was appointed the military chief of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces.

Today, Fahim continues to control basically the same Tajik forces — heavily armed by Russia — as before. Russian officers have served Massood and then Fahim for years, helping the Afghans in using more sophisticated military equipment. The Russians are in essence running the small Afghan Tajik airforce, serving as pilots and mechanics.

In Moscow this week, Fahim got pledges of continued military and technical support — spare parts and expertise to keep the Northern Alliance's heavy equipment running. And it was announced that the Northern Alliance might get more Russian airplanes.

During the campaign against the Taliban, Russia only provided assistance to the Northern Alliance Tajiks. Moscow does not trust other anti-Taliban factions, especially not the Pashtuns, who are believed to be turncoat Taliban allied with Pakistan.

Afghanistan has an interim government, but no legitimate internal source of revenue and no defense budget. The only significant domestic source of income in Afghanistan is the production and trafficking of heroin. The Northern Alliance army that liberated Kabul last November was raised with and is still financed by narcodollars. There have been repeated and reliable reports that Afghan heroin produced by the Northern Alliance is transported through Tajikistan and Russia to consumers in Europe with the help of Tajik and Russian civilian and military officials.

Geopolitically speaking, it would seem that Russia has a vested interest in seeing Afghanistan united, civilized and stable. But true stabilization could harm not only the heroin trade, but also more legitimate Russian interests.

In the 1990s, Washington supported plans to build gas and oil pipelines from Central Asia and the Caspian area through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean port of Karachi in Pakistan, bypassing traditional Russian export routes. These projects were postponed because of continued infighting in Afghanistan and because the Taliban authorities provided shelter to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorists.

Today the pipeline projects may go ahead, providing the Kabul government with legitimate revenue if, of course, real stability returns to the country. But the planned pipelines would not go through Tajik-controlled areas, and Russia would lose out politically and economically if a pipeline from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean becomes a reality.

Karzai has been begging Western powers to send more troops to Afghanistan, to expand the British-led stabilization force and deploy it outside of Kabul. Russia's ally Fahim has indicated that he does not favor the deployment of large numbers of foreign soldiers, saying, "There is no reason for them to go to all parts of Afghanistan."

Pashtun warlords are also busy establishing their own fiefdoms in the southeast, promoting heroin production and trade via Iran and Pakistan, to finance their private armies. Uzbek and Hazari factions have their own ambitious warlords, poppy fields and foreign patrons.

It's hard to see who really needs or wants a united, successful Afghanistan, except perhaps Karzai and some of his Western supporters. This week Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told journalists that the bad times for Afghanistan are not over, that the forces of terrorism are lurking in the dark preparing to destabilize the country again. This may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.