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Afghanistan: Creation of a Warlord Democracy

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Afghanistan:

Creation of a Warlord

Democracy

By

Ana Pejcinova

Submitted to

Central European University

Department of Political Science

Mentor: Professor Aida Hozic, Ithaca University, Florida

Budapest, Hungary - 2006

The security of some and the insecurity of others, our

modernity and their tradition are parts of a

simultaneous., linked, fragmented world … the

fragmenting countries show the integrating ones the

dark side of their common present. ‘If you do not like

the image in the mirror,’ says an old Persian poem,

‘do not break the mirror, break your face.’

Barnett Rubin, on the post-Cold War world In The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: Afghanistan, Mirror of the World (1995)


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Acknowledgments The idea for this thesis appeared during an intense period of my deployment in Afghanistan as a UN electoral officer, for the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004 and 2005. A number of Afghan men and women are present in this text, with their warmth, dignity, and impressive will to live, free from bitterness and self-pity. My first thanks therefore are due to my former colleagues and friends from the Logar Province, Kabul Region: mullah Qazi Sultan Fahim and Haji Abdul Rahman. Also, warm thanks to the Afghan team of the Southeast Region and the Peter Erben electoral team. Special gratitude to Trevor Martin, Head of the UNAMA Central Field Office, for his wise and sophisticated understanding of Afghan politics; and to Geoff Hourn, former UNOPS Regional Manager, for his continuous support and friendship. Sincere appreciation to my CEU mentor, Professor Aida Hozic, for her invaluable guidance through the areas of international relations and political science.

This text does not express the opinion of any of the aforementioned individuals, or organizations.

Abstract This thesis is a qualitative single-case study of emergence and consolidation of a so-called “warlord democracy” in Afghanistan, a formally democratic regime where violence predominantly serves as a trump in economic, political and social contracts. A definition and typology of Afghan warlords as military entrepreneurs is developed. Five enabling conditions of militant entrepreneurship are explained: the socio-historical and economic conditions, the regime imposition by a foreign military intervention, the democratic transitional paradigm limited to institution-building, and the global phenomenon of fusion of post-modern warfare and gain maximization. The thesis shows the contexts of development and specific mechanisms of the five enabling conditions, which contrary to the expectations of their theoretical framework or the paradigms whence they stem from, consistently contributed to the creation, institutionalization and legitimization of a warlord democracy in Afghanistan.


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CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: Warlords

1.1.1. Defining Warlords 1.1.2. Afghan Warlords 1.1.3. Categories of Warlords 1.1.4. Warlordism

1.2. History of Warlordism 1.2.1. The Rise of Warlordism in the

Cold War 1.2.2. The Role of Warlords in the Fall of

the Taliban 1.2.3. Post-Taliban Phase 1.2.4. Establishment of Warlordism 1.2.5. International Contractors 1.2.6. Grievances

1.3. Elections 1.3.1. Presidential Elections 2004

1.3.1.1. Electoral data 1.3.1.2. Electoral violations 1.3.1.3. Undercurrents

1.3.2. Parliamentary Elections 2005 1.3.2.1. Electoral Data 1.3.2.2. Candidates 1.3.2.3. Candidacy Violations

1.3.2.4. Electoral Violations

1.3.3. Post-electoral development CHAPTER 2: Violence and Profit 2.1. The Situation 2.1.1. Resource Dependence 2.1.2. New Commanders 2.2. Nexus 2.2.1. Growing Poppy 2.2.2. Income, Bans and Prices 2.3. Poverty and Illicit Economy 2.4. Poppy-eradication Programme 2.5. Addicted Economy CHAPTER 3: Afghan Cultural Model 3.1. Qawm 3.1.1. Types of Social Bonds 3.1.2. Values 3.1.3. Shifting Alliances 3.2. Customary Laws 3.2.1. Shura 3.2.2. Arbakai 3.2.3. Jirga 3.2.4. Equality and Honour


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3.2.5. Regulation of Violence 3.3. Traditional Origins of Warlords 3.4. De-regulation of Violence CHAPTER 4: Democratization by Foreign Intervention 4.1. Democracy by Force 4.1.1. Democratization as Security Policy 4.1.2. Democratization as Ends or Means 4.1.3. Mechanisms of Failure 4.1.4. Economic Perspective of Foreign Interventionism CHAPTER 5: Democratization without Illusions 5.1. State-building, Nation-building and Security 5.2. Democratization Paradigm 5.2.1. Electoralist Democracy 5.2.2. Post-conflict Elections 5.2.3. Between Democracy and Autocracy 5.2.4. Hybrid Regimes 5.3. Critique of Democratization CHAPTER 6: Post-modernizing Afghanistan 6.1. The Symptoms 6.2. Models of Societal Interrelations 6.2.1. Pre-modernity 6.2.2. Modernity 6.2.3. Post-modernity 6.2.4. Post-modern Wars

6.3. Globalization and Dedifferentiation 6.3.1. Commodification of violence 6.3.2. Warfare, Welfare and Levelling of the State 6.3.3. The Post-modern State 6.3.4. Between War and Peace 6.3.5. Post-modernizing Afghanistan CHAPTER 7: Managing Militant Entrepreneurship 7.1. Elimination 7.2. Incorporation 7.2.1. Unintended Consequences 7.2.2. Taming Violence and Profit CONCLUSION ABBREVIATIONS GLOSSARY OF AFGHAN WORDS ILLUSTRATIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY


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Introduction This thesis describes the creation of a warlord democracy in Afghanistan, a formally democratic system dominated by local warlords and their proxies. I argue that five enabling conditions supported the creation of such system: (1) the specific socio-historical conditions and events in the country, (2) the economic situation of harsh poverty and high demand for security and income, (3) the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan, (4) the paradigm of transition to democracy focused on institutions, and (4) the global pattern of emergence and sustenance of “new” wars (Kaldor 1999)1 with a distinctive gain-maximizing feature. The five enabling conditions are connected by a common micro-pattern of blending of violence and profit. I use this pattern to define warlords as “militant entrepreneurs.” The concept of militant entrepreneurship developed by Thomas Gallant2 describes a category of societal entrepreneurs whose differentiating feature is provision of the commodity of violence and its counterpart, security. I analyze five contexts of occurrence of militant entrepreneurship in Afghanistan 1 Mary Kaldor, “New and Old Wars: Organized violence in a global era” (Cambridge: Polity 1999). 2 Thomas W. Gallant, “Brigandage, Piracy, Capitalism, and State-Formation: Transnational crime from a historical world-systems perspective,” in “States and Illegal Practices,” eds. Josiah Heyman and Alan Smart (Oxford International Publishers Ltd. 1999).

(electoral, military, economic, socio-historical, and global contexts), where the ability to deliver or withhold violence appears cross-contextually as a commodity in societal contracts. This thesis attempts to demonstrate how the fundamental paradigms, whence from the five enabling conditions stem, are utilized in the case-country in procreation of violence and profit. I show how the shortcomings of the paradigms enabled them to be manipulated toward consistently contributing to the creation, institutionalization and legitimization of a warlord democracy in Afghanistan. The following text presents a qualitative single-case study, based on my observations and empirical research of Afghan power-relations in the period of 2004-2005. The motivation for research draws on what I perceived in Afghanistan as a discrepancy between intended policy outcomes and unintended consequences in field practice of the democratization paradigm. I argue that post-conflict strategies are in deficit of appropriate theoretical concepts and, consequently, in deficit of functional policies and practices for approaching warlordism. As John Mackinlay observes: “The international community has not yet developed a language and an approach to tackle the warlords… [They] fall beyond the language of Clausewitzian writers and communicators whose only concept of violence is as an instrument of policy.”3 The oxymoron “warlord democracy” is a symptom of this linguistic and theoretical deficit. This thesis attempts to contribute to

3 John Mackinlay, in Sasha Lezhnev’s “Crafting Peace: Strategies to deal with warlords in collapsing states,” (Lexington Books, 2005):1-2.


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the development of a theoretical language which approximates the phenomenon of warlordism, and hopefully, it may in turn enable political analysts, scholars and policy-designers to attain an alternative critical perspective for understanding actors, behaviour and events specific to our age. Thesis Outline Chapter 1 formulates a definition of warlords and warlordism. A warlord typology is developed, based on distinguishing relational features of Afghan warlords. This part discerns the presence of warlords in appointed governmental offices and elected parliamentary posts, and it shows elections as an enabling condition for legitimization of warlords. An analysis of the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections of Afghanistan 2004-2005 follows, showing how tradition, militancy and international influence shaped the electoral outcomes. Chapter 2 shows the economic aspect of militant entrepreneurship in Afghanistan based on opium trade. The market value and the trajectory of poppy growing and opium production is estimated, in comparison to the GDP and international aid to the country. The nexus between poverty and violence is discerned. Chapter 3 examines the cultural model of the traditional Afghan communities, and its deterioration over time due to the effects of the Cold War and rising warlordism. Chapters 1-3 examine the case-specific conditions for emergence of formally legitimized militant entrepreneurship in Afghanistan, while chapters 4-6 refer to more general conditions of its establishment.

Chapter 4 tests and confirms Stephen Watts’ thesis4 that democratization brought by foreign military intervention leads to institutionalization of warlord democracies as the economically most viable outcome of interventionism. Chapter 5 researches the state-building and democratization paradigms to find out that the focus and limitation to institution-building of policies based on these paradigms render them open to manipulation by militant entrepreneurs, who use democratic institutions to further establish themselves in power, gaining legal inter/national legitimacy and state resources. Chapter 6 shifts the level of analysis to some of the negative consequences of the processes of globalization which support the blending of violence and profit symptomatic for warlordism. I develop four models of societal organization (pre-modern, modern, post-modern and post-modern/warlord model), with variations in relations and mutual embeddedness of society, state, economy and militancy. This part of the thesis revises the symptoms of Afghan-specific conditions discerned in the previous chapters and reformulates them as distinctive symptoms of a post-modern era. Chapter 7 distinguishes two main groups of strategies for approaching warlords and analyzes their actual and plausible consequences. The conclusion of the thesis offers a critical perspective on approaching post-modern wars and actors, relevant for scholars and policy makers involved in post-conflict interventions. 4 Stephen Watts, “Democracy by Force: Norms, resource constraints, and coalition-building” (Paper presented on the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. Honolulu, HI, 1-5 March 2005).


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Sources Country-specific data used in this thesis is drawn from reports by the Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) – Country Office in Afghanistan, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (ODC), and various Afghan and international no-governmental bodies and organizations, such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW), Afghan Justice Project (AJP), Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), etc. The theoretical basis for this thesis draws on two lines of thought: on the concepts of warlords and warlordism (Susan Strange, Mary Kaldor, Richard Friman, Peter Andreas, Josiah Heyman, Alan Smart, Thomas Gallant, William Reno, et al.), and on the democratization paradigm and post-conflict state-building (Thomas Carothers, Giovanni Sartori, Wolfgang Merkel, Robert Dahl, Amitai Etzioni, Stephen Watts). The analysis of Afghanistan is based on works by Barnett Rubin, Ahmad Rashid, Marina Ottaway, Sven Simonsen and Whitney Azoy, as well as on personal observations and numerous interviews with Afghans by the author.

Chapter 1 - Warlords The attack on the New York World Trade Center on September 11 2001 was followed by a US-led attack on the Afghan Taliban government: the Taliban were hosting Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al-Qaeda network, allegedly behind the terrorist act. After the subsequent fall of the Taliban toward the end of 2001, two international actors became major power brokers in the country: the UN and the U.S. The UN led the state-building process in the country, while the U.S. mission officially remained limited to the Taliban and bin Laden. The White House at first rejected NATO and UN offers to send peacekeepers in Afghanistan (Simonsen 2004:723)5. Instead, the US military bought precarious and, more than often, double alliances with local military commanders, providing them with funds and weapons. The absence of international security providers opened a vacuum of power, which the Afghan warlords utilized to penetrate the new state offices. The warlords needed to gain political legitimacy in the newly built state, to legalize their armed forces, and to obtain legal impunity for the war crimes committed during the previous civil war (1970s-1990s). The first post-conflict elections in the country provided them with the opportunity to consolidate in power.

5 Sven G. Simonsen, “Ethnicising Afghanistan? Inclusion and exclusion in post-Bonn institution building” (Third World Quarterly, vol. 25, No. 4, 2004): 707–729.


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Much of the world media attention was directed to the Afghan Presidential and Parliamentary Elections in 2004 and 2005. These events were to be indicators of success of the democratization of Afghanistan and, consequently, justification for the military intervention by the U.S. The Elections took place in a relatively non-violent atmosphere, and were proclaimed a victory for the Afghan people and for democracy worldwide. Despite the impressive achievement of having the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections take place at all in this continuously volatile region, an Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission post-elections survey (AIHRC 2005)6 voices popular anger amongst Afghan citizens against warlords and militia commanders in the new political decision-making body of the country. The AIHRC survey pictures the elected Afghan Parliament dominated by warlords, commanders, their proxies, and various authority figures linked to them. Who and what are the Afghan warlords? How did popular elections produce a warlord Parliament? This chapter will offer a definition of warlords and a typology based on warlords’ distinguishing features. The history of formation and consolidation of warlordism in Afghanistan will be given, starting from the Cold War to the contemporary period.

6 Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission – AIHRC, “A Call for Justice” (2005).

We shall find the following: warlords at present act as military security guarantors, cooperating with the two main international actors in the country, the U.S. and the UN. Warlords, although acting as security guarantors, use violence to increase insecurity and thus increase the demand for their services. Violence, or the threat of it, was used to shape the results of the Afghan Elections 2004 and 2005. The result was the creation of a legitimate and dysfunctional warlord democracy. 1.1. Defining Warlords The term “warlord,” although frequent in use, lacks a precise definition in political science, mainly due to warlords’ largely informal modes of operation. The word is used to refer to a wide range of meanings: from traditional local headmen, legitimate in their respective communities, to regional militant leaders of private armed forces, drug barons, war criminals and mass-abusers of human rights. The Western popular perception connotes this word with generally negative associations. However, this is an all-too-quick evaluation of authority figures that may be perceived as ethnic representatives and defenders within their own communities. I will henceforth use the term “warlord” as a value-neutral term, to refer to authoritative militants who fulfil a range of societal roles within the local communities, and who develop specific modes of economic, military and political operations and exchange under extreme circumstances. The existent definitions of warlords typically describe a symptomatic blending of economic and military terms, which refers to warlords as


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to service-providers incorporated in the local and global economic system. Thomas Gallant’s notion of warlords as “military entrepreneurs”7 conceives a category of societal entrepreneurs, whose main commodity is violence: “By ‘military entrepreneur’ I refer to a category of men who take up arms and who wield violence or the threat of violence as their stock in trade. I use ‘military’ here not in its contemporary common connotation of a national army, but in an older, more ambiguous form referring only to the use of arms and weapons. They are entrepreneurs in the sense that they are purveyors of a commodity – violence,” (Gallant 1999:26-27). I expand Gallant’s notion of violent commodity, emphasizing that it is used as a trump in each societal contract, with the fundamental function to divide the discourse of interaction into two zones: one of security, and the other one of threat. Ultimately, these zones can correspond to a zone of survival, and a zone of death, each one for rental. 1.1.1. Afghan Warlords An Afghan officer of the international NGO Human Rights Watch describes the local use of the term warlord:

7 Other definitions which describe warlords in a blend of economic and military terms are offered by Volkov’s “violent entrepreneurs” (Vadim Volkov, “Violent Entrepreneurs: The use of force in the making of Russian capitalism,” Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002) and by Lezhnev’s typology of “ethnic entrepreneurs,” “absolute warlords” and “freedom fighters.”

“Warlord is not a technical word. In Afghanistan, it is a literal translation of the local phrase ‘jang salar,’ and it has simply come to refer to any leader of men under arms. The country has thousands of such men, some deriving their power from a single roadblock, others controlling a town or small area, and still others reigning over large districts. At the apex of this chaotic system are some six or seven major warlords, each with a significant geographic, ethnic, and political base of support,” (Human Rights Watch: “Losing the Peace in Afghanistan,” 2004b). However, we shall see in the next section that warlords and armed leaders do not make a homogeneous group. Militant entrepreneurship elicits features, motives, behaviour and interrelations different from those specific to local commanders. The following chart presents the key power figures of Afghanistan and their areas of influence:


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Figure 1 – Afghanistan’s power brokers. Source: Barnett R. Rubin, “Briefing on

Afghanistan – AFNORTH” (2003b):31

1.1.2. Categories of Warlords I shall propose here categorisation of Afghan warlords based on several features that connect and distinguish warlords from other types of military commanders and traditional headmen. 1) they command private, or privatized8, military forces; 2) their rule is connected to a specific territory, usually to their ethnic community; 3) they posses some legitimacy among the local population; 4) they have a more or less symbiotic economic and military relationship with at least a part of the local community; 5) they participate in the global economic system, engaging in one or more forms of illicit or informal economy; and 6) they challenge, privatize or supplement the state functions, resources and instruments on their territories. Warlords, among themselves, may differ in several dimensions: 1) type and size of military forces in formal or informal allegiance to them; 2) type of legitimacy among the local community: based on security-provision, economic welfare, tribe, ethnicity, tradition, religion, etc.;

8 “Privatized” military force refers to state police or army forces loyal, ethnically or economically, to warlords. Warlords themselves can hold governmental offices.


