Interview: Dangerous Afghanistan - a safe backyard for Pakistan
So the Taliban were against me, the government was against me. On both sides I had no security. […]I was moving on and my father and my mother, my friends were telling me this is dangerous, please don’t do it. But I said, if I don’t do it and you don’t do it, then who will be doing it? […] We need some sacrifices; we need to make some sacrifices in order to change something. Otherwise nothing will change and we just bend our heads down and say whatever they will say. And I don’t want to do that. That’s why I was doing these activities.
Owais Tokhi, a 29 year old student in Germany, has been working as a freelance journalist with different media and international humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan. Originally from Herat in West Afghanistan, he was forced to leave his country in 2008, due to his critical reports against the Islamic fundamentalism of the Taliban and the corruption of the new Afghan government. He became an enemy for both sides of the conflict and has only scarcely survived three attacks, escaping often only by sheer luck. His long exodus and search for security led him through India, Russia, Ukraine and finally to Germany.
In September 2010 he was accepted by the Germany authorities for asylum and received a passport six month later. In order to keep his permanent residence authorization, he will never be able to return to Afghanistan.
This interview was held in order to gain more background knowledge about the ongoing conflict and war in Afghanistan and to get a better understanding about the problems arising from the intervention, that started in 2001.
Afghanistan has now been in a conflict for over 3 decades. With the intervention in 2001 by the USA and later by ISAF a whole new war was triggered. What are the reasons for this everlasting conflict in Afghanistan?
Tokhi: If we look at the international level, like the conflict in Syria, the same thing is happening in Afghanistan - China and Russia on one side, the US and its allies on the other side.
If you make the circle smaller, regionally, Pakistan does not want a strong Afghan state, because if Afghanistan is stabilized and peaceful they fear that India might have influence in the building and construction of Afghanistan. They could get too close. Pakistan and China do not like this.
If there will be a future war between all these countries, it will mean trouble and they will be hit from the other side also by Afghanistan. They [Pakistan] want to have a safe backyard through Afghanistan. And a safe backyard for them is a destabilized [one], where civil war is going on. On the other side Pakistan does not want a stabilized government in Afghanistan and a strong army because they have a conflict in the border sharing – which is called Durand line, based on an agreement* made in 1893.
*Note by author: The Durand line refers to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that was established in an agreement between British India and Afghanistan in 1893. It runs directly through the area of the biggest Afghan ethnicity, the Pashtuns, and divides it in two parts. Some critics argue today, that it was drawn up deliberately in this way to prevent the Pashtuns from becoming too powerful in the region.
Coming to the intervention itself starting in 2001, do you actually think the intervention was successful and could be used as a guideline for future interventions?
Tokhi: We do believe that this was a good action which changed the fate of our country, but it could be better. There could have been much better works done in the process. With the Iraq war happening, the political attention was withdrawn from Afghanistan. They thought they removed Taliban, but Taliban started again from 2005 on. Before they were only very small groups, but they actually started to grow again afterwards. Through the missing political attention and pressure, the new government became corrupt. Also, there were less economic support. All in all resulted to make the dead Taliban alive and made them strong again.
Thinking about the different areas of the intervention - especially development and reconstruction - have these changes turned out effective?
Tokhi: See, nobody was thinking that one day there will be internet in Afghanistan or mobile phones. But now we even have flights from Herat to Kabul every day: there are international and local airlines. [...]
From my city Herat to Kabul it is about 1400km. If you wanted to get there during the civil war it was nearly impossible, because the roads were destroyed. So you had to spend three days in a car to get there. Now, the roads are all rebuilt. You sit in your car and you are in Kabul within five hours. [...]
There is no more monopoly of one company, but a free market. The people enjoy these varieties. Nobody was thinking about having a parliament in Afghanistan! But today, more than 33% of the parliament consists of women and we have experienced a legitimate and democratic parliament. People voted for the first time in history of the country, people voted directly, sending their representative to make their law and to contribute to their fates. These changes would not have come just like that. It requires for a small progress, a lot of time. And force. But now it came. It changed the people. Never, never in history of this country people went to vote, to choose their president. They did it twice and they will do it again in 2014. This will make democracy more mature in the country.
What are the most important needs for Afghanistan now? What are the areas the intervening parties should focus on more intensively?
Tokhi: Of course there is suffering because of the poverty and for the short run it needs in Afghanistan some humanitarian support and subsidisation. The Afghan government is not able to subsidize a lot of money and if they are not able to invest in the education then the level of education will decrease and there will be problems in the process […].