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3) sources of economic sustainability: ranging from black and grey economy, to legal entrepreneurship (from extortion, abduction, plunder, to extraction, security provision, licit activities, etc.); 4) type and degree of economic relationships with the local supporting community: ranging from social services and redistribution of resources, to extortion, coercion, abuses, mass displacements and mass murders; 5) extension of their cooperative networks and links to other global networks: ranging from local to international level, and 6) relationship with the government: ranging from cooption, cooperation, competition and tolerance of independent equals, to criminalization, persecution and extinction. The hostile relationship can go both ways: the state forces can criminalize and be criminalized by the warlords, in areas where different laws and authorities of the state and the local culture overlap and compete with each other. None of the listed features are mutually exclusive. Each combination of relationships, in any degree, is possible and observable in Afghan reality. Moreover, these relational constellations are continually shifting, in type and in intensity, so that permanent categorization of individual warlords within static types will not show fruitful. 1.1.3. Warlordism “Warlordism” describes a state of predominance of one or more militant entrepreneurs over internationally recognized territories (one or several states), embedded in the system of economic transactions,

parallel to, challenging, cooperating with, or participating in the formal state government and the legal economy of the country. Warlords, as military entrepreneurs - purveyors of the violent stock in trade, commonly are danger to and guarantors of security. As security-guarantors, they often supplement state functions. The government itself may be warlord-ruled. In other scenarios, the government may be weaker than the warlords, and may operate as long as it serves warlords’ purposes. Due to their territory-based legitimacy, warlords may tend to tolerate each other’s existence, so long as their informal territories are unchallenged, and so long as struggle for central state control is outside their interest or power. The latter is the case of Afghanistan and is the ground for the development of present warlordism. 1.2. History of Warlordism in Afghanistan The history of Afghanistan describes a permanently weak state which has never ruled its territories and the population outside the regional capitals. All attempts to modernize the country have failed due to violent upheavals of the rooted traditionalism of the independent rural areas. Afghan warlords have been present on the country’s political scene for decades, as major military actors during the Cold War period and the subsequent civil war. The next section will describe the rise of warlords and their consolidation within the new state system.


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1.2.1. The Rise of Warlordism in the Cold War Militancy in Afghanistan rose from a particular traditional societal system of self-organization, violence management, provision of order, conflict resolution, and boundary maintenance in Afghan communities, fully described in chapter 4. The violence in the country was socially regulated and in state of dynamic balance between actors until the Cold War, when foreign military aid started pouring in, arming whole populations. In this period, modern technology of mass destruction was provided by the USSR and the U.S. to selected Afghan leaders and factions, which were then unleashed against each other’s ethnic communities. With the introduction and unequal dissemination of advanced military technology, the balance of violence was disrupted and mass killings began. This went on through more than two decades long civil war. During the process, the former political elite, the urban culture, was extinguished or exiled. The final blow to the urban elite, as well as to the traditionally ruling families and clans, were the Taliban,9 suspicious of any sort of critical or cosmopolitan culture.

9 “The Taliban victory represented a ‘social revolution’ in which the sons of poor tribes and clans were able to overthrow a tribal aristocracy. In a dramatic reversal of previous patterns of change, it was the countryside who ruled the capital. Violence was this viewed as a means to restore status and power.” (Mohammed H. Atmar and Jonathan Goodhand, “Afghanistan: The Challenge of ‘Winning the Peace’,” in “Searching for Peace in Central and South Asia: An overview of conflict prevention and peacebuilding activities,” eds. Monique Mekenkamp, et al., Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002:115).

Consequently, not many people were left available to form a political elite after the fall of the Taliban, when the democratization process was initiated by the UN. It was the warlords then who could guarantee security to the state, or sabotage it. 1.2.2. The Role of Warlords in the Fall of the Taliban The events of September 11 were followed by the formation of the Western military coalition, formally comprised of the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia (under the name of Coalition Forces – CFs), in the U.S.-led mission “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan. However, it was mainly with U.S. air forces and the Afghan Northern Alliance (NA)10 ground troops that the fall of the Taliban was achieved. The Northern Alliance was formed by warlords connected by nothing else but a common enemy, the Talib forces, which had previously fought them to the north of Afghanistan.11 10 The Northern Alliance was also known as the United Front (UF). 11 Prior to the U.S. attack, the NA was officially in command of 10-15% of the country territory. However, military alliances and hostilities were shifting continually in-between Afghan warlords and in their relation to the Taliban, the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.: warlords kept on changing sides, allies and enemies. Some cooperated with two mutually warring parties. Rubin clarifies the complex arrangement of rented loyalties: “To say that the Taliban ‘control,’ say, 85 percent of the country would be an exaggeration, but they have largely defeated or disarmed competitors, mainly local armed power-holders. The Taliban advance was partly accomplished militarily .... But the accomplishment was also financial. Like Najibullah [President of the U.S.S.R. puppet government in Afghanistan, note added] and the mujahidin parties before them, much of the allegiance professed to them was purchased for cash. In areas that are frequently reported to change hands between the Taliban and their opponents, the


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During this attack of foreseeable end, the UN organized a meeting of key Afghan and international players in Bonn, to determine the future of the country. Anti-Talib warlords were present at the Bonn Conference in 2001 which set the foundations of the future state. Warlords were given the status of legitimate representatives of the local “resistance” forces and military allies of the U.S.-led “liberation” war. The meeting produced the Bonn Agreement 2001, a document which ensured political power and recognition of the NA warlords, the democratization of the state, and appointed the U.S.-backed Pashtoon, Hamid Karzai, as an interim president. 1.2.3. Post-Taliban Phase After the Taliban began their withdrawal to the Pakistani border, the Northern Alliance warlords, in coordination with the U.S. military command, advanced to Kabul and took over the control of the city (with exceeding number of civilian victims), expecting a share in the honour and in the spoils of war. However, the U.S. refused to further negotiate political issues with the warlords, treating them as hired military allies against the Taliban, and limiting the U.S. political

common change of events is the payment of a commander by one side or another, who then announces a change in allegiance. The Taliban captured Kabul after paying of a Hizb-i Islami commander (Zardad, in Sarobi) who blocked their advance up the narrow defile from Jalalabad” (Barnett R. Rubin, “The Political Economy of War and Peace in Afghanistan,” n.d.).

involvement to financial and political support to their appointed interim president.12 The U.S. post-conflict plan was to continue the conflict, with CFs military presence limited to the capital and the Southern and Southeast Taliban regions of the country. Their comparatively minor military presence, never having exceeded 20.000 in number over 5 years, reliance on a compliant government, and no engagement in peace-keeping or state-building, opened a power vacuum where the remaining Afghan warlords consolidated their own local rules. U.S. state-building in Afghanistan was limited to a symbolic reconstruction by combined military-civilian deployments.13 For two years, until 2003, the White House Administration was declining

12 USIP confirms that warlords are paid by the U.S. without reference to the central government (United States Institute for Peace – USIP, “Unfinished Business in Afghanistan: Warlordism, reconstruction, and ethnic harmony,” January 2003). Media reports detail the double role the U.S. assumed in relation to Afghan warlords: officially not entering political negotiations with them, but within the frame of military operations, large amounts of money have been paid on hand, to buy the allegiance of some warlords for the U.S.-backed Karzai. (Syed S. Shahzad, “Revival of the Taliban,” Asia Times, 05 April 2005).

13 The combined teams were named Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), composed of a few civil engineers and a larger military force. For detailed history of PRTs, military deployments, timetables, and objections by the civilian international organizations in Afghanistan, refer to the USIP: “Provincial Reconstruction Teams: Special report 147” (September 2005).


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offers from the UN to send peacekeepers in the country or to expand NATO’s ISAF14 forces outside Kabul. With this, civilian security and political processes were impeded and endangered, and the UN-led state-building and democratization programmes were to a large degree subordinated to the U.S. national military objectives. The U.S. forces, with their significantly smaller deployment of UK allies, remained within their own mission (Bush 2003)15 – to hunt down Osama bin Laden. The least cost of achieving their aim seemed to be letting local warlords provide (or withhold) security by their own means, so long as the stated goal of the “Operation Enduring Freedom” was unimpeded.16 This mission has not been unaccomplished yet. 1.2.4. Establishment of Warlordism The U.S. policy of laissez-faire and the absence of international peace-keepers in the country allowed warlords to strengthen their positions

14 International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF): a deployment of NATO member forces, restricted to Kabul until 2005. 15 George W. Bush: “In the President’s Words: ‘Free People Will Keep the Peace of the World’,” (New York Times, 27 February 2003). 16 The U.S. concept of “unimpeded” operations was criticized by a report by the Afghanistan Justice Project, which named “grave abuses” by U.S. troops, “crude and brutal” methods of inquiry that sometimes lead to death, the now known secret detention facilities, with no access for international human rights and monitoring groups, nor for Afghan governmental representatives. The AJP Report concludes that the “U.S. forces have jeopardized prospects for establishing stable and accountable institutions in Afghanistan, have undermined the security of the Afghan people … and have reinforced a pattern of impunity that undermines the legitimacy of the political process,” (AJP 2005).

and seek recognition and rewards of legitimate victors. The NA warlords established themselves in government; some incorporated their troops and supporters within the new army, police and state administration,17 and expanded their (both licit and formal, and illicit and informal) economic, military and political networks throughout the country. The continuing violence scattered throughout the country and the abusive behaviour of the U.S. forces (HRW 2004c)18, enabled warlords to offer themselves as legitimate security providers to their ethnic communities. How did the process of warlord integration within the state take place? The case of Marshal Fahim, a NA Tajik warlord, presents a good example. Despite the Bonn Agreement, which disallowed any armed troops in Kabul other than the planned International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)19, Fahim moved his forces into the capital in December 2001. He was appointed Defence Minister under the Interim Administration, and was thus enabled to integrate his combatants, estimated about 18 000, into the new Afghan National Army (ANA). Fahim soon appointed 38 generals from his loyal commanders in the ANA. In this way, the new army was originally built from combatants loyal to a single warlord, with a record of war 17 The list of major warlords incorporated in the Interim and in the Transitional Government contains: Defence Minister Marshal Fahim, Foreign Minister Abdullah, Interior Minister Wardak, the Army Chief of Staff Dostum, previously a vice-president in the Transitional Government, former vice-president Qadir, assassinated in 2002, present vice-president Khalili, Sayyaf, with influence over the judiciary, et al. 18 Human Rights Watch: “’Enduring Freedom’: Abuses by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.” HRW Report, vol. 16, No. 3 (C) (2004c). 19 ISAF, the UN Security Council approved multinational armed forces.


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crimes and with dubious loyalty to the idea of pacification and democratic state-building. It was a similar process with the Afghan Police (ANP), formed by legitimating Wardak’s loyal forces during Qanuni’s appointment as Minister of Interior. Thus, warlords-led combatants gained state uniforms, state salaries and relative impunity from past, present and future abuse of force. Other warlords achieved similar integration in the regions outside Kabul.20 Human Rights Watch (2003a; 2003b; 2004a21) has documented a number of human rights abuses performed by the Afghan army and police troops since the beginning of the state-building process: kidnapping, extortion, illicit breaking into households, robbery, rapes of women and boys, harassment of political activists and media people. International and local calls for justice against warlords have been increasing in number. The history of each predominant warlord has been recorded in a number of documents.22 In January 2005, the

20 “The Afghan National Army remains less than 10,000 strong. Meanwhile a half dozen militia leaders each command larger forces than that,” goes the estimation of warlords’ armed power by Care International and Center on International Cooperation, in “Good Intentions Will Not Pave the Road to Peace,” policy brief (15 September 2003): 7. 21 Human Rights Watch: “’Killing You is a Very Easy Thing For Us’: Human rights abuses in Southeast Afghanistan” (2003a); “Global Report: Essential Background: Overview of human rights issues in Afghanistan” (31 December 2004a). 22 Detailed data about each warlord and related alleged crimes is available in the Afghan Justice Project Report – AJP, “Casting Shadows: War crimes and crimes against humanity, 1978-2001” (July 2005). Human Rights Watch reports (“’Killing You is a Very Easy Thing for Us’: Human rights abuses in Southeast Afghanistan”

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a historical overview of warlords’ human rights abuses to the Afghan President Karzai. The report was never released to the public. According to Ahmed Rashid,23 a human right advocate, political analyst and present member of the Presidential cabinet, “it created panic among the warlords and drug barons, who urged Karzai to shelve it.” 1.2.5. International Contractors In international military and political contracts, Afghan warlords as military entrepreneurs at present have two main demand-sources: (a) the international community engaged in state building, democratization and pacification, and (b) the U.S., engaged in the continuing hunt for Osama bin Laden. The first actor is attempting to pacify violence, to rent peace in exchange for political power, while the second actor continues to rent local violent services in pursuit of the U.S. military goals.24 (2003a); ''Blood-Stained Hands: Past atrocities in Kabul and Afghanistan's legacy of impunity'' (2003b); “Global Report: Essential Background: Overview of human rights issues in Afghanistan” (31 December 2004a)) are additional sources of information on warlords currently in the Afghan government. 23 Ahmed Rashid, “Afghan Human Rights Abuses: A chance for change,” EurasiaNet (08 April 2005). 24 In chapter 2, we shall examine the correspondence between warlords and drug-lords. These will show to be the same people. Cooperation with warlords hence corresponds to support to the opium market in Afghanistan. Barnett Rubin criticizes the Bush administration for continuing their armament of the war/drug-lords and maintaining alliance with them in fighting the Taliban: “The Bush administration's


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Obviously, these two parties have different agendas for the warlords. In lack of coordination between the policies of the international engagement in Afghanistan, the warlords are able to maximize their gains by renting security services to both actors: simultaneously acting as providers of security for the international state-building community, and as providers of directed violence for the U.S. forces. So long as there is pending violence in the country, warlords’ services remain in high demand. 1.2.6. Grievances No phenomenon can exist on its own, isolated from its environment. In order for warlords to exist, we have to trace the environmental needs they respond to. So long as these needs exist, the existence of the warlords can be expected. A survey done by the Asia Foundation (2004)25 depicts the popular perception of the needs of the country in the following ratio: decision to arm and fund commanders with long histories of involvement in drug trafficking, and its failure for almost three years to do anything about it, has greatly exacerbated this problem. When he visits Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld meets military commanders whom Afghans know as the godfathers of drug trafficking. The message has been clear: Help fight the Taliban and no one will interfere with your trafficking.” (Barnett R. Rubin: “Drugs and Security: Afghanistan's fatal addiction,” International Herald Tribune, 28 October 2004a). 25 Asia Foundation: “Voter Education Planning Survey: Afghanistan 2004 National Elections,” Kabul (2004), in “Afghanistan’s Millennium Development Goals,” UN Report, Vision 2020 (2005): 5.

Figure 2 – Perception of Security. Source: Asia Foundation (2004)

The highest items in demand are security (34%) and economy (27%), the two areas where militant entrepreneurs position themselves as main providers. Next we shall concentrate on the first item, on what (in)security in Afghanistan means, while chapter 3 will explain the second item, mechanisms of popular economic benefits of warlord rule. Typically, security incidents in these past five years have not been predominantly caused by the Taliban, as the international media, NATO troops and governmental officers frequently present. Local population refers to warlords, and not to the Taliban, as the main threat to their security (HRW 2003a, Part III). The situation in Afghanistan at present is characterized by numerous minor security incidents scattered irregularly throughout the country. In most cases,


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incidents are officially ascribed to the Taliban, the common demonized enemy. When the Taliban are named, further police investigation is not necessarily carried out: the Taliban are treated in the ANA and CFs area of responsibility. Most often, perpetrators are either not sought or random imprisonment takes place. The mechanism of informal violence usually functions as follows: warlords outsource violence to commanders or to individuals; local commanders, on their own or in coordination with a warlord, outsource violence to combatants or civilians. Low-intensity incidents follow, of minor scope and effect. The underlying function of these minor security incidents (typically road-side bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, and assassinations) is characteristically with the aim to achieve a deal with the government (such as release of prisoners, or approval to keep weapons), or to discredit a district or provincial governmental appointee (to show, for example, that he is not capable of controlling his territory), or to create critical demand for a capable security provider, (most often, the individual who outsourced the security incident in the first place). In brief, who can provide maximum violence equals the one who can provide maximum security. Here we see violence as a trump in local political arrangements. Violence, or the threat of it, was used in the electoral political arrangements too. Well established in the state administration, warlords and their proxies extended the internal competition from military to political goals. The democratic institution of elections was subjected to violent competition as well.

1.3. Elections The world media was presented with impressive numbers of registered voters, voter turnout and women’s participation in the Afghan Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004 and 2005. However, the warlords’ military predominance, expanded through the state administrative network, enabled militant figures to form the majority of candidates in the elections and to manipulate the electoral outcomes. In a highly volatile environment, there was barely anyone else to run for office or had the courage to compete with warlords. Also, the influence of the White House on the Afghan government most likely included licit and illicit support to Karzai’s presidential campaign, which probably determined the outcome of the Afghanistan’s Presidential Elections 2004. The following sections will describe the mechanisms used to manipulate the Afghan Elections and thus establish a warlord democracy. 1.3.1. Presidential Election 2004 1.3.1.1. Electoral data For the UN-administered Presidential Elections 2004, significant majority of 10.5 million voters, out of the roughly estimated 28 million population,26 registered in the country and in the neighbouring 26 In absence of exact nation wide census and voter registry for both Elections 2004 and 2005, it has not been possible to estimate the actual size of the electorate in order to estimate vote-eligible population, or to prevent multiple registrations. The projected numbers vary from 24 to 28 millions or more.


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Iran and Pakistan where several millions Afghan refugees resided. According to the JEMB Presidential Elections Results report (2004), the turnout at the Election Day, 9 September 2004, was estimated at 70%, just over 8.1 million voters, an impressive number for the first election after the Taliban rule, under conditions of aggravating security challenges. Women’s turnout accounted for unexpected 40% of the voters. 18 candidates were on the presidential ballot. Despite warnings by international organizations, warlords dominated the ballot. Voting proved to be mainly along ethnic, territorial and military lines.27 However, Karzai won 56 percent of the vote, followed by leading strongmen: Qanuni (16%), Mohaqiq (12%), and Dostum (10%). Obviously, the U.S.-backed Interim and Transitional President, and not the warlords, carried off the victory of the day.28

27 Karzai, a Pashtoon, received most of the votes in the Pashtoon east and south regions, as well as a clear majority in the multiethnic west and the urban centres. Qanuni, a Tajik, received 95% of the votes in his native Panjshir province, but scored less in other Tajik-dominated provinces. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, and Haji Mohammad Mohaqqeq, a Hazara, were voted for by the Uzbek and Hazara population respectively. Full details of allegiances and voting patterns are available in the report by the International Crisis Group - ICG: “Afghanistan: From Presidential to Parliamentary Elections,” Asia Report No. 88. (2004):14-15. 28 For Karzai and others’ political manoeuvring in face of the Presidential Election, see ICG 2004:7-9.

1.3.1.2. Electoral violations The following violations allegedly took place during registration: multiple voter registration cards, proxy-registration, and registration of deceased and non-existent individuals; forceful appropriation or buying off registration cards on behalf of candidates, registrant coercion and intimidation, purposeful overestimation of eligible voter’s numbers in some provinces, and underage registrants (also, see ICG 2004:4). NGO observers (ANFREL 2004, AIHRC 2004, FCCS 2004, and FEFA 200429) listed the following electoral violations during polling: voter intimidation and harassment, presence of candidates, agents, armed persons and campaigning materials inside and close to polling centres, collaboration between electoral personnel and candidates, and washable “indelible” ink. Offences and offenders pointed to practically each candidate.30 In some cases, especially in Pashtoon-

29 Asian Network for Free Elections - ANFREL: “Statement on the Afghanistan Presidential Election” (12 October 2004); Afghanistan Independent Human Rights commission - AIHRC: “Press Release on Elections” (10 October 2004); Foundation for Culture and Civil Society - FCCS: “Main Points about the Elections: A civil society perspective.” (10 October 2004); Free and Fair Elections for Afghanistan – FEFA: “Press Release on Presidential Election” (October 9, 2004). 30 The FCCS (2004) electoral observers pointed out to polling staff biased toward “different candidates in different places. A lot of Qanuni supporters seem to have been recruited, including in Jalalabad, Kandahar and Herat. Others were reportedly biased towards Karzai (Gardez) Massouda Jalal (Badakhshan, Herat), and Mohaqqeq (Kabul).”


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dominated areas, the high female voter turnout was explained as proxy-voting by male relatives. During the counting period, reports included a number of cases of ballot boxes with broken seals, missing ballot boxes, missing ballots, and staffed ballot boxes with consistent voting pattern for specific candidates. Electoral offences again pointed out to practically all presidential candidates, including Karzai. However, as a first electoral exercise of the Afghan people, the Election was recognized as valid, despite its numerous shortcomings. The picture below (Fig. 3) was taken on the Afghan Presidential Election Day, September 9 2004. The location of the photo is the district of Kharwar, in the south of the province of Logar, Central Region – Kabul. This district is known as Taliban-friendly area, providing safe passage, safe haven and support to combatants, on one of the main routes from the south and the southeast of the country to Kabul. In the picture, a polling station is depicted. The person looking in the camera is the district governor. The person who took the picture was an Afghan electoral officer and a deputy head of the district shura31. The purpose of taking this picture was to fulfil one of the duties of the electoral officers, that is, to provide more vivid illustrations of this historical moment. None of the people around this photo regard the

31 Shura – local council of elders; a traditional model of self-rule in Afghanistan, elaborated in chapter 4.

secrecy of the ballot as an inviolable right of the voter. Obviously, the ANP officer, the person on the left, the governor, and perhaps the photographer, can see the ballot.

Figure 3 – Afghan Presidential Elections: secrecy of the ballot. Source: UNAMA

field materials. This photo can be taken as material evidence that the decision who to vote for was made by the local shuras, in accordance with the communal Afghan culture, and not individually and in secrecy, in accordance to Western individualistic models. Moreover, this


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district’s shura was one of the last to agree to participation in the election, and to “guarantee security”32 of electoral officers on their territory. The information gained from the field was that the shura accepted the electoral process after unnamed Karzai’s envoys or supporters negotiated with (or made large payments to) the shura their support. The polling results of the Logar Province were predominantly in favour of Karzai. 1.3.1.3. Undercurrents A special feature of the Presidential Elections was the gradual acceptance of the electoral process among the traditional local councils (shuras) and the precariously positioned commanders. Local authority figures, previously stating indifference or hostility toward the elections, rapidly changed to support of the electoral process during the summer of 2004. This could not have been attributed merely to the official civic education campaign run by the UN. Multiple unofficial and independent sources confirmed a pattern of large scale payments, handed to voters, community leaders and commanders, to ensure support for various candidates. Allegedly, there were multiple payments for electoral loyalty offered by many and accepted by many, where the highest bidder apparently won. The elected President Karzai was backed by the U.S. It is necessary to

32 The Afghan phrase, “we cannot guarantee security for X,” literally means that X will not be safe on their territory: the person may be murdered, attacked or banished forcefully out of the territory, either by the shura’s police, the arbakai, or by combatants cooperating with the local shura. This phrase is considered as a more or less direct threat on life of non-local Afghan or international “foreigners.”

indicate the influence of U.S. governmental and non-governmental agencies on the electoral process.33 The fact that Karzai had no politically experienced or organized opposition without political programs, led some observers to name the Presidential Elections as something close to a farce (FCCS 2004) set to ensure Karzai’s election. However, the high voter turnout showed that regardless of the tradition of payment in the Afghan culture of exchange, it was the choice of the majority to accept democratic institutions as an extended part of the societal competition and cooperation for self-governance, even though the means applied were somewhat uncommon. 1.3.2. Parliamentary Elections 2005 The full Parliamentary Elections should have consisted of three parallel electoral processes: votes should have been cast for representatives to the Parliament, the Provincial Councils and the District Councils. Due to the still disputed district boundaries, the 33 I shall list three independent allegations pointing to (attempted) purchased victory for warlords and Karzai: (1) Fraudulent ballots disqualified in the counting process included votes for Karzai and for other candidates. (2) A high-ranking UN officer, in an off-the-record conversation, recounted a post-electoral meeting with a political party leader, who had asked the UN to “renew their monthly salaries of 10.000 U.S.D they had been receiving prior to the presidential elections.” The source of the money Karzai had at disposal for these exorbitant and unrecorded “salaries” is not known, but probably leads to Karzai’s backer. (3) A U.S.-based INGO international officer in Afghanistan, in an unofficial conversation, stated that “their mission there was clearly to support Karzai’s campaign.”


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district representative election was not held. The 2005 Elections aimed at the formation of the Lower House and the Provincial Councils, the latter delegating a single representative from each province to form one third of the Upper House of Parliament. The second third of the Upper House is to be elected from the District Councils in the District Elections 2006, and the last third is appointed by the President.

1.3.2.1. Electoral Data According to the JEMB Voter Registration Update Period: End-of-Period Report (2005:3), about 1.7 million Afghans registered to obtain new cards (90%) or make corrections (10%) of the personal data on the cards from the previous year. However, despite the high number of registrants, the turnout for the Parliamentary Elections was surprisingly low: only 51.5% of the total number (calculated by number of issued registration cards) of registered voters, according to the JEMB Final Report: National Assembly and Provincial Council Elections (2005:6). The lowest turnout was recorded in the urban centres, especially in Kabul (21%) and throughout the Southern Region of Kandahar. The counting process was led by stricter rules than those in the Presidential Elections. The same JEMB Report (2005:6) says that ballots from 703 polling stations and additional 74 ballot boxes (over 2.5% of the total number of polling stations) have been excluded from the count by clear evidence of fraud, showing a consistent pattern of violation of the electoral regulations.

We have two contradictory indications: first, the high interest of many actors to manipulate the electoral outcome; second, the drop in voter turnout in comparison to the turnout on the Presidential Elections. An internal survey conducted by the UN electoral staff on the reasons for the low voter turnout on the Parliamentary Elections concluded that it was largely due to the predominance of warlords on the ballots.34 Warlord candidates were the reason for these two contradictory indications: the high interest in the electoral outcome and the low interest to vote. 1.3.2.2. Candidates According to the JEMB Candidate Nomination: Wolesi Jirga35 and Provincial Council Elections 2005 Report, a total of 6.102 candidates submitted applications to run for an office in the Lower House (Wolesi Jirga) or in the Provincial Councils in 2005.36 Kolhatkar and Ingalls (2005) delineated three main groups running for the parliamentary elections: a) Karzai and his allied group of technocrats, mostly returnees with international education and experience; b) the

34 The same survey also showed growing disappointment in Karzai’s government which kept warlords on key governmental position, merely shifting local commanders allied to them from one post to another, or from one province to another. The results of this survey have not been published separately. 35 Wolesi Jirga: Lower House of Parliament. Meshrano Jirga: Upper House of Parliament. 36 2,905 people (including 339 women) registered to stand in the lower house elections, while 3,141 people (including 279 women) registered to stand for election to provincial councils that would each nominate one representative to the Afghanistan’s Upper House.


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warlord group of Qanuni, Dostum, and Mohaqiq, and c) a group of intellectuals, critics of both Karzai and the warlords.37 The AIHCR-UNAMA Joint Verification of Political Rights report (2005:3) estimates that “approximately 16% of the 6.102 candidates have in the past served as commanders or maintained links with armed groups and approximately 4% of this group could pose a significant threat to their communities in the absence of disarmament.” The same report indicates that a quantitative analysis does not present an accurate picture of the overwhelming influence of several monumental figures among the ”dangerous” ones. These are the ones popularly referred to as “warlords.” 38 1.3.2.3. Candidacy Violations The established independent Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) was in charge of sieving off ineligible candidates. Its functionality was

37 The latter group has no economic power and no support from the international community, Kolhatkar and Ingalls (Sonali Kolhatkar and Jim Ingalls: “US Exporting Fake Democracy -- By Force,” Foreign Policy in Focus, 16 September 2005) report. Most members of their parties are women, and their platform advocates disarmament, secularization, women’s rights and free media. Also, because of their outspoken programmes against warlords and fundamentalism, their candidates have been under most frequent and violent oppression by governmental and non-governmental forces. 38 Some claimed that up to 50% of the candidates were actually illegitimate. Prof. Wadir Safi of the Kabul University characterized the Parliamentary Elections as follows: "at least half of those standing are warlords or have some links to these commanders," (North 2005).

undermined by a loophole in the Constitution and the Electoral Law,39 which bans convicted war criminals and persons with proven links to illegal armed groups from running for an office.40 In absence of a well-developed legal system, evidence and courage to challenge the standing militants, the ECC was faced with, in legal terms, mere allegations and not with convictions for war crimes, illegal possession of arms and human rights violations. In order to avoid the ban on candidacy, some ineligible candidates had relatives (in one case, a wife) run for the Elections in their stead. According to the ECC, a total of 1,136 complaints against 556 candidates were filed with the election complaints commission. Only 208 candidates allegedly involved in illegal armed groups were officially under ECC scrutiny. The vetting process by ECC disqualified merely 17 candidates, according to the ECC Challenge Period Statistics (2005): 11 for “commanding or belonging to an unofficial military force or armed group,” 1 “not resigned from specified public office,” and 5 for “insufficient valid signatures in support of nomination.”

39 According to the Electoral Law, Ch. VII, Article 35 - Candidate Nomination, it is sufficient that a candidate submits a written statement, “confirming that they do not command, or belong to, unofficial military forces or armed groups, and confirming that they have not been convicted [italic added] of crimes against humanity, or any other crime…” Article 85 of the Constitution also bars convicted criminals from running for governmental office. Both documents are available at the JEMB website. 40 The Electoral Law, the Law on Political Parties and the Constitution of Afghanistan are available at the Joint Electoral Management Body web-page. See Bibliography for reference.


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The UNDP Afghanistan New Beginnings Program (ANBP) maintains an expansive commander database, which contains about 1,800 names. Overlapping patterns of information from multiple and independent sources have put forward allegations against these persons for maintaining private militias. Most persons on this database are "benign," according to the head of the ANBP Program (North 2005)41, with less than 100 actually dangerous groups. However, according to the same source, all 208 candidates from the ECC list are on the database and include “some key individuals.” The UN-led efforts to persuade candidates to disarm had to be satisfied in the end, due to “political reasons,” with the armed leaders’ symbolic gestures. Sources involved in these disarmament negotiations with the suspected candidates alleged that the quantities of weapons handed to the negotiating teams were minute, and often consisted of inoperable and outdated weapons. The same sources confirm that this “political decision” has been advocated by unspecified Afghan governmental authorities. The official AIHRC-UNAMA Joint Verification Report (2005c)42 conveys disappointment in the vetting process: "Many expressed the view that a number of armed and powerful figures never appeared on the list [of ineligible candidates] due to political calculations."

41 Andrew North: “Warlord Fears in Afghan Elections.” (BBC News Reports, 17 August 2005). 42 AIHRC-UNAMA: “Joint Verification of Political Rights: Wolesi Jirga and Provincial Council Elections 2005,” 2nd Report (04 June – 16 August 2005c).

How actively some candidates were interested in shaping the electoral result is illustrated by the 250 official “voluntary” withdrawals from candidacy, according to JEMB/ECC reports.43 At least six candidates were killed prior to the Elections; a larger number were a target of less successful assassination attempts; some, especially women, were threatened and physically intimidated to withdraw. The infamous so-called “Assassination” Article 37 of the Electoral Law made it highly desirable to kill better-faring candidates in order to succeed them in the aftermath of the Elections. The UN security reports found that most of the incidents related to candidates were due to inter-candidate conflicts, typically but for the most part falsely blamed on the Taleban, where violence was seen as means of eliminating competition. 1.3.2.4. Electoral Violations Reported electoral violations, as recorded by the AIHRC-UNAMA Reports on the Joint Verification of Political Rights (2005b; 2005c)44, included: candidate (and their relatives) harassment and arbitrary imprisonment by governmental officials, killing of religious. leaders supportive to the elections, voter intimidation by party agents and by JEMB polling staff, unauthorized “help” to voters inside polling

43 Joint Electoral Management Body of Afghanistan - JEMB: “Candidate Nomination: Wolesi Jirga and Provincial Council Elections” (2005); Electoral Complaints Commission – ECC: “Challenge Period Statistics” (10 August 2005). 44 AIHRC-UNAMA: “Joint Verification of Political Rights: Wolesi Jirga and Provincial Council Elections 2005,” 1st Report (19 April – 03 June 04 2005c).


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stations for “illiterate” voters, women and youngsters, candidates campaigning inside polling centres, multiple voting, proxy-voting, underage voting, broken seals of ballot boxes, etc. However, all offences were in the limits of tolerable in the particular conditions in the country, the fraudulent votes were dealt with during the counting process, and the elections were proclaimed successful. 1.3.3. Post-electoral development The predominance of warlords in Parliament became immediately apparent wit the first set of functions allotted to parliamentary members: Qanuni (the Northern Alliance warlords’ frontman) was elected president of the Lower House, with only a few votes of difference from another militant, Sayyaf Mojadidi (former president of the first mujahedeen government from the 1990s) was elected to head the Upper House. After the Parliamentary Elections, the President appointed only half (one sixth of the Parliament in total) of the parliamentarians he was supposed to appoint to the Upper House’s last third in order to balance the appointed with the elected power in the legislative body. The President’s list of appointees includes at least one famous. warlord, Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, according to the JEMB “Presidential Appointees List” (2005)45.The Parliament mirrors the power competitions of the country.