After the French army left Kapisa, there were some studies by the ministry of rural development. They calculated what the French people left behind in the sense of development of this region in the villages [and found out] that if they would divide the development budget of Afghanistan it would take 50 years for Afghanistan to do what the French left behind them. Germany is most active among others, and I blame the governor of Herat at that time, for opposing the presence of Germans in the West region, because of Iran. Iran is not good with German politics, but they are better with Italy or Spain. So Iran pushed to oppose the German presence. Therefore, Germany chose the North of Afghanistan to be stationed and take care of this area. And now Italy and Spain are there and cannot do the development projects as richly as the Germans. You can see that the Italian and Spanish did not do much because of their economic problems.
So are you criticizing the approach that different countries of the UN split Afghanistan up in different areas without having a look which country has the best resources to help this region in Afghanistan?
Tokhi: Yes, they told everyone where to go before the planning actually started […].
Now, what is going on in the south, in the Pashtun residential regions, in Helmand and in other places, a lot of money is wasted. They [Taliban] destroy one school, the next day they [the Provincial Reconstruction Teams] build this school again. In the north the people are suffering with the lack of schools in the villages. This comes also from the stupid policies. They say if you give them development they will stop the conflict. If there is less Taliban and less conflict in this city or state, fewer attacks happen. The people should see that if they want development, if they want school or these good things they should stop supporting the Taliban! Locals are the ones who can understand who is an outsider in their village, who is not local, just came here and does suspicious activities. So the people are the ones who can play the major role to change their situation.
You told us that you have experienced a lot of corruption, especially during the last elections. Are there any mistakes in the anti-corruption policies?
Tokhi: There has been a lot of corruption, especially when the government has started from zero. It can never be an ideal government or an idealist state, but it needs time to fight that. The good thing is that the outside forces [the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF] could choose the right people. Unfortunately they are choosing the wrong people!
And what I criticise in the US Congress is that they are very stupidly making their policies concerning Afghanistan.
The congress is sending consultants to Afghanistan to investigate about the issue. So what is he or she doing? They visit a base; stay two, three months inside this base writing his or her report. Whenever he or she is going outside, they are going out in the convoy or the helicopter, looking at people from above through bulletproof glass. But they never contact the people, they never hear the people. They might be making contact with two or three corrupted warlords or governors, commanders and they collect some data, untrue data, from them or they say they describe and they make a report and submit it to the Congress in Washington. The policy-makers usually rely only on this data. They could include the reports from the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch - who are between and among the people and who are in contact with the people, but they are more relying on the policies of their counsellor reports, especially the US politicians.
If they would use this kind of report from the International Organisations and NGOs and from the Afghan government itself, put it all together, they would have better policies.
As we all know, the drug trade is a big business in Afghanistan, especially for insurgency groups. Do you think that every country has a significant interest in solving this problem or is this not their main goal? And do you think that if there would be more focus on the issue, it would help the development of the country?
Tokhi: The drug issue is a complicated topic. If you look at the drug graph it started from almost zero in 2001 and strongly increases since then. So why is it three times, four times higher than from the time of Taliban to now? Because there is something behind the scenes, what we do not know exactly. Some people want the country to be destabilized, since they benefit from this situation. If there is a weak, central government the warlords, the local sellers of the different regions, might benefit. They keep it moving on and from this money they use some in it to push the conflict further. These are the small hands; there are bigger hands which we do not know exactly. There are Afghans saying that helicopters are coming to their farms, buying the opium harvest of the year. These farmers are of course happy about it, because they will get more than the market price or than selling potatoes. There have been no attempts for regulation of policies, against the opium. The law is against this, the constitution is against this, everything is against this. Opium is illegal in the farms, but still they are doing it. An example is the Helmand province, which is south-west of the country. According to an UN report, only Helmand is providing two-thirds of heroin worldwide. Just one state of Afghanistan! And always the US and the UK, the militaries, are having conflict about who to control this region, because of the benefits of this. When the Prince of Wales went to Helmand to visit the military, he was riding a motorbike, visiting the farms of opium to see it from nearby. If they can see it why do they not destroy it?
Should there be some initiatives for Taliban fighters who want to quit the insurgency and become re-integrated into Afghan society again?