45 See also Afghanistan Online: “Members of President Hamid Karzai's Cabinet” (2005).

We now have a clearer picture of Afghan warlords as militant entrepreneurs, positioned in relation to the security situation in the country. The history of warlords’ ascension to high governmental posts is obviously linked to internationally-influenced local conflicts, which enforces the positions of Afghan militant entrepreneurs in the post-Taliban political sphere. The first Afghan elections were the means of establishing warlords in the newly-built democratic regime.


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Chapter 2 - Violence and Profit Militant entrepreneurship in Afghanistan is present in two forms: chapter 1 described militancy as a means to political power; chapter 2 will describe militancy as a means of financial sustainability. The following part will show the link between Afghan warlords and opium trade to measure their economic predominance in comparison to potential licit and state-generated incentives. We shall assess the monetary value of the Afghan opium market and examine the economic link between warlords and the wider population. 2.1. The Situation Afghan warlords draw most of their income from controlling the opium trade in the world’s largest opium-producing region. The opium business provides a relatively stable source of profit, which is used to sustain warlords’ patronage networks and to maintain their military power. This income gives them economic predominance incomparably higher than any licit entrepreneurship can offer. Violence is used as a means to sustain illicit economic networks, to compete for control of trade routes, and to guarantee fulfilment of transaction contracts within the opium network. However, we shall see in this chapter that poverty and opium business are interlinked. The opium network provides major employment opportunities to a society continually on the verge of famine. The economy of this country is largely dependent on its opium sector.

Entire impoverished areas enter warlords’ opium networks and become dependent on militant figures who secure their sources of income. 2.1.1. Resource Dependence The explanation is as follows: during the Cold War, various militant factions were sponsored by the two super-powers to conduct a proxy-war on Afghan territory. The external financial and military aid (advanced military technology) significantly raised the stakes of this war: Afghan factions had to compete with each other’s military competence and seek external sources of income to buy weapons. The sponsored factions became dependent on stable sources of high-level income.46 After the end of the Cold War, the two super-powers withdrew their financial and military aid. The formerly sponsored factions needed to maintain the level of internal military competition and hence had to find an alternative source of income. The lucrative opium trade provided sufficient funds. An exclusive relation between violence and profit was formed. The economic self-sufficiency based on control of the opium market rendered warlords relatively independent from their traditional communities and from alternative sources of income. 2.1.2. New Commanders 46 “As the [civil] war intensified, however, commanders increasingly depended on foreign aid relayed by the parties, and subsequently they too became more autonomous from local society,” (Rubin n.d.).


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Barnett Rubin points out to the Taliban period (1995-2001) as the time of “consolidation of a number of phenomena that had been developing previously, namely the emergence of transnational trade networks of the Afghan regional diaspora, linked to smuggling and drug trading groups in the surrounding countries as well as to political parties, religious groups, and elements of the administration…”47 The economic independence based on control of the opium market distinguished a historically new48 type of commanders emerging in the post-Cold War period. “Within Afghanistan itself, the main economic actors were the commanders. Contrary to some stereotypes, these commanders were by and large not the ‘traditional’ (i.e. tribal or landowning) elites… but a group of new elites that benefited from U.S., Pakistani, and Saudi policies of supporting only Islamist parties rather than the nationalist former elite.” (Rubin n.d.).

According to Rubin, these commanders sought to gain economic independence from their political-religious parties, and subsequently loosened their reciprocative bonds with the local communities. Nonetheless, it is as late as in 2004 that this author (Rubin 2004b:1) discerns indubitable symptoms of integration (permanent economic relations and vertical hierarchical organization) in the global market. 47 Rubin (ibid.) shows that the establishment of security in this period, under Taliban’s effective measures, suppressed local tolls, banditry, tributes, it reduced the cost of long-distance trade, and opened routes to favourable markets for both wheat and opium. 48 The novelty of this type of militant figures lies in their previous historical dependence on the indigenous communities and their full observance of customary laws, as we shall see in chapter 3.

The present day warlords in the Afghan government come from these economically independent commanders. They gained economic predominance in the post-Taliban phase, consolidating opium networks by means of military and, later, political predominance. We shall next estimate the market value of the opium trade in Afghanistan and examine its ascending tendency. With the opium economic trump added to the warlords’ military trump, we shall complete the definition militant entrepreneurs given in chapter 1. 2.2. Nexus

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (ODC), in the “Afghanistan Opium Survey 2005,“ estimates that Afghan production supplies more than three-quarters of the heroin sold in Europe, and all heroin in Russia. The ODC Report confirms that “there is a clear nexus between drug trafficking and warlordism,” where provinces controlled by warlords are especially suitable for trafficking, who tax it in exchange for protection and free flow of licit and illicit goods and people. The link between resurgent security incident and drug cultivation is apparent, the Report affirms. The Head of UNODC concludes that "traffickers, warlords and insurgents in Afghanistan control quasi-military operations and run military-type operations” (ODC 2005).

Warlords derive income from growing poppy on their land, from private “security” taxation of farmers and traffickers, and from their own trafficking networks which export opium and import arms. This income serves military entrepreneurs to maintain their networks, pay


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their armed forces (if not already paid by the government), purchase technologically advanced weapons, buy peace with other such entrepreneurs, buy tolerance from public officers, and form zones of impunity around their persons, networks and activities.

2.2.1. Growing Poppy The main commodity which made Afghanistan a participant in the global economic system was opium poppy, later chemically produced opium and opium derivates (mainly heroin). Historically, a major turn toward the global opium market can be traced to the end of the Cold War, when foreign powers lost their interest in fighting each other by sponsoring Afghan combatants through proxy-wars.49 The foreign financial and military support ceased, and warlords were driven to develop self-sustainable economic bases in order to maintain their already costly networks of organized violence.50 Hence, increase in

49 During the Cold War, and even earlier, Afghanistan has been Used for a history of proxy wars, the earliest one being the “Great Game” between RU.S.sia and the British Empire in 19th/20th c., and as such subject to limited international economic, military and political influences. However, this cannot be considered as being a part of the global economic market, as there has been no permanent economic relationship provided by the proxy wars, barely any economic autonomy (aeconomia) of the local units, and barely any competitive products or services for sale abroad to multiple demand-sources. The latter are characteristic for the globalization period. 50 “With the decline of suprapower patronage in the early 1990s, controls on nonstate entities have declines and such groups have increasingly had to generate their own resources to support their military activities and patronage networks.” (Atmar/Goodhand, 2002:114)

poppy growing, opium production and related cross-border trafficking since the 1980s.

Figure 4 - Afghanistan opium production, 1980-2005. Source: ODC Statistical Annex to “The Opium Situation in Afghanistan 2005,” (2005): 1.

2.2.2. Income, Bans and Prices

The UN Office of Drugs and Crime (ODC), in the “Afghanistan Opium Survey 2005,“ estimates that, in the Taliban period (1996 to 1999), production doubled and peaked at over 4600 tons. In 2000 the Taliban banned opium cultivation, but not trade; In 2001 following the


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Taliban ban, prices of raw opium increased tenfold; prior to September 11 prices increased about twenty-fold ($700 kg). In January 2002, the Karzai Interim Administration banned it; in effect, opium prices amounted to around $350 at harvest time in 2002, and were about $450 at the end of the year. The following chart from the same report presents the estimate of income from opium production in Afghanistan:

Figure 5 - Gross income of poppy cultivation per hectare in U.S.$, Source: ODC Afghanistan Opium Survey 2005, (2005): 7.

Over the 1994-2000 period, gross income from opium was about $150 million/year ($750/family). In 2002, gross income rose to $1.2 billion

($6,500/family). Part of the income is shared with traders and/or taxed by warlords. The income from illicit substances trafficking into neighbouring countries (Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan) amounted to at least $720 million in 2000.

Figure 5. shows that the prices of commodity sky-rocketed in the harvesting season following each ban on opium production and trade: the Taliban ban in 2000 and Karzai’s ban in early 2002 (prior to the 2002 harvest). This chart tests positive the thesis that criminalization of a commodity, and consequent higher risk in production and transport, generates higher prices of the commodity at the market, and may further motivate engagement in the criminalized activities.

Figure 6 – Income from Opium Compared to International Aid to Afghanistan (2002-2003). Source: Barnett Rubin, “Road to Ruin” (2004b): 12.


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Figure 6. compares the level of drug income to the level of international aid delivered to Afghanistan in the period 2002-2003. However, in the 2002-2004 period, the total income from poppy cultivation and drug trafficking shows ascending trajectory,51 estimated at $7 billion (Rubin 2004a), while in the same period the total international aid remains at $3.3 billion.

2.3. Poverty and Illicit Economy

Afghanistan ranks as 173rd of the 178 countries compared in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI).52 Opium sale and poppy growing are a response to relentless circumstances of pending poverty and hunger. The following section will examine the relation between (non-military) civilian population and the opium trade, with militant entrepreneurs playing a mediatory role in this relationship.

The ODH report observes that Afghan farmers grow opium poppy for several reasons: it was not strictly illegal until the official bans in 2000 and in 2002. It is produced with cheap labour (women, children, old people, landless returnees and refugees). The soil and the climate are

51 Barnett R. Rubin: “Road to Ruin: Afghanistan’s booming opium industry”(7 October 2004b). 52 “With an estimated HDI value of 0.346, Afghanistan falls at the bottom of the 177 countries ranked by the global Human Development Report of 2004, just above Burundi, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Sierra Leone .... The HPI [Human Poverty Index, note by author] places Afghanistan just above Niger and Burkina Faso, and far below its two neighbouring countries, Iran and Pakistan,” (UNDP: “Afghanistan National Human Development Report: Security with a human face,” 2005:4).

benevolent for poppy growing, and there is a know-how in the specific agriculture among Afghan farmers. Poppy yields up to three harvests per year, and the income from opium poppy is abundant. As a commodity, opium is a low-maintenance product: light, easy to pack and store, it lasts long without decaying or losing in quality, it does not need marketing and, of course, the demand is high. In absence of banks, stable currencies and creditors, opium has become “a form of saving, a source of liquidity and a collateral for credit,” (ODC 2005).

The ODC conducted a survey among local farmers in 2005 to assess the intensity of the reasons for poppy growing; the survey shows a clear relation between opium production (high sale price: 30.5%) and poverty (31.4%). The (violent) “external pressure to grow” and “landowners who want their tenants to cultivate it on their land” are rather low (only 1.9% and 0.1%, respectively), which means that is generally a free-choice activity; however, poverty is not a matter of free choice, and its coercive power is stronger than that of guns. Additionally, the survey shows the specific way of cooperation between farmers and warlords, a symbiotic interdependence on unequal terms, offered or imposed on the population53, where extreme

53 “Cultivators don't create traffickers, traffickers create cultivators. Many peasants who grow opium are bound to the cycle of opium production by debt bondage. […]Yet some in the Bush administration are now pushing for aerial spraying of drug crops with herbicides, which would damage other farm products and injure the people's health. Eradicating part of the crop — the most that could be accomplished — would drive up the price, creating incentives to grow opium in more inaccessible areas. The deeply indebted farmers, who owe opium to wholesalers on futures contracts for cash they received at planting time, will face a grim choice: give their


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poverty and extreme profit may virtually be indistinguishable. Rubin (2004a) explains how different professions are involved in the drug networks:

“Drugs provide livelihoods for poor farmers as well as employment for laborers during the harvest. Teachers and bureaucrats earn extra money as small-time traders. Merchants and money lenders earn profits as financiers and middlemen. Militia commanders, including members of Karzai's cabinet and the commanders of the country's principal military garrisons, have enriched themselves protecting the trade.”

2.4. Poppy-eradication Programme

The unintended effects of the international efforts to reduce poppy growing is illustrated by a series of interviews conducted by the BBC correspondent Andrew North,54 who accompanied the ODC Head, Antonio Maria Costa, on a field trip to the poppy growing regions of Afghanistan. Firstly, his resources report, the British troops offered farmers money if they destroyed their crops. Farmers then started growing it deliberately, expecting cash from the British. When the money did not come, they sold the poppy to opium producers. The governmental poppy eradication programme announced that 25% of

daughters to the traffickers, flee the country or grow more opium. That was what they did when the Taliban banned the crop without alternative livelihoods.” (Rubin 2004a) 54 Andrew North :“Following the Afghan Drugs Trail” (BBC News Reports, 18 November, 2004).

the crop should be destroyed. The farmers concluded that the remaining 75% can be grown legally.55

The Islamic authorities in the country forbid consuming opium; however, producing it for export to infidels is an undecided issue, permitted by some, banned by other clerics. Farmers and clerics, according to North’s report, require the West to reduce its demand for drugs, if they want the problem solved.

2.5. Addicted Economy

The OCD Report re-names opium as an "economic narcotic" for whole segments of Afghan society. Opium is an income generator, a means of exchange, a payment mechanism; it stores value, funds transactions and provides economic security as a guarantee of contracts and loans. Moreover, the Report observes that, “in some regions, traffickers gain respect from the local community when they recycle part of their income for the benefit of poor villages.” However, the main beneficiaries from opium production in Afghanistan are the traffickers, who collect about 79% of the total income from the opium economy, distribute a part of it through the informal security and mediatory network, while 21% goes to the farmers, according to the same ODC Report. A part from the overall 55 Further examples of Afghan humour are presented in the same BBC report. When asked why he is growing opium for the first time, even when it is illegal, a 78-year old farmer responds plaintively: “"There's freedom now, it's a democracy isn't it?" The same farmer, when asked not to grow poppy the following year, says: "Okay, next year, I will only grow it with your permission." (North 2004).


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drug income is invested into licit economy. Prof. Ali Jalali estimates: “Much of the progress [economic growth, note added] is attributed to foreign assistance and the illegal drug economy.”56

This chapter presented the economic enabling condition for creation of warlordism. Militant entrepreneurs command much higher resources than the state can provide, and simultaneously they offer an alternative exit from poverty to a significant part of the population. Warlords may thus be perceived locally as legitimate community leaders due to their provision of economic networks for opium sale.

Rubin’s observation (Sec. 2.1.2.) on the formation of a new type of commanders, characterized by severance from their communities, leads us to examine the previous, traditional type of commanders, which was embedded in the Afghan social tissue. The next chapter will outline the cultural model of Afghanistan, a type of societal organization wherefrom militants stemmed and which had, until the emergence of warlordism, managed and tamed violence.

56 Ali A. Jalali: “The Future of Afghanistan.” REF (2006):14.

Chapter 3 - The Afghan Cultural Model This chapter will describe the traditional organization of communities in Afghanistan, which, despite ethnic differences, is largely homogeneous throughout the country. Militant commanders and present-day warlords emerged from within this system, as a hyper-amplified function of a previously balanced social function of defence and dispute-settlement. The traditional system historically integrated and managed internal and external violence through developed institutions of peaceful conflict-resolution processes. In absence of state instruments of protection and coercion, it is the traditional system that has provided leadership, order, security and justice in the past centuries of Afghanistan. The Afghan customary laws are based on representation, government by discussion and vote, peace missions, special councils, national assembly, and differentiated instruments of legitimate use of force, which guarantee security and observance of contracts within and in-between communities. The customary system of violence- and conflict-management broke down during the Cold War, when foreign military and financial aid bestowed selected militant factions with unprecedented quantity and quality of military resources. The militant factions thus gained independence from their communities and disproportionate power to deliver violence. The leaders of these selected factions, consequently,


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were able to corrupt the traditional ruling councils with exorbitant payments. Their incomparable military power challenged the traditional authorities in delivering justice and managing violence in accordance to customary laws. The leaders of these factions are the present-day warlords of Afghanistan. Thus, the super-powers helped in the establishment of warlordism and, as a by-product, in the breakdown of the social bonds of the Afghan communities. The next sections will present the Afghan model of values and norms, the emergence of warlords from the military societal function, the corruption of the traditional society and its present relation to warlords. 3.1. Qawm

A number of studies have been recently made to analyze the Afghan traditional model of self-organization, decision-making and conflict resolution (USAID 2005, Azoy 2003; Rubin 1995-2005; Dupree 2002; Khuram 2004)57. They all recognize that the exquisitely complex network of Afghan societal bonds (qawm) is regulated by

57 USAID: “Afghanistan Rule of the Law Project: Field study of informal and customary justice in Afghanistan” (2005); Whitney G. Azoy: “Buzkashi: Game & power in Afghanistan” (Waveland Press, 2003); Nancy H. Dupree: “Cultural Heritage and National Identity in Afghanistan” (Third World Quarterly, vol. 23, No. 5, 2002): 977–989; Karim Khuram: “The Customary Laws of Afghanistan”. A Report by the International Legal Foundation (September 2004).

highly developed customary laws, the practiced culture-specific rule of law in the rural areas of the country. The community bonds are organized in overlapping series of individual and communal affiliations. The key term describing the bond and the alliance is qawm, which can be translated to mean a “solidarity group.” Simonsen (2004:708) elaborates its connotations: “The content of this denomination, however, varies widely; it is situational and relative, and may thus (alternatively) describe tribe, region, ethnic group or profession.” Family and qawm relations are considered synonymous with solidarity. The community is so tightly knit on horizontal and on vertical level that any movement away from the traditional ways of interaction seems to tear the fabric of the community.