Tokhi: It is the bad policies of the president Karzai and the government, and these are coming from the US, because it is supporting his policies. They empty the jails, they [the insurgence fighters] get released! The Afghan National Forces do their best to decrease the suicide attacks, but the president 'hugs' the person and says not to do it again. There are reports from the Afghan intelligence office that three times a person was arrested for trying to commit suicide attacks, and the person got released every single time. Because of this crazy lack of punishment against the terrorists and against the suicide attackers, there is no specific law to bring them in court trials, so the Afghan forces, the national forces, get tired of this. They put in danger their own life to punish this bad guy, but he gets released with rewards by our president. What is the reason behind this? He wants to embrace Taliban in order to come and make peace negotiations. And I opposed these peace negotiations from the beginning. Why? These people they are not autonomous! Because they do not have the freedom to come, they do not have the permission. Everything is in the hand of Pakistan. From the other side, there is a programme where they give incentives to Taliban to give up their weapon and to join the peace process. But what [do] they do? They take the money, they receive lots of support, but the next day with this money they go, and again, join the Taliban forces back. This happened many times. Imagine the danger from releasing political opponents and especially terrorists. This is increasing the tension and the force against fair elections.
What do you think about the future outlook for Afghanistan: where is it going and what will happen with the next elections?
Tokhi: Poor Afghans, they live all their life with hopes. The only thing why they still breathe is their hope that there will be positive changes. But if you ask my personal opinion I would say that there are lots of problems in this country and it is not going to be fine in short time. In the long run it might be possible. But at the moment it is going in the wrong direction because of the maladministration from the president. In the beginning of 2008 they started peace negotiations with Taliban. It was wasting time and gave Taliban the opportunity to recruit and get powerful again. Taliban does not believe in peace. They want to take everything by force and they are not autonomous. If you want to make peace negotiations, you will have to make peace negotiations with Pakistan*, not with Taliban! Today it showed that I was right, that the peace negotiations with Taliban will not make progress. The government should not call them [Taliban] brother, if they are killing their people every day. Taliban should have fear! If they do not make peace, they should be destroyed. But now it is the other way around. The government is saying if I do not make peace, I will be destroyed. But Taliban is not a strong group, they are not an army. And they are not even one group, they are still different groups. Today I saw in Afghan news that Taliban groups are still fighting against each other. They are fighting, killing each other. So this is the thing. The government should show that it is strong, otherwise there will be no peace.
*Note by author: It is commonly known that the Intelligence Service of Pakistan, the ISI, has been part of the civil war in Afghanistan through their support of the Taliban and former rebel groups. Furthermore, the rebel groups are able to use the territory on the Pakistani side of the border to withdraw and recover. Pakistan is thereby one of the leading factors, which are contributing to the conflict today.
Thank you, Owais, for this thoroughly engaging interview and your views about the situation in Afghanistan today.
The interview was held on the 30th November 2013 by Marianne Siede, Anke Neumeier and Jan Oczenasek.
Owais Tokhi, a 29 year old student in Germany, has been working as a freelance journalist with different media and international humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan. Originally from Herat in West Afghanistan, he was forced to leave his country in 2008, due to his critical reports against the Islamic fundamentalism of the Taliban and the corruption of the new Afghan government. He became an enemy for both sides of the conflict and has only scarcely survived three attacks, escaping often only by sheer luck. His long exodus and search for security led him through India, Russia, Ukraine and finally to Germany.
In September 2010 he was accepted by the Germany authorities for asylum and received a passport six month later. In order to keep his permanent residence authorization, he will never be able to return to Afghanistan.
This interview was held in order to gain more background knowledge about the ongoing conflict and war in Afghanistan and to get a better understanding about the problems arising from the intervention, that started in 2001.
Afghanistan has now been in a conflict for over 3 decades. With the intervention in 2001 by the USA and later by ISAF a whole new war was triggered. What are the reasons for this everlasting conflict in Afghanistan?
Tokhi: If we look at the international level, like the conflict in Syria, the same thing is happening in Afghanistan - China and Russia on one side, the US and its allies on the other side.
If you make the circle smaller, regionally, Pakistan does not want a strong Afghan state, because if Afghanistan is stabilized and peaceful they fear that India might have influence in the building and construction of Afghanistan. They could get too close. Pakistan and China do not like this.
If there will be a future war between all these countries, it will mean trouble and they will be hit from the other side also by Afghanistan. They [Pakistan] want to have a safe backyard through Afghanistan. And a safe backyard for them is a destabilized [one], where civil war is going on. On the other side Pakistan does not want a stabilized government in Afghanistan and a strong army because they have a conflict in the border sharing – which is called Durand line, based on an agreement* made in 1893.
*Note by author: The Durand line refers to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, that was established in an agreement between British India and Afghanistan in 1893. It runs directly through the area of the biggest Afghan ethnicity, the Pashtuns, and divides it in two parts. Some critics argue today, that it was drawn up deliberately in this way to prevent the Pashtuns from becoming too powerful in the region.
Coming to the intervention itself starting in 2001, do you actually think the intervention was successful and could be used as a guideline for future interventions?