3.1.1. Types of Social Bonds

The human bonding primarily follows the bloodline and, secondarily, a group connected through a common activity. In centuries-long absence of strong or of any central government, the Afghan communities have been organized in tribal systems, based on the family as a primary unit of organization. Three levels of hierarchical ordering are apparent in the society: family, tribe, and ethnicity, with the family providing the tightest bonds, and ethnicity the least tight one. Religion does not form its bonds based on bloodlines, and compared to the filial bonds, it has not been emphasized as a reason for conflicts, until the Taliban period, which waged war against “bad


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Muslims.” The Afghan society is almost homogeneously Muslim, and the Shia and Sunni division corresponds at large to ethnic boundaries.

The three levels of societal bonds (family, ethnicity and religion) are tightly knit. Societal groups tend to maintain internal cohesion and unity, and loyalty to one’s qawm-bonds permeates all aspects of life. Geographical dispersion plays a role in the strength and the weakness of community bonds: tribal fractions and families grow more independent if settled in areas remote from the rest of the tribe.

The predominance of blood alliance is almost homogeneous in the rural areas. The decisions of the community determine the decisions of the individual. The urban population tends toward individuation (the individual as a basic unit of community and prime decision-maker); however, in majority of cases individualism is still outweighed by filial bonds. 3.1.2. Values The affective-ethical dimension of these bonds that forms the social glue is responsibility. The more power an individual, a family or a tribe has, the more responsibility they have toward their related units. A man bears the responsibility for his family survival, honour, and relations with other social units. The woman is traditionally treated as a half of the man’s value.58 The rationale behind the restrictive norms 58 One question posed by Afghan rural representatives before the Presidential Elections 2004 was whether a woman’s vote would be counted as a half of a man’s vote.

around women is “protection” of the woman and her honour – the man is responsible for her honour, which if ruined, ruins his honour and the honour of the family as well. Different areas of Afghanistan have different levels of liberty and restrictions upon their male and female members. It is important to note that Afghans, like many traditional tribal societies, hold the human bond as a cardinal value, and evaluate interrelations in terms of honour, solidarity and loyalty. On a deeper level, the traditional model describes different degrees of quality of these bonds in terms of responsibility and power, unlike the classic Western qualifiers of individualistic liberalism - liberty and rights. Although these four values can be taken as indivisible, Western appeals fall short if promoted as “freedom and rights” due to their low resonance in the Afghan cultural model. Culturally insensitive communication can have a self-sabotaging effect: freedom and rights may be perceived as “absence of responsibility,” and individual liberty may be taken as destructive for the family bonds. Unfortunately, the perception of the West too in traditional societies is largely negative. Images passed by satellite TV, personal experiences of Afghans abroad, and often the behaviour of Westerners in Afghanistan, depict, in Afghan view, an immoral, fragmented and spiritually lost society, ridden by materialism, greed, lust, addictive substances and violence. 3.1.3. Shifting Alliances An expressive feature of the Afghan world is shifting and often multiple alliances: loyalty, power and people can shift sides quickly as


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the tide of reputation and incentives shifts. This is the mechanism of keeping maintenance costs of military alliances permanently high: the costs rise as the power of a person rises. In order to minimize effort and costs, a military leader typically would not interfere with the traditional local councils which rule the villages – so long as the village pledges loyalty, sends combatants under his command, and so long as the military leader provides incentives for the council and the combatants. Although a fiercely independent society, to accept incentives for loyalty is a part of the Afghan cultural model. There is no linguistic differentiation between salary and bribe – everything is translated as payment or gift. The size of offered and required incentives skyrocketed during the Cold War, where foreign states competed for the loyalty of various factions. 3.2. Customary Laws The tradition of self-governance by discussion, as well as of delegative representative councils, have been traditionally practiced and respected in the Afghan society, although patriarchal and male-dominated. Most customary forms of rule are not aimed to govern the whole state in terms of day-to-day decisions; however, the institution of the Loya Jirga (a form of National Assembly) serves to decide on issues important for the country and legitimize a ruler.

Khuram (2004:4) observes that “the formal legal system is simply not the norm governing the lives of the majority of the population.” The customary laws predominant in Afghanistan, in combination with the Hanafi branch of the Islamic jurisprudence (the Sharia), have been practiced through generations, and is still the predominant form of dispute settlement. The Afghan community is organized in a largely homogeneous way, with merely technical variations (different fees for a particular crime) throughout the state territory. The customary laws and recommended by international experts to be fully recognized by the new government and further steps in the formal democratization of Afghanistan to be built on.59 3.2.1. Shura

An Afghan family may number from 2 to 100 members, as it includes the sons, the grandsons and their wives and children. Each family is headed by the oldest man or the oldest son in the extended family.

59 USIP (2001) recommends: “In most of Afghanistan, customary systems have long regulated the vast majority of disputes and served the needs of most aspects of both civil and criminal justice. These systems… have continued to function reasonably well and maintain some legal order even as the formal system of justice effectively was stalled during the last twenty-five years of war. The formal, Kabul-based legal system has historically been difficult to implement in these areas. Indeed, even when in effect in the 1970s, the laws and jurisdiction of the formal system of justice did not command nearly the same level of respect or adherence in the rural areas as did the traditional systems such as the ‘Qadi courts’ and arbitration by respected local members of the community. As a consequence, no attempt should be made to impose any other legal system or structure on the rural areas of the country. It is not evident that it is needed, and it would not work.”


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Family heads represent their families in the village council, a shura, which makes the community decisions, mediates in internal and external disputes and defines the village relations to other villages and tribes. Some regions have female shuras consisting of women only and dealing with women’s issues, but these have mostly nominal existence in the rural areas.

The local shura also decides who and for what incentives the village allies, fights with or fights against. Disputes over property, honour, contracts and harm are resolved by either customary laws or by Islamic laws, depending on the choice of the disputing parties (Khuram 2004:7) – this choice is not imposed by the council. The council is responsible for assigning mediators to specific disputes, their number depending on the size of the dispute, and the selection of members depending on the laws chosen by the disputing parties. For example, if the disputing parties chose the Sharia way of resolution, clerics will be appointed in the mediation body; if the customary way is chosen, then men will be appointed who have gained reputation of being wise, just and experienced.

“Shura” is a word of Arabic origin, used in the Afghan society to denote a “council”; it can refer to village or tribal council. Its literal translation is “consultation," which, same like its English counterpart, defines the function of the organ. Shuras, as I will call them further in this text, also regulate the relationship between the individuals,

communities and the state.60 Any community issue under the jurisprudence of the shura summons its members, who discuss the issue at length. Shura members have equal rights and treatment in the discussion, regardless to the social standing (wealth, military power) of the member. When several opinions are present, the final decision is made by individual vote amongst shura members, all votes counted as equal. If the votes draw a tie, a coin is tossed.

3.2.2. Arbakai The decisions of the shura are considered final, and are implemented by the arbakai. Arbakai are institution kindred to local police, consisting of respected community members who wear arms and protect the village. The shura does not implement its decisions, but it delegates its authority to the arbakai, a positive sign of formal differentiation in the power institutions of the Afghan traditional model.

Dispute settlement is done by a mandatory meeting of the conflicting parties under auspices of a common authority (a special council formed by shura members from all concerned villages), by discussion,

60 According to Atmar and Goodand (2002:126), shuras “play a role in local governance, conflict resolution, resource management, and management of state-society relationships in local spheres. Such institutions manage diverse local conflict between individuals, families and communities, and between communities and the state. Conflict resolution takes place through negotiation, arbitration, and adjudication by applying Sharia, local laws and norms. The state has historically respected the role of these institutions and this practice continued under the Taliban and United Front.”


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mediation and delegated power of implementation. If a disputing party does not agree with the shura decision, he can ask another shura to be formed. This can be repeated up to three times; the unsatisfied party must either comply with the third decision, or move out of the tribal territory. The observance of the settlement is enforced by the arbakai. Arbakai also were the guarantors of security for peaceful conduction of elections in their areas, where they were given the role of deputized policemen. 3.2.3. Jirga The term shura is related to the term jirga, another key term essential to understanding the Afghan society. Jirga, a word of Pashto and Baluchi origin, is translated literally as a “peace mission.” It is a grand assembly on national level, a top-level meeting of all local representatives, originally with the responsibility to appoint, but in practice to merely legitimize, national leaders (e.g. kings and presidents), decide on national strategies for response to foreign interventions, national politics and government, constitutions, etc. The act of convening a Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) ensures the legitimacy and the implementation of the decisions made at the assembly. Jirgas are highly representative, ensuring each district to send several representatives, including women.

The institutionalization of Islam in Afghanistan includes mullahs (those who have been educated in madrassas to know the Kuran by heart, or to read it), and maliks (powerbrokers on level of village.

These are highly respected members of the local communities, and are often members of the local shuras. Unlike the Christian religious organization, the mullahs are not bound within a centralized clerical hierarchy and have no formal relationship between them.

In practice, the secular juridical system is restricted to the regional capitals, while in the provinces dominant figures (shuras and mullahs, but now commanders and warlords) judge cases. Many districts have no access to legal representatives and no awareness of existence of secular and state-regulated law. Due to the widely spread and largely unified customary law, its long tradition and embeddedness in the smallest segments of society, and due to lessons from history, an option examined by the government is to integrate the customary law and shura system within the juridical system. Also, the District and Provincial Councils, represented each in the Parliament, under the democratization process were designed to model the shura system, a culturally sensitive move on the part of the authorities.

3.2.4. Equality and Honour

In Afghanistan there is no caste system, and no belief in inborn inequality except in gender issues. There is high competition over land, water resources, and lately over trade routes and military technology. Traditionally, the right and the power to rule belong to the


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one with prestige, or with honour61. There are families with traditionally more prestige than others. Prestige in Afghanistan is obtained by individual quality, that is, by name and game. However, both name and game are resources that can be gained and lost rather quickly by individual action. Game measures how much gain one can provide for others. Power and wealth usually follow prestige. Education usually follows a long-term wealth.

A person of a “good name” would be treated with more respect in the community and their opinion would bear more weight on societal decisions. They would be also entitled to larger share in common gain. Prestige is often based on personal merit: persons who gain fame by wise mediation of conflicts are highly influential in the tribal shuras. Military power is also a means to obtain prestige; however, a military 61 Dupree (2002:978) gives a favourable assessment of the Afghan society (note her assessment of the position of women): “Honour is the rock upon which social status rests and the family is the single most important institution in Afghan society. Individual honour, a positive pride in independence that comes from self-reliance, fulfilment of family obligations, respect for the elderly, respect for women, loyalty to colleagues and friends, tolerance for others, forthrightness, an abhorrence of fanaticism, and a dislike for ostentation, is a cultural quality most Afghans share. The position of women is central to these values. In this patriarchal society women are the standards by which morality is judged, and they carry the responsibility of passing on the values of the society to younger generations. Many of these values are implicit in the rules of etiquette which emphasise respect for elders and guests, such as always standing in welcome, exchanges of prescribed greetings, appropriate dress, and, above all, decorum and deportment, which are as crucial for males as for females. The criteria for appropriate behaviour may vary from group to group and often within each group, or even within extended families, but central to the rules of etiquette are those designed to uphold honour.”

leader is bound to bestow gifts, to provide and share the spoils of war with his combatants and lieges. Material remuneration is a part of every value system: instead of vendetta, a person’s life can be traded for goods if honour is not essentially at stake; military loyalty goes to the highest bidder, the one who is most likely to provide the richest gain. There are, however, exceptions: men of faith and wisdom may weigh Islamic or customary ethics against gain.

Ever-hovering poverty and possibility of violent death plays a significant role in Afghan society: it is often the case that if a person does not ally his family to a power figure or refuses his incentives to do what the authority requires, he puts his and his family’s lives at stake. As personal power and wealth grow, the more heads and families the person is responsible to, the higher the number of challengers to subdue the person and appropriate his wealth. The necessity of violent means in everyday life is perceived as normal and essential, to protect one’s honour, qawm, life, property and contracts.

3.2.5. Regulation of Violence The traditional balance between legitimacy and military power has been based on simple formulae: the wiser the shura, the better off its families, the better equipped its arbakai, the more power the community has to maintain peace, settle disputes in a satisfactory way, ally with the winners, defend its community and obtain spoils for them; hence, the wiser the shura.


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Violence is an integral part of the Afghan culture, restrained and regulated by a specific code of honour. Carrying a gun is both a part of the tradition and a means of daily survival in Afghanistan, in protection of land, water-sources or fending off criminal and militant groups. Fighting in minor disputes is traditionally done by mostly symbolic shots, because to kill one enemy, again by the code of honour, dictates vengeance for the victim’s family. This would open up a cycle of violence, where both parties would be further harmed. The jirga system is conceptualized in such a way as to minimize violence, as its name suggests. Mostly, peace missions arrange for blood money, and if life must be paid with life, it is done in a ritualized way, so as to mark the end of the violence pattern. 3.3. Traditional Origins of Warlords Present day warlords stem from the warrior culture of Afghanistan. A warlord is typically a person who has distinguished himself as a military leader, has a record of a number of victories, and has shared satisfactory spoils of war with the network of followers, which support the families of the combatants and in some cases, whole villages. The community of followers is typically from the same ethnic group, and it is commonly more or less intolerant of other ethnic groups. An Afghan warlord is typically a person coming from a powerful, well-known family. The family supports him by unremitting loyalty, network of cooperatives and combatants, the family name giving him legitimacy, authority and community respect, as well as the loyalty of

other, minor families from the same tribe or ethnic community. As Whitney Azoy (2003) illustrates, the dynamics of interaction between a warlord and his followers is as follows: a “good” warlord provides spoils, gains victories and obtains a “good name”. The “good name” attracts more supporters, acquires more combatants and a larger potential for military and economic activities. Azoy finely explains the informal institutional pattern of Afghan authority: “The Afghan form of authority resides neither in permanent corporations nor in formal statuses, but in individual men who relate to each other in transient patterns of cooperation and competition… Unregulated, however, by any system of universally recognized authority, this cooperation readily gives way to competition,” (Azoy 2003:24). The highest power, followed by the highest title of Khan, is ascribed to an individual for his deeds; it is not hereditary, although it can be, and it essentially designates power over people. Traditionally, not the economic resources, but the number (quantity) and the “names” (quality) of supporters measure the power and the authority of the person in the Afghan cultural model. 3.4. De-regulation of Violence The institutions of shura, jirga and arbakai, as well as the code of honour within the warrior culture, are of primary importance in the organization of the Afghan community, although the same system can


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be used again as a “mud curtain”62 to ignore and over-ride governmental decisions. However, in the last two decades, the international factor caused corruption of the shura system and emergence of military figures as autonomous and predominant decision-makers on their respective territories. This process can be traced down to the period of the Russian and American proxy-wars in Afghanistan, and is parallel (if not identical) to the rise of warlordism described in chapter 1. Ever since the Cold War, foreign powers have been supporting different tribes and militant factions, by providing them with arms, funds and military training. The uncontrolled influx of advanced military technology, tipped the historical balance of power in favour of those who have more effective arms against those who have traditionally born the legitimacy and authority in community governance. The asymmetry in cash and arms enabled militant figures to buy off or coerce shuras in their favour. By complying with militant figures, some shuras have lost their reputation in their respective communities. At present, local commanders often resolve disputes previously delegated to shuras. Once local protectors of their communities, today warlords vary in their relation to their original qawm-s. Warlords still have positive

62 Atmar/Goodhand, (Afghanistan 2002:125-126): “To an extent, such institutions [jirgas and shuras] have enabled Afghan communities to construct a so-called mud-curtain to keep an interfering and often repressive state at bay. The fact that such institutions have survived over centuries and are remarkably resilient and adaptable is attributed to their stable legitimacy with Afghan communities in meeting essential societal needs, including local governance.”

incentives to maintain the loyalty of the traditional local authorities. This is usually done by positive coercion: local councils face the choice of accepting incentives from a warlord (property, territory, gifts, arms, etc) or renouncing his protection. Warlords provide income to their supporters in form of payment and gifts, and thus sustain, directly or indirectly, a part of the population. Furthermore, they may provide a sense of ethnic pride and unity to their respective communities. Although most contemporary warlords distribute high incentives to a small group of supporters, some may widen their scope of redistribution to the general population of their territories.63

The more intense the exchange between a warlord and his ethnic community, the stronger the popular legitimacy of the warlord. However, to have legitimacy within one community does not mean legitimacy within another community. Due to the history of inter-ethnic violence in the civil war, the more legitimacy a warlord has within his own community, the less legitimacy he is likely to have in other communities.