Tokhi: We do believe that this was a good action which changed the fate of our country, but it could be better. There could have been much better works done in the process. With the Iraq war happening, the political attention was withdrawn from Afghanistan. They thought they removed Taliban, but Taliban started again from 2005 on. Before they were only very small groups, but they actually started to grow again afterwards. Through the missing political attention and pressure, the new government became corrupt. Also, there were less economic support. All in all resulted to make the dead Taliban alive and made them strong again.
Thinking about the different areas of the intervention - especially development and reconstruction - have these changes turned out effective?
Tokhi: See, nobody was thinking that one day there will be internet in Afghanistan or mobile phones. But now we even have flights from Herat to Kabul every day: there are international and local airlines. [...]
From my city Herat to Kabul it is about 1400km. If you wanted to get there during the civil war it was nearly impossible, because the roads were destroyed. So you had to spend three days in a car to get there. Now, the roads are all rebuilt. You sit in your car and you are in Kabul within five hours. [...]
There is no more monopoly of one company, but a free market. The people enjoy these varieties. Nobody was thinking about having a parliament in Afghanistan! But today, more than 33% of the parliament consists of women and we have experienced a legitimate and democratic parliament. People voted for the first time in history of the country, people voted directly, sending their representative to make their law and to contribute to their fates. These changes would not have come just like that. It requires for a small progress, a lot of time. And force. But now it came. It changed the people. Never, never in history of this country people went to vote, to choose their president. They did it twice and they will do it again in 2014. This will make democracy more mature in the country.
What are the most important needs for Afghanistan now? What are the areas the intervening parties should focus on more intensively?
Tokhi: Of course there is suffering because of the poverty and for the short run it needs in Afghanistan some humanitarian support and subsidisation. The Afghan government is not able to subsidize a lot of money and if they are not able to invest in the education then the level of education will decrease and there will be problems in the process […].
After the French army left Kapisa, there were some studies by the ministry of rural development. They calculated what the French people left behind in the sense of development of this region in the villages [and found out] that if they would divide the development budget of Afghanistan it would take 50 years for Afghanistan to do what the French left behind them. Germany is most active among others, and I blame the governor of Herat at that time, for opposing the presence of Germans in the West region, because of Iran. Iran is not good with German politics, but they are better with Italy or Spain. So Iran pushed to oppose the German presence. Therefore, Germany chose the North of Afghanistan to be stationed and take care of this area. And now Italy and Spain are there and cannot do the development projects as richly as the Germans. You can see that the Italian and Spanish did not do much because of their economic problems.
So are you criticizing the approach that different countries of the UN split Afghanistan up in different areas without having a look which country has the best resources to help this region in Afghanistan?
Tokhi: Yes, they told everyone where to go before the planning actually started […].
Now, what is going on in the south, in the Pashtun residential regions, in Helmand and in other places, a lot of money is wasted. They [Taliban] destroy one school, the next day they [the Provincial Reconstruction Teams] build this school again. In the north the people are suffering with the lack of schools in the villages. This comes also from the stupid policies. They say if you give them development they will stop the conflict. If there is less Taliban and less conflict in this city or state, fewer attacks happen. The people should see that if they want development, if they want school or these good things they should stop supporting the Taliban! Locals are the ones who can understand who is an outsider in their village, who is not local, just came here and does suspicious activities. So the people are the ones who can play the major role to change their situation.
You told us that you have experienced a lot of corruption, especially during the last elections. Are there any mistakes in the anti-corruption policies?
Tokhi: There has been a lot of corruption, especially when the government has started from zero. It can never be an ideal government or an idealist state, but it needs time to fight that. The good thing is that the outside forces [the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF] could choose the right people. Unfortunately they are choosing the wrong people!
And what I criticise in the US Congress is that they are very stupidly making their policies concerning Afghanistan.
The congress is sending consultants to Afghanistan to investigate about the issue. So what is he or she doing? They visit a base; stay two, three months inside this base writing his or her report. Whenever he or she is going outside, they are going out in the convoy or the helicopter, looking at people from above through bulletproof glass. But they never contact the people, they never hear the people. They might be making contact with two or three corrupted warlords or governors, commanders and they collect some data, untrue data, from them or they say they describe and they make a report and submit it to the Congress in Washington. The policy-makers usually rely only on this data. They could include the reports from the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch - who are between and among the people and who are in contact with the people, but they are more relying on the policies of their counsellor reports, especially the US politicians.
If they would use this kind of report from the International Organisations and NGOs and from the Afghan government itself, put it all together, they would have better policies.