63 An example of how a warlord can maintain his relations with the community is Ismail Khan, former governor of the Western Herat Region and present Minister of Mines and Energy. He was known for building roads, providing water sources in his region, having the city of Heart regularly cleaned and partially rebuilt. He was as well known for keeping income from taxes to himself instead of sending it to the central government in Kabul.


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Most warlords do not engage in projects of public interest; they limit their activities to distributing cash, gifts, property and arms to the community of supporters. Moreover, almost all warlords, ever since the Russian involvement in Afghanistan, have been accused for war crimes against each other’s ethnic communities. Popularly, many Afghans consider that the warlords have lost their “honour” because what they did to civilians during the civil war. However, it is not clear how much popular anger goes against all warlords, and how much against other communities’ warlords.

This chapter identified the sociological enabling condition of warlordism. The origins of Afghan combatants lie in a complex network of societal organization and peaceful regulation of violence. The end of traditional militants, in service of their communities and tamed by them, began with the Cold War and has still not ended. Contemporary militant entrepreneurs retain some links with their communities and maintain a large degree of informal contractual exchanges with the shuras. Some warlords move toward minimizing this exchange and establishing their dominance, while others move toward re-establishing reciprocative relations with societal groups. The military and economic predominance of warlords and the poverty of the population render unequal exchange relations between them.

Chapter 4 - Democratization by Foreign Intervention

The previous chapters showed the historical and cultural context of emergence of Afghan warlordism and their present military, political, and economic predominance. These were internal country-specific conditions which enabled the warlordisation of the new democratic regime. Henceforth we shall enter domains characteristic for a number of post-conflict countries, which are related to international practices of foreign interventions. Two aspects of interventionism will be assessed next: this chapter will focus on the concept of “democracy by force” (Watts 2005), and chapter 5 will examine the state-building and democratization paradigms as practiced by the international community today.

The US-led military intervention in Afghanistan delineated the beginning of the UN-led democratization process. The foreign military regime change will show as yet another condition which favoured the creation of a warlord democracy as the economically most viable model of interventionism. Post-conflict elections will be examined as a means of institutionalizing and legitimizing warlord democracies, reframing chapter 1 within the context of foreign influence and local militancy.


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4.1. Democracy by Force

Although the question of the right to impose a regime on a foreign state is debatable from legal and ethical point of view, the fact is that it happens, it has happened in numerous cases in recent history, and it is likely to happen in future, with or without approval of international law, the global community, the intervening state’s public opinion or the intervened citizens. It is a recurrent historical phenomenon, changing the degree and the form of intervener’s role in the intervened state, from simple conquest, through colonialism, the Cold War foreign regime changes, and post-Cold War. While the Cold War was marked by either anti-communist or anti-capitalist fears, the post-Cold War period has concentrated on control of the free market, control over natural energy resources, and lately anti-terrorist and, some believe, anti-Islamist fears. The following discussion will exclude economic analysis of the possible motives behind the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan and conspiracy theories that “inside every U.S. foreign policy there lies a small oil-interest just waiting to be released.” Given that this intervention already took place and is irretrievable, the question of justified (or not) intervention is useless a posteriori for Afghanistan, and the question what to do next in intervened states becomes significant both for the country in question and for the international community involved in state building and democratization.

6.1.1. Democratization as Security Policy

The concept of democratization as a security-related foreign policy, promoted in Afghanistan, is based on the observation that democracies rarely go to war against each other, whereupon one of the authors of this democratic peace theory, Bruce Russet64, expressed bitter disagreement when their theory was used to justify waging wars. It is common that politicians would use theories from political science and international relations to find multidimensional reasons and justifications for sending (or not) troops to topple a foreign regime. However, scientists’ justifications and predictions for foreign-led regime change vary to a large degree. Watts (2005) describes three main lines of thinking: realist, liberal and critical theorist approach to “democracy by force:” The realist approach holds that the attempt is likely to fail, it is far too expensive in terms of funds and human lives, and it provokes hostility in local and international actors. Realists are also highly critical of the institutional approach to promoting democracy, which does not influence the underlying power relations inherent in the society in question. Liberals advocate “democracy by force”, believing that democracy is the only sound basis for military, economic and political stability. Some liberals are not optimistic toward the outcomes of such interventions. Critical theorists are far less optimistic than realists and liberals; they claim that Western states tend to blindly project their own problems and solutions (histories, values, institutions) onto other, 64 Bruce Russet: “Installing Democracy” (Commonwealth, December 3 2004): 14.


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culturally different countries, and impose a “one-size-fits-all” programme of regime change where the intervener’s institutions are disseminated regardless to local history or culture.65

4.1.2. Democratization as Ends or Means

One positive test for the prevalent motives of imposing democracy on another state can put to the ritualistic “first-election” step: whether the intervener only makes elections possible or they heavily influence the outcome to serve their own national interests in the intervened country. The main Afghan intervener, the U.S., has a long history of clandestine toppling of regimes, manipulating political outcomes, open military interventions, and support to friendly autocrats. The U.S. Administration, according to Carothers (2004:64)66, suffers from a “split personality”: one - realist, befriending autocratic rulers who guarantee non-democratic stability to fulfil American economic and security interests; and the other – neo-Reaganite, demanding (or enforcing) democratization around the globe. This causes doubts

65 Critical theorists are divided between those who advocate neutralization of “warlords” in order to promote civil society, and those who take them for “a part of the traditional social fabric of many cultures” Watts (2005); the latter groups characterizes their difficult and implausible removal as power-vacuuming of the state, to which civilians become victims. 66 Thomas Carothers: “Critical Mission: Essays on democracy promotion” (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004).

about the legitimacy of contemporary “democratization by force” and it defames democratization effort.67

The U.S. activities in Afghanistan to a significant level were aimed at determining the outcome of the elections and the appointment of key governmental officials, starting from the interim and later on legally elected President. The influence on the electoral outcome, to recount the indications from chapter 1, was probably performed by covert funnelling of large amounts of money directly to the preferred candidate (used for bribe and campaigning), through American non-governmental organizations, by funding local media and campaigns; by buying out potential opponents and through coercive alliances with them, using the U.S. military forces as leverage.

While democratization by foreign intervention may be considered as a potentially legitimate goal in some cases, interfering in the outcomes of democratic processes can hardly be seen as such. The intervener’s

67 Moreover, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper: “Lessons From the Past: the American record on nation-building” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Policy Brief no. 24, May 2003) analysis of U.S. involvement foreign democratization by military intervention concludes that out of 18 cases, only 5 were relatively successful: three of these five cases are post-World War II Italy, Germany and Japan - each within historically unrepeatable and exceptional conditions, where the foreign intervention was performed multilaterally. The other two, Panama and Granada, belong to illiberal/electoral democracies. Carothers puts it bluntly: “the idea that there’s a small democracy inside every society waiting to be released just isn’t true.” Blaming it on the target-society or on the incompetence of the local government shows equally untrue. (in Amitai Etzioni: “A Self-Restrained Approach to Nation-Building by Foreign Powers,” International Affairs, 2004 I:7).


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protégés are also unlikely to gain or maintain popular support, and manipulated elections are a shortcut to disillusionment in democracy amongst the local population. Carothers (2004:71) warns on the long-term negative effects of “wrapping security goals in the language of democracy promotion and then confusing democracy promotion with the search for particular political outcomes that enhance those security goals.” In the international community, the instrumentalization of democracy promotion for achievement of security (and economic benefits) is also not likely to be lauded. Perhaps most importantly, the local community is likely to lose faith in the democratic promise and trust in the international community.68

4.1.3. Mechanisms of Failure In many cases, the introduction of democracy resembles “either pragmatic or desperate experiments rather than expressions of deeply felt aspirations of ‘the people’,” estimates Thomas Carothers (2004:13) the not-so-bright history of democratizing countries. Why does not imposed democracy take root? Stephen Watts (2005) criticizes the concept of regime change by external intervention on the ground of its likely consequences. Regardless to the motivations of the intervener, a larger or smaller part of the population will tend to perceive themselves as occupied and shift their support to local military commanders or nationalistic

68 The symptoms of this disillusionment are indicated by the low voter turnout in the second round of the Afghan Elections, namely the Parliamentary Elections 2005.

leaders as to their sole representatives; the latter may lead them into a liberation war against the intervener or into a civil war between forces loyal to the intervener and those against them.69 The intervened population is not likely to accept imposed authority structures, so that the intervener is frequently compelled to use force in an effort “to fit square pegs into round holes” (Etzioni 2004: 3). Any use of force by the foreign troops, whether in self-defence, in protection of civil rights or against local insurgents, is likely to be interpreted as illegitimate and unproportional, to signal a common enemy to the local actors, and motivate growing civil dissatisfaction or resistance. If foreign military presence is unaccepted by the population, local militant leaders may come to be perceived as defenders of their communities, and interventions against them can backlash with popular insurgency and escalating spirals of violence. This is the mechanism of producing local warlords, Watts explains. Interventions usually fail to address the underlying causes of instability, and thus are quick to lose popular support. Moreover, local leaders are put in position to legitimize and increase their power in conditions of

69 “Moreover, external military threats often strengthen dictators’ hold. They inflate autocrats with a renewed sense of purpose and determination. The specter of foreign takeover allows swaggering strongmen to play the nationalist card at home and claim the mantle of heroic defender of the nation’s honor and territorial integrity. In the intensifying state of siege, they can smear domestic opponents as pawns of sinister foreign aggressors and distract public attention from the failings of their own rule,” (Thomas Carothers: “Why Dictators Aren’t Dominos,” Foreign Policy & Carnegie Endowment Special Report, 2003:60).


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continued instability, and they may perceive insignificant gain from cooperation with the interveners. Even citizens may benefit from warlord regimes, and it is the citizens who give support, continuity and legitimacy to any sort of rule. Introducing a set of democratic institutions in a country does not imply favour or compliance from the wide populace. Moreover, it is realistic to assume that the citizens would attempt to adjust institutions to their societal beliefs, values, interests and patterns of behaviour. Conflict-ridden countries are characterized by damaged social values and patterns, mistrust and anarchy; liberty is typically associated with freedom to abuse others, power with violence, and cooperation with destruction; or isolationism and apathy prevail. A society formerly under an illegitimate (unaccepted) regime will tend to be distrustful toward a new one, even if it is called democracy, and the pattern of behaviour will largely tend to appropriate and personalize the democratic regime, or work its ways against, despite or heedless to institutions and laws. Such states sometimes draw exasperated opinions among domestic experts and international academics that a “strong hand” is need to set the society up and running again, an advice which is likely to produce a “strong-handed” autocracy or oligarchy. Another objection goes against the assumption that democracy is a universal aspiration and a universal good, especially when its practices go against or regardless to non-Western cultural orders and differences. Democracy is an ideology (Carothers 2004:19-20), and

imposing it by coercion brings out its ideological limitations and cultural particularities. Foreign interventions including regime-imposition are especially disputable when one state assumes that it can judge what institutional form in what value frame can be the best for another society. However, Watts (2005) notes that in case of regime change by foreign military intervention, the intervener will tend to install its own regime in the intervened state, for better or worse. Regimes tend to propagate themselves, and autocracies will attempt to install or beget autocracies, while democracies will attempt to install or beget democracies. From this perspective, democratization is an expression of the Western dominant discourse, prone to suffering from cultural insensitivity and legitimized manipulation.

4.1.4. Economic Perspective of Foreign Interventionism Military engagement as means of building a liberal regime has been discussed with overwhelming scepticism amongst political scientists not only for its ethical contradictions, but also for its cost-ineffective consequences. Stephen Watts claims that the high costs of longer and more committed interventions lead the intervening state to decrease these costs by entering power-sharing arrangements with local military leaders, promising them political power regardless to their background and agenda. Then, this promise is legitimized and institutionalized through the first post-conflict elections, whereupon the intervener can disengage from open conflict, having established military and political influence in the intervened state. “From the standpoint of the intervener, competitive oligarchy thus represents the lowest-cost form of intervention,” Watts (2005) claims. Competitive


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oligarchies, or warlord democracies, as he names them, are considered to be the only lasting and economically viable outcome, although characterized by continuous low-intensity violence. This arrangement, I should add, is viable so long as the actors profit from a weak state without having to fight for supreme control, and without having to take the full responsibility a strong state should assume in relation to its citizens. Wolfgang Merkel (2004) elaborates on the issue of stability of such “defective democracies,”70 with their defects being perceived by governing elite and population not as transitional phases, but as instrumental: “As long as this equilibrium between problems, context and power lasts, defective democracies will survive for protracted periods of time,” (2004:33). I shall conclude that, in case of Afghanistan, a defective democracy is likely to remain stable so long as local warlords are satisficied with the extracted profits from the intervening parties, the opium market, the weak state, and so long as their positions are not challenged.

70 Wolfgang Merkel: “Embedded and Defective Democracies” (Democratization, vol.11, No.5, December 2004: 33–58):33.

Chapter 5 - Democratization without Illusions

The democratization process of Afghanistan started in 2001, amidst continuing battles, promised-but-not delivered economic aid and, generally, in lack of a working concept what to do with a country that needs basic security, infrastructure, livelihood and functional government. State-building and democratization paradigm were applied, only to be instrumentalized by local militant entrepreneurs, as we saw in chapter 1. Nevertheless, the institutional achievements of state-building and of the symptomatic post-conflict elections were proclaimed successful, due to the “habit of conceiving democracy in procedural rather than substantive terms and of failing to get beyond the most tangible level of political activity in a complex transitional society to the underlying realities of power and tradition” (Carothers 2004:15). This part will describe the state-building and democratization paradigm, to find their procedural-institutional approach as another enabling condition for creation of a warlord democracy. The rationale is as follows: the state-building paradigm is based on the imaginary arrow anarchy->state. However, neither anarchy nor full state ever existed in Afghanistan. Instead, there has been historical competition between a permanently weak state, traditional communities and, most recently, warlords. The contemporary phase,


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behind a formally democratic regime, is a continuation of the competition between the same actors, leading neither toward anarchy nor toward a full state, as we shall see in the following sections. The democratization paradigm, on the other hand, is based on another imaginary arrow autocracy->democracy. Traditional oligarchy, with merely formal autocracy (royalty), and poly-centric form of ruling has historically been prevalent on Afghan territory. The democratic regime re-established another form of oligarchy, based on warlord rule. What makes the state-building and democratization paradigms? We shall next examine the assumptions built in these concepts to show inherent mechanisms which helped the legitimization and political establishment of a warlord democracy in Afghanistan. 6.2. State-building, Nation-building and Security Post-conflict state building and internationally managed democratization are relatively recent concepts. These two forms of international interventionism have two novel components: first, that states should be rebuilt, and not dismantled or left to their own fates; second, they should democratize. The international community, according to Ottaway and Lieven,71 has tried three approaches to volatile states: first, proxy-stabilization through local power-holders –

71 Marina Ottaway and Anatol Lieven: “Rebuilding Afghanistan” (Current History, March 2002).

abandoned through failure72; second, letting problematic countries sort out their problems themselves – abandoned because of escalating regional instability. The third, most recent approach is related to the democratic-reconstruction model. The package contains the following general agreement: The parties involved in the conflict must reach agreement on a new permanent political system. Elections must be held as soon as possible. The new state must be multiethnic, secular, and democratic—regardless of whether this has any basis in local tradition, or whether it is what the inhabitants of the country want. While the accord is being implemented, peace and order are guaranteed by an international force, as well as by the presence of a large number of UN administrators. (Ottaway/Lieven 2002). From this concise description, we can see the characteristics of the state-building paradigm: each aspect listed in the quotation above is oriented and limited to institutions. The aim of this paradigm is to institutionalize the political life in the country. However, it omits to perceive the overwhelming incentives for local and international actors to build manageable, weak institutions, which can be circumvented and instrumentalized.

72 The warlord model, a former habitual stabilization method for a failed state, Ottaway and Lievin say, “was freely employed, for instance, by the United States during the cold war and by France as part of its neocolonial strategy in Africa. It is not ethically appealing, but it is cheap, can be effective or a time, and requires little effort on the part of international actors, who delegate the job of imposing order to local leaders.” (Ottaway/Lieven 2002:135)


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“The state’s prime function is to provide the political good of security… Other political goods can be supplied only within a framework of security,”73 says Rotberg. The often advocated first item on the post-conflict agenda, security, is often overlooked due to its costliness. Security has been a key value for Afghans for decades. It seems that, historically, whoever could provide security for the population, would gain some sort of wide legitimacy.74 Security is on the state- and nation-building agenda.75

While state-building refers to establishment of formal institutions of democratic governance, nation-building refers to a creation of a national identity in ethnically divided societies. State-building and nation-building go together in the aftermath of a civil war. Etzioni

73 Robert I. Rotberg: “Nation-State Failure: A recurring phenomenon?” NIC 2020 project (6 November 2003). 74 According to Tarzi, even the Taliban’s “initial popularity stemmed from their ability to stop kidnappings, rapes and assaults on civilians by warlords or gangs who exploited the lack of security provided by the central government,” and only later they lost it, by losing grip of their own allies’ torture and abuse of civilians, (Amin Tarzi: “Afghan Demonstrations Test Warlords-Turned-Administrators”. In “Analysis of Events and Trends in Afghanistan,” RFE/RL: 11, vol. 4, No. 9., March 2005). 75 According to Etzioni (2004:1), the primary meaning of nation-building used to be construction of some sort of government, democratic or not, but stable. Today the term is used for construction of democratic and stable governments. State-building and nation-building include three different and interrelated tasks: community-building (peaceful cohabitation of disparate ethnic groups; building a sense on national identity to unify and over-ride ethnic identities), democratization; and economic reconstruction. It also may include improvement of governance, which means rule of law, anti-corruption, democratization and freedom of the media.

(2004:4) observes that all historical attempts of deliberate construction of a nation, controlled by external agents or public authorities, have failed or under-delivered massively, while most communities who have overcome their inter-ethnic or inter-religious conflicts have done so independently of external interference, spontaneously or in spite of the occupying force, in their own way and time. 76 Each element of the nation-building agenda, and therefore of the democratization process, is influenced (that is, undermined or rendered meaningless) by the lack of security. In states where no-one holds the monopoly on the use of violence, but a number of forces attempt to control it, aspects of nation-building become prey to inter-warlord games. The great hopes of constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms are not fulfilled, but are instrumentalized, practiced selectively or used as trumps in dealing with the international community.

The reality in state-less, restless and nation-less countries is one of overwhelming civic powerlessness for non-violent and economically not predominant individuals, where the only available options are to withdraw on the margins of power competitions, or to enter the networks of militant entrepreneurs. Without security, nation-building

76 The reasons for his scepticism are as follows: “over-ambitious. societal engineering seeks to overcome prevailing social forces and long-established societal structures and traditions and to generate new ones. It vainly tries to quickly undo deeply ingrained cultural and psychological predispositions, strong emotional ties and (often) religious. beliefs, as well as very powerful reward allocations by tribal chiefs of warlords, and equally quickly to substitute alien frameworks..” (Etzioni:2004:15)


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and its component democratization fail, go awry and produce non-secure, non-democratic institutions.77 Elections are then likely to turn into sham-exercise establishing either foreign-backed protégés or local power figures into key governmental positions. These may have incentives and the opportunity to fulfil foreign or non-democratic agendas, and are difficult to be removed from the power-positions in the subsequent years.

5.2. Democratization Paradigm

What is nowadays called “democratic regime” is thought to be the best normative model for a dynamic balance in egalitarian distribution of power, coercion, liberty, responsibility, laws, justice, rights, limitations, ruling and representation. However, the democratic enthusiasm is tamed by two facts: firstly, there is no regime today that fully practices democracy; secondly, democracy is not an ideal regime that solves all national problems. Democracy should be cautiously described as a changing system, whose best feature, to agree with Derrida (2003:114)78, is a “perspective open to perfectability” - the attitude of active openness toward knowledge-based self-criticism and self-revision.

77 “Previous international efforts to build democracy after violent conflict counsel one clear, overriding lesson: ‘It's security, stupid.’.” (Larry Diamond: “An Eyewitness to the Iraq Botch,” Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2004). 78 Jacques Derrida: “Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Autoimmunity – real and symbolic suicides.” Interview by Giovanna Borradori (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

Unfortunately, precisely this feature is sometimes undermined by the very practitioners of the democratic paradigm. The very openness toward changeability and perfectability is overlooked if democratization is practiced as a mechanical duplication of procedures and institutions, in a manner in-sensified to local needs, historical and cultural complexities, and phenomena which surpass the domain of a single state. “Wrong ideas about democracy make a democracy go wrong,” warns Sartori.79 Correspondently, wrong ideas of “democratization” may go so awry so as to sabotage their own mission, establish clearly anti-democratic rule and help massive abuses of human rights, illicit economy and regional, or even global, insecurity.

The following sections will dismantle several wrong assumptions of the democratization paradigm: (a) the assumption that actors want either a strong state or no state to be built; (b) the assumption that elections express the free will of the voters; and (c) that a democratically elected government will attempt to build a strong state in order to lead gradually the country toward the ideal model of democracy. To counter-argue this set of assumptions, I will present here a sequence of concepts offering critical overview of aspects of “wrong” democracy and democratization; next, I will isolate mechanisms that make defective democracies achieve some sort of equilibrium of dys-functionalities, which keep them in a continual transition stage between non-democracy and democracy.

79 Giovanni Sartori: “The Theory of Democracy Revisited: The contemporary debate” (Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1987:3.


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5.2.1. Electoralist democracy

Perhaps the most simplistic, popular and dangerous definition of democracy is the one equating democracy with regular holding of relatively free and fair elections. This definition has further deteriorated in international unilaterally or multilaterally organized elections, often limited to the first round of national elections, which has enabled the global community to turn a blind eye to the subsequent non-democratic rule and cease interest in deeper democracy building in the particular state.

What is so important about elections? Sartori (1987:86-87) notes that, ideally, it is precisely in the act of elections that we find the demos in governing instead of governed role. However, he critically assesses the electoral consequences: firstly, in-between elections the government can do more or less whatever without directly consulting the public opinion. Secondly, the elections hardly measure a general will or knowledge of the people: instead, they draw the heterogeneously influenced opinion of a part of the people. Although Sartori states that “free elections with unfree opinion express nothing” (Sartori 1987:102), voters can “freely” prefer autocratic, totalitarian or traditional regimes for perceived benefits they provide them (such as security, national identity, tradition, income or privilege). We saw in chapter 1 that votes can be simply bought or extorted.

I shall critically summarize what the vote expresses: the needs, the constraints and the beliefs of the voter, where the degree of freedom exercised in the act of voting is culturally, economically and militarily determined. Elections meaningfully express also the lack of choices, information and political awareness of the voters, as well as their economic and security needs, the economic and military power of the candidates, and the cultural preferences of the entire community. In a more cynical view, it can be said that elections express more the negative limitations of the voters rather than an affirmative collective choice.

5.2.2. Post-conflict Elections

In his analysis of the role that elections have played in 14 transitions from conflict to peace in the 1990s, Roland Paris shows that premature elections can create more long-term disadvantages than advantages.80 In the light of his study, this seems more acute in presidential systems, like Afghanistan’s, where one wins, the other players lose, some do not want to play, and many do not understand the rules. Post-conflict state building theorists, according to Ahmed (2005), agree on the sequence of establishment as: the army, the police, and the judiciary, and that only after elections can be exercised without abuse from dubious local figures.

80 For more on Paris’ study and the UN missions in Afghanistan and in Iraq, see No Size Fits All by Salman Ahmed, in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005.


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But military campaigns are expensive, and any sort of legitimacy of a national government, as faltering as it may be, deflects aggression from the foreign intervening presence. Thus, elections are hastily performed, citizens are given the right and the opportunity to choose who will govern them, but are not the power to exercise that right freely, nor alternatives of credible and experienced candidates.

Political scientists note that elections are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for democracy.81 Flawed elections have been too often used to promulgate autocratic regimes hiding behind ineffectual democratic constitutions.82 It seems that democratic regimes are uniquely susceptible to manipulation due to their complexity (the number of opinions and values it has to evaluate, negotiate, aggregate or put aside, as opposed to the comparative simplicity of the autocratic rule). Democracy is a sensitive regime and allows for a wide range of abusive and nominal practice by opportunists, demagogues and autarchs. Elections inherit that sensitivity liable to manipulation by local and international actors, as we saw in the analysis of the Afghan Elections 2004 and 2005. 81 Schmitter and Karl, while assigning crucial importance to elections, emphasize that democracy “cannot be reduced to the regular holding of elections,” (Phillipe C. Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl: “What Democracy is… and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 2, issue 3, 1991: 75-88). 82 Larry Diamond warns that “ill-timed and ill-prepared elections do not produce democracy, or even political stability, after conflict… Instead, they may only enhance the power of actors who mobilize coercion, fear, and prejudice, thereby reviving autocracy and even precipitating large-scale violent strife.” (Larry Diamond: “”Building Democracy after Conflict: Lessons from Iraq,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 16, No. 1, January 2005: 9-23).

5.2.3. Between Democracy and Autocracy

Robert Dahl83 draws out two key criteria for measuring the presence and the absence of democracy, on the scale whose poles oppose “autocratic regimes” to “competitive polyarchies.” Sartori starts from Dahl’s terms to counterpoise democracy and autocracy – the rule of the majority versus the rule of the one: “democracy is non-autocracy,” he claims (1987:206). This negative definition is especially helpful for understanding the democratization paradigm, as it delimits the two poles of movement from autocracy into polyarchy (democracy). Obviously then, “democratization” is about movement from less to more: from more or less autocracy, toward more or less polyarchy, with many points in-between, and not all of them on the same line.

I will add: midway between autocracies and polyarchies, oligarchies, the rule of the few, can be characterized as regimes where a few individual actors enter more or less balanced power-relations with each other, enjoy some support from a community of followers, invest themselves with the power to rule and set their own limits and conditions of exercising their power.

83 Robert A. Dahl: “Polyarchy” (New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1971).


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5.2.4. Hybrid Regimes Dahl’s typology of autocracy and competitive polyarchy moves in the modern world of ideal models – the relentlessly non-ideal present places countries in-between these two poles, whilst none fully embodies either model. In focus of political science often are explicitly contradictory states, which are nominally democratic and practically largely autocratic. The assessment of these states is typically done from the perspective of the ideal type of competitive polyarchies (democracies). Levitsky and Way84 call these dysfunctional regimes “hybrid.” One type of hybrid regimes they examine, competitive authoritarianism, is especially applicable to mature warlord democracies, where (2002:52) “formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principle means of obtaining and exercising political authority. Incumbents violate these rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.”85 They can be characterized by different violations of democratic sub-regimes, in each aspect in a various degree: massive electoral fraud, abuse of state resources, restricted media access to opposition, harassment of political opposition and their supporters;

84 Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way: “Elections without Democracy: The rise of competitive authoritarianism” (Journal of Democracy, vol. 7, No. 2, April 2002). 85 The authors opt for re-naming these regimes as “diminished authoritarianism”, instead of “diminished democracy,” although such regimes fall short of full scale authoritarianism as well.

journalists, opposition politicians and NGO workers may be spied on, threatened harassed, imprisoned, exiled or murdered. Although Levitsky and Way (2002:53) opt against naming such regimes as democratic at all, they admit that incumbents usually do not openly violate democratic rules, but strive to disable, circumvent them and reduce them to a façade, which they cannot do fully. Instead of open violation, preferred means include bribery, co-optation and abuse of legal powers, such as tax authorities, judiciaries and other state agencies “to ‘legally’ harass, persecute, or extort cooperative behaviour from their critics.” This is a relatively lasting solution.86 Practicing such mechanisms, a state can be called democratic, can be treated as such by the international community, can continue to receive reconstruction and economic aid, and can still practice a harsh autocracy. Hybrid regimes tend to fall into a deadlock of conflicting yet balanced powers and interests. They often maintain and profit on a blurred line between executive and legislative powers, lack of check and balance system, circumvention of parliament or judiciary, and deliberately and chronically damaged rule of law. Political processes are generally

86 “Authoritarian governments may coexist indefinitely with meaningful democratic institutions. As long as incumbents avoid egregious (and well-publicized) rights abuses and do not cancel or openly steal elections, the contradictions inherent in competitive authoritarianism may be manageable using bribery, co-optation, and various forms of ‘legal’ persecution, governments may limit opposition challenges without provoking massive protest or international repudiation.” (Levitsky/Way 2002:58-59).


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informal, political and personal power overlap. Critical periods of instability, so long as they last, are used to justify critical (and often non-democratic) decisions and practices. A formally democratic regime can function in such a way over an extended period of time, and may serve political actors to develop and consolidate their reliance on extra-legal resources. Such merely formal democracies gain short-term stability at the expense of their long-term chances for improving the degree of democratic rule in the country.

The result is a potentially stable, yet hybrid political system: a democracy with serious defects. In the long run, these defects diffuse citizens’ support for democratic norms and shake citizen’s belief in the legitimacy of the concept of democracy as a whole.

5.3. Critique of Democratization

Democratization programmes stem from understanding of democracy as political scientists try to define. One can draw a direct line from science to reality through policies, and this line in out case would go directly through the practice of internationally designed and led democratization process in post-conflict settings. Up until now, the democratization programmes have tended to be an exercise of political, predominantly institutional change, without understanding how change occurs outside institutions.

Thomas Carothers’ article “The End of the Transitional Paradigm” (Carothers 2004) claims that the basic notion of democratization stemming from this paradigm has outlived its usefulness; the failures of establishing and consolidating democracy today, according to him, are due to misleading assumptions inscribed in precisely this paradigm. He names five such assumptions: (1) movement from autocracy is necessarily movement toward democracy, (2) democratization happens in a sequence of stages (opening, breakthrough and consolidation), (3) elections equal democracy, (4) conditions (economic, social, political, institutional, etc.) are not major determinants, and (5) democratization occurs in states which do not need (and consequently democratization does not include) state-building.

The reality confronting these assumptions, according to the author, is as follows: (1) liberalization does not imply transit of the country away from autocracy, and much less toward democracy; (2) transitional countries may move backward, in their own direction neither toward democracy or autocracy, or they may stagnate for an indefinite period of time somewhere in-between, as most “third wave” democracies do87; democratic teleology is misleading; real change

87 Carothers (2004:171) summarizes: “By far the majority of third-wave countries have not achieved relatively well-functioning democracy or do not seem to be deepening or advancing whatever democratic progress they have made. In a small number of countries, initial political openings have clearly failed and authoritarian regimes have resolidified… Most of the transitional countries, however, are neither dictatorial nor clearly headed toward democracy. They have entered a political grey zone.”


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happens in a chaotic manner, with a lot of jerks, shifts, repetitions, in all directions at once; (3) elections are a partial democratic regime, and may serve to perpetuate a status quo, or even movement toward autocracy; (4) conditions matter; in some cases these are decisive kernels of political change or the lack of it; and (5) democratization and state building are not two sides of the same coin; moreover, democratization focused on institutional change tends to overlook the real needs of failed, collapsed or dysfunctional states. The resources needed for “starting up” a country may be devoured by the democratization process, make institutional practices (such as constitution, laws and elections) serve the interest of the power groups and enable them to obtain legal control over more power and resources.

All five points are applicable to Afghanistan: (1) political liberalization brings militant figures to legitimized power, wherefrom they expand and legally immunize their informal networks; (2) a post-modern warlord democracy is established; (3) elections were the means of achieving the previous. two points; (4) the conditions provided by the opium market and international engagement in the country helped, or even motivated, the process; (5) the institution-bound democratization paradigm unintentionally acted as an accomplice in the legitimization of the violent regime.