As we all know, the drug trade is a big business in Afghanistan, especially for insurgency groups. Do you think that every country has a significant interest in solving this problem or is this not their main goal? And do you think that if there would be more focus on the issue, it would help the development of the country?
Tokhi: The drug issue is a complicated topic. If you look at the drug graph it started from almost zero in 2001 and strongly increases since then. So why is it three times, four times higher than from the time of Taliban to now? Because there is something behind the scenes, what we do not know exactly. Some people want the country to be destabilized, since they benefit from this situation. If there is a weak, central government the warlords, the local sellers of the different regions, might benefit. They keep it moving on and from this money they use some in it to push the conflict further. These are the small hands; there are bigger hands which we do not know exactly. There are Afghans saying that helicopters are coming to their farms, buying the opium harvest of the year. These farmers are of course happy about it, because they will get more than the market price or than selling potatoes. There have been no attempts for regulation of policies, against the opium. The law is against this, the constitution is against this, everything is against this. Opium is illegal in the farms, but still they are doing it. An example is the Helmand province, which is south-west of the country. According to an UN report, only Helmand is providing two-thirds of heroin worldwide. Just one state of Afghanistan! And always the US and the UK, the militaries, are having conflict about who to control this region, because of the benefits of this. When the Prince of Wales went to Helmand to visit the military, he was riding a motorbike, visiting the farms of opium to see it from nearby. If they can see it why do they not destroy it?
Should there be some initiatives for Taliban fighters who want to quit the insurgency and become re-integrated into Afghan society again?
Tokhi: It is the bad policies of the president Karzai and the government, and these are coming from the US, because it is supporting his policies. They empty the jails, they [the insurgence fighters] get released! The Afghan National Forces do their best to decrease the suicide attacks, but the president 'hugs' the person and says not to do it again. There are reports from the Afghan intelligence office that three times a person was arrested for trying to commit suicide attacks, and the person got released every single time. Because of this crazy lack of punishment against the terrorists and against the suicide attackers, there is no specific law to bring them in court trials, so the Afghan forces, the national forces, get tired of this. They put in danger their own life to punish this bad guy, but he gets released with rewards by our president. What is the reason behind this? He wants to embrace Taliban in order to come and make peace negotiations. And I opposed these peace negotiations from the beginning. Why? These people they are not autonomous! Because they do not have the freedom to come, they do not have the permission. Everything is in the hand of Pakistan. From the other side, there is a programme where they give incentives to Taliban to give up their weapon and to join the peace process. But what [do] they do? They take the money, they receive lots of support, but the next day with this money they go, and again, join the Taliban forces back. This happened many times. Imagine the danger from releasing political opponents and especially terrorists. This is increasing the tension and the force against fair elections.
What do you think about the future outlook for Afghanistan: where is it going and what will happen with the next elections?
Tokhi: Poor Afghans, they live all their life with hopes. The only thing why they still breathe is their hope that there will be positive changes. But if you ask my personal opinion I would say that there are lots of problems in this country and it is not going to be fine in short time. In the long run it might be possible. But at the moment it is going in the wrong direction because of the maladministration from the president. In the beginning of 2008 they started peace negotiations with Taliban. It was wasting time and gave Taliban the opportunity to recruit and get powerful again. Taliban does not believe in peace. They want to take everything by force and they are not autonomous. If you want to make peace negotiations, you will have to make peace negotiations with Pakistan*, not with Taliban! Today it showed that I was right, that the peace negotiations with Taliban will not make progress. The government should not call them [Taliban] brother, if they are killing their people every day. Taliban should have fear! If they do not make peace, they should be destroyed. But now it is the other way around. The government is saying if I do not make peace, I will be destroyed. But Taliban is not a strong group, they are not an army. And they are not even one group, they are still different groups. Today I saw in Afghan news that Taliban groups are still fighting against each other. They are fighting, killing each other. So this is the thing. The government should show that it is strong, otherwise there will be no peace.
*Note by author: It is commonly known that the Intelligence Service of Pakistan, the ISI, has been part of the civil war in Afghanistan through their support of the Taliban and former rebel groups. Furthermore, the rebel groups are able to use the territory on the Pakistani side of the border to withdraw and recover. Pakistan is thereby one of the leading factors, which are contributing to the conflict today.
Thank you, Owais, for this thoroughly engaging interview and your views about the situation in Afghanistan today.
The interview was held on the 30th November 2013 by Marianne Siede, Anke Neumeier and Jan Oczenasek.
All opinions and views expressed in the articles on this website are the opinions of the designated authors only and do not reflect the opinions or views of the Current Affairs Society itself in any way.