Chapter 6 - Post-modernizing Afghanistan Thus far, we examined the socio-historical context of emergence of warlords, the US-led military intervention in the country, as well as the state-building and democratization paradigms. Next, I shall summarize the symptoms of warlord democracy we discerned so far and order them in a temporal sequence. 6.1. The Symptoms The Afghan communities have been historically ruled not by royalties and states, but by traditional and customary laws. Afghan warlords emerged from a locally regulated social function of controlled violence. During the Cold War, local warlords were sponsored by the two super-powers. The Cold War on Afghan territory was fought as an inter-ethnic war, with massive casualties on all sides. Ethnic cleavages deepened and poverty increased. With foreign financial aid and advanced military technology, they formed extensive and expensive militant networks. They became dependent on external high-income sources. After the Cold War, in its continuation in a civil war, foreign aid ceased and warlords started becoming increasingly dependent on the opium market as their main source of income. They started gaining economic predominance and independence, based on their ability to control the opium production and market by military means. The


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traditional forms of self-rule were damaged and rendered open to military and economic rule. Military conquest of territory was frequently substituted with large-scale payments to traditional and military rulers. Alliances were often bought, and allies shifted sides to the highest bidder. Warlords become militant entrepreneurs, with their ability to deliver or withhold violence put forward for rental to the highest bidder. The present post-Taliban phase reflects the power relations of the pre-Taliban phase. Warlords are key power-brokers in the democratizing state. They have consolidated their positions in the state instruments of coercion (army and police), and they have consolidated their opium networks, drawing in them an increasing part of the impoverished population. At present, warlords cooperate with the U.S. as local military allies in exchange for financial incentives, and with the UN as security guarantors in exchange for political power. Warlords and their proxies dominated the electoral ballots in the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004 and 2005. They obtained formalized political predominance, in addition to their previously established military and economic predominance. They use their political power to legitimize themselves and obtain impunity for their war crimes, their networks and illicit operations. Much of the present-day security and informal employment opportunities are derived from warlords’ activities. Much of the insecurity and the paralysis of legal economy is due to their activities as well. Democracy and state-building reflect the same dual relation: these processes are supported by warlords up to a point to which state

instruments can be utilized in their personal agendas. A warlord democracy has been consolidated: a regime where formal democratic institutions are manipulated to mask a non-democratic rule by poly-centric power-holders, who dominate the military, economic and political life of the country. As we saw in the previous chapters, four main patterns contributed to the formation of a warlord democracy: the historical and cultural conditions, the act of imposing democracy by foreign military intervention, and the assumptions of the democratic paradigm limited to institutional reforms. However, these symptoms and conditions are not specific only to Afghanistan. They are symptoms of a larger pattern of change in power-relations enfolding in a number of countries worldwide. This pattern is connected to the emergence of the so-called “new wars” (Kaldor 1999) and the notions of “globalization,” “dedifferentiation” and “commodification,” which will be developed next. Four network models of mutual embeddedness of economy, militancy, society and state will be drafted, in order to explain “post-modernization” of warlordism. The introduced terminology and concepts will delineate the fifth pattern which enabled the creation of a warlord democracy as a symptom of the post-modern age. The following part will define the aforementioned terms and re-examine warlordism through their prism, in order to show how recent global transformations provide benevolent conditions for creation of warlord democracies. I shall describe the transit of warlordism from pre/modern to post-modern stage, marked by the establishment of a


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symbiotic relation between warlords and the global systems of politics and economy. This relation is two-pronged: (a) the first prong is based on the commodified ability to deliver or withhold violence, put forward for rental to the highest bidder on the market (formal and informal, licit and illicit) in societal, political, military and economic contracts; (b) the second prong is based on the militarily-maintained economic predominance over opium trade, which far outweighs optional licit income. With these two prongs, Afghan militant entrepreneurs gain relative independence88 from sole demand-sources, such as states and society, and transfer their dependence onto the global market. From their economically and militarily independent position, they can enter inclusive contracts and parallel alliances with multiple local and international, state and non-state, licit and illicit actors. They can break these contracts and alliances if they do not support their military, economic and political predominance.

88 This relative independence is the independence of the service/goods provider who can choose to which bidder to offer his goods/services. The wide array of alternative interdependence links provides this relative independency. For example, Afghan warlords can choose whether to accept “security fees” from the U.S., the UN, Pakistan, India, Iran, the Afghan state, private security firms, foreign corporations, local drug traffickers, local communities, or from any combination of these bidders, even when bidders are hostile to each other.

6.2. Models of Societal Interrelations Prior to entering analysis of the influence the globalizing market has exerted on Afghanistan, I shall elaborate the pre-modern, modern and post-modern models of societal organization. These models are derived on Karl Polanyi’s conceptualization of the modernizing world,89 and Mittelman and Johnston’s appropriation of Polanyi’s theory in the globalizing world.90 The models belong to Weberian “ideal types”: “conceptual patterns which bring together certain relationships and events of historical life into a complex which is conceived of as an internally consistent system.”91 They will serve to differentiate between specific modes of behaviour characteristic to separate historical and organizational phases. It will be obvious however that no real-world phenomenon at any point of history fully embodies any of the model-stages; instead, any phenomenon can combine features from each stage,92 where the difference between stages can be seen as a more and/or less movement toward different stage-specific modes of operation. Hence, modern

89 Karl Polanyi: “The Great Transformation” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957). 90 James H. Mittelman and Robert Johnston: “The Globalization of Organized Crime: The courtesan state, and the corruption of civil society” (Global Governance, 5:1, 1999: 103-127). 91 Max Weber, in Ken Morrison: “Marx, Weber, Durkheim: Formations of modern social thought” (London: Sage Publications, 2003):270. 92 For example, pre-modern societies may relate to features of post-modern global economy via the Silk Road; post-modern actors may link to the pre-modern model via their link to state-free communities, ethnic identity, tradition, customary laws, etc.


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phenomena will tend toward full actualization of the modern model, never fully reaching it, while simultaneously exhibiting some features of pre-modern and post-modern models; correspondently, post-modern phenomena will have their trajectory of development toward the post-modern model(s), while exhibiting features of pre-modern and modern models to a lesser degree. The four models will show variations of relations between society, economy, militancy, and the state. They should be understood in terms of networks: they depict types of mutual embeddedness of social, economic, militant and state networks, where the size of the circle expresses its power to influence the enfolded circles, or the power to form asymmetric relations of interdependence with them.

Figure 7a. Pre-modern

model. Figure 7b. Modern model Figure 7c. Post-modern

model Optionally, it would be challenging to examine whether the following model (Fig. 7d) expresses a further extreme of the overall societal relations in post-modern stage. This model depicts the most approximate framework for understanding warlord states:

Figure 7d. Optional post-modern model – Warlordism

6.2.1. Pre-modernity In the pre-modern model (Fig. 7a), the economic system, according to Polanyi,93 is submerged in general social relations. I conjoin the military system, which was not examined by Polanyi, but is relevant to this thesis. Violent and economic networks are embedded in and subordinated to the social network.94 Violence and economy are put into service of the community, which manages, directs and tames them. In the pre-modern world, societal functions are diffuse, lacking

93 “The [pre-modern, note added] economic system is… a mere function of social organization,” (Polanyi 1957:67). 94 “[In pre-modern stage] man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claim, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they serve this end… the economic system will be run on non-economic motives,” (Polanyi 1957:46).


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sharp differentiation. This model corresponds to the pre-state societal organization. The goals of pre-modern wars are limited to territory and control over natural resources. 6.2.2. Modernity In the modern model (Fig. 7b), a new actor is created, the state, which functions as an all-embedding network in relation to economy, militancy and society. The state and the society are differentiated; functions are clearly separated between the four actors. In the modern stage, economic and militant systems are put into the service of the state. The wars of the modern phase are characterized by the following goals: control of a specific territory, formation of an independent state, central authority, and acquisition of internationally recognized sovereignty. This model approximates the Weberian state model, where the state holds monopoly over legitimate use of violence, it regulates the national economic system and it responds to social needs. According to Weber (Morrison 2003:300), the novelties of the modern state system include: contractual impersonal relations bound by legal norms, separation between the administrative and the private sphere, and specialization of functions. Emile Durkheim (Morrison 2003:141-142) adds the following features characteristic for advanced societies: contractual links instead of social links, separate and specialized administrative functions, a centralized authority in the form of legal and political organs, and separate and autonomous economic function.

The state-building and democratization paradigm, as practiced in post-conflict settings, aims at actualization of the modern model. 6.2.3. Post-modernity According to Polanyi it is in this modernizing stage where economy begins to gain in power, by “commodifying” (1957:69-72) three non-commodities: people are commodified into labour force, nature is commodified into property, and wealth into money. However, the worldwide modernization, according to Polanyi (1957:71), begins to reverse the modern-model relations of systemic embeddedness: the social system becomes embedded in the economic system, and it is the world economic system that manages, directs and tames the society henceforth.95 In the post-modern stage (Fig. 7c.), the rise of the economic system to the most powerful position in the model is consolidated. State, society and militancy are embedded in the economic system. Contractual impersonal relations are bound not by legal but by economic norms, formerly differentiated functions blend, there is a return to a polycentric sources of authority, followed by de-institutionalization and de-formalization. Weak and violence-ridden state systems are pictured in the optional post-modern model (Fig. 7d.): state and society are embedded into the militant network, which in turn is embedded into the economic

95 “Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.”(Polany 1957:57). “All along the line, human society had become an accessory of the economic system,” (ibid., 75).


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system. The system of violence becomes disembedded from the social system, it exits its service, and within the economic system it becomes a commodity in service of the world market forces. The global economic system henceforth manages, directs and tames violence. The optional post-modern relational constellation is highly illustrative of Afghanistan, a case where the system of militant entrepreneurs tends away from embeddedness in the social system and toward embeddedness in the global economic system. This model (Fig. 7d) more accurately expresses “warlordisation,” where militancy and economy establish a direct link, without the state or the society to influence their exchange. Further on in this text, the term “post-modern” will be used on the background of figures 7c. and 7d., and the term “globalisation” as process of movement from pre/modern to post-modern model. The post-modern stage can be examined as consolidation of symptoms developed in the modern stage. The processes of globalization, elaborated in the following sections, can thus refer both to an amplified, but previously present historical phenomenon, and to a new stage, where the effects of this amplification enable new types of relations and elicit new forms of behaviour. 6.2.4. Post-modern Wars In the post-modern phase, the modern territory-oriented goals of war become redundant, as competition is limited to control over the economic system, instead of control over a territory and society. Establishing economic predominance is less costly and sufficient.

Post-modern wars are about stable sources of profit, as we saw in chapter 1: Afghan warlords begin contesting over sources of profit and trade routes and disconnect from the local communities. Although Kaldor (1999:3) names identity and population as goals of the new wars, I would, however, argue that these goals are flashbacks of pre- or early modern wars and war-making motives; the new wars are recognizable by their primarily economic character, where other types of goals are subordinated, or even commodified, under the cardinal goal of gain maximization at the global market.96 It is important to note that the post-modern phase does not eradicate or exclude modern and pre-modern features and motives, but it selectively incorporates and adjusts some of them to become acceptable for the global market and/or for the international community. 6.3. Globalization and Dedifferentiation The symbiotic relationship of the market and violence, the main point of interest for this thesis, must be understood in terms of globalising “dedifferentiation” (Mittelman/Johnston 1999:114), where previously (in the modern model) sharply differentiated functions, roles, institutions, areas, ends, laws and means, lose their distinction, overlap, multiply and exchange roles. I argue that this effects with a triangular de-differentiation between politics, economy and militancy,

96 Thus, nationalistic leaders can be for rental, religious or ethnic loyalties can be given up, and set against their communities for a proper price.


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where one can observe “post-modern” forms of global re-militarization and commodification of politics, commodified militancy and militant economies.97 Moreover, the difference between formal and informal politics, between licit and illicit economy98, and between legitimate and illegitimate violence, is blurred. Consequently, in this text, I shall use these key terms (militancy, politics, and economy) to refer to both their licit and illicit, formal and informal sides. To describe thoroughly the interplay of these hybrid forms is beyond the ambitions of this text; however, I shall delineate here the context of globalizing market and violence as a framework for understanding the rise of post-modern warlordism in Afghanistan and its consequences to state building and internationally led processes of democratization. The notion of globalization will draw on Mary Kaldor’s (1999:3) definition, as “intensification of global connectedness […] a contradictory process involving both integration and fragmentation, homogenization and diversification, globalization and localization.” This process, according to Kaldor, takes place in each society, regardless of the stage of development and position in the global economic system. However, in developing countries, globalizing economy tends to arrive before political processes of state-building and development. Typically, developing states are characterized by lack of physical, economic and legal security, so that profit-driven

97 It should be noted though that dedifferentiation does not happen alone. It is accompanied by specific post-modern forms of differentiation, de-coupling of previously blended terms, such as economic development and social policy (Mittelman/Johnston 1999:112). 98 Global economy, as a system of trans-national economic activities.

interests create a demand for protection guarantors. This demand couples foreign firms with security providers, which can be international private security companies, authoritarian rulers and state security forces, or local warlords in weak or collapsed states. In another scenario, it is the local militants who reach for the globalizing market and integrate with it by becoming providers of security and/or of (illicit) commodities. In both cases, economy and militancy establish a close unmediated relation, which in turn affects the mode of operation of each of the actors: corporations accommodate means and modes of operation of organized irregular violence, and militants accommodate corporate means and modes of operation. 6.3.1. Commodification of Violence Post-modern wars borrow from pre-modern and modern types of wars, and yet their economic and corporate features make them distinguishable from both predecessors. The stepping stone between modern and post-modern phase of warfare, I shall claim, is the commodification of violence for the global market: when the ability to deliver or withhold violence gains a price as a service, and is offered as a commodity to the highest bidder on the market. In this phase, the service-provider is liberated from a single demand-source (one or other party) and from societal loyalties. Violence as service is offered to multiple actors simultaneously, and it can get contracted by various actors, sometimes simultaneously by opposing parties. The global market can accept violence as service, as in the process of commodification the motive of the violent service-provider is divorced


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from the ability to deliver the service.99 Hence, the questions of ethical dimensions, consequences for the social network and political legitimacy – all issues based on motives and consequences - these become redundant or inapplicable questions: violent agents and contracts can be legitimized as rational actors with rational behaviour within economically theories. Within economic practice, militant entrepreneurs are treated as licit entrepreneurs; illicit militants and licit security organizations can be equally rented by legitimate or illegitimate actors. Hence, local warlords as militant entrepreneurs, regardless of their motives, enter the global economic market as service providers for parties who can rent them, regardless of the latter’s motives. The ability to deliver violence or to deliver from it can be used to gain an upper hand in economic, societal and political contracts, locally and globally. The unique feature of this commodity is to provide division between safety and threat; hence, security and violence can be regarded as two sides of the same coin, where the tosser is for rental.100 However, although the modernist motivation for violence 99 The question of legitimacy, a pillar of the Weberian state as bearer of monopoly over legitimate Use of force on a delineated territory, is a question which defines itself on the motive of the militant actors (including the state). By commodifying violence this question is neutralized: it does not enter the rational economic calculations of choice of partners and outsourcing agents. A corporation does not inquire about the motives of a service provider, but about their ability to deliver the good. 100 It is important to note that the tosser is not for sale: self-sacrificing loyalty of a “sold” actor belongs to the modern and pre-modern periods, while the loyalty of commodified violence is subject to economic rules and market competition. “You cannot buy an Afghan, you can only rent him,” so goes a saying in Afghanistan. An

(such as liberation, ethnic identity, or resistance) is de-coupled from the commodified service of violence, pre-modern, modern and post-modern features may coexist together, and the motives for gain or for modernist or pre-modern values can compete with each other in the violent entrepreneur as well. 6.3.2. Warfare, Welfare and Levelling of the State The post-modern characteristics of the contemporary wars led by commodified violence-providers, according to Kaldor (1999:5), are discernable as processes of dedifferentiation between war actors, organized crime, civilian, economic and state actors101, dedifferentiation between combatants and non-combatants (civilians), between internal and external wars, between aggression and repression, between local and global102, private and public, state and interesting consequence of the differentiation between rental and sale refers to the responsibility of the demand-party: while “bought” commodities entail full responsibility over the item, “rented” commodities dissolve this responsibility and render the demand-party relatively freer from responsibility over the effects of the rented item deployment. 101 “[T]he new wars involve a blurring of the distinction between war (usually defined as violence between states or organized political groups for political motives), organized crime (violence undertaken by privately organized groups for private purposes, usually financial gains) and large-scale violations of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organized groups against individuals),” (Kaldor 1999:2). 102 According to Mary Kaldor, the new wars are localized, but embedded in “a myriad of transnational connections so that the distinction between internal and external, between aggression (attacks from abroad) and repression (attacks from inside the country), or even between local and global, are difficult to sustain,” (Kaldor 1999:2).


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non-state, formal and informal spheres, between economically and politically motivated actors and wars. The new post-modern wars, including recent Afghan wars, mime and adjust the following corporate features: high level of decentralization, small-size units connected in lose networks in a mixed relation of confrontation, competition and cooperation, sometimes simultaneously, and even when on opposed sides (Kaldor 1999:8), shifting alliances formed ad hoc, aligned toward a common gain-maximizing goal and broken for the lack of it, light-step approach (without heavy investments or territorialization), high mobility and indiscernability from the surrounding. Organizationally, corporations and new-warlord structures are polycentric, rarely vertically structured hierarchies; they may engage in multiple services, some licit and some illicit; operations are performed through networks of highly autonomous units, where actors can be indiscriminately state offices, firms, local gangs, mercenaries, entrepreneurs, criminals and so on.103 The organizational map of post- 103 Mittelman and Johnston (1999:107-108) link transnational organized crime and transnational corporations through their common behaviour: gain maximization, rational decision-making, product innovation, risk reduction, investment in research and development, and technological advancement. They both operate through strategic alliances or subcontracting, and move toward opening markets. Also: “Increasingly, actors in the illicit side of the economy mirror the transnational business strategies of actors in the licit side, including subcontracting, joint ventures and strategic alliances, Use of offshore bank accounts, and sectoral diversification. […] extreme variation in the levels of organization and degree of criminality… from independent entrepreneurs to loose networks of transnational gangs, to highly

modern operators corresponds to the contemporary mode of military and economic organization of Afghan actors. 6.3.3. The Post-modern State Both transnational corporations and transnational (and, equally, local-and-globally-embedded) criminal or violent groups can function above, below and beside the state,104 capitalizing on economic deregulation, social fragmentation, state building, state withdrawal or state collapse. In the previously depicted figures 7c and 7d, the economy commodifies the systems of militancy, society and state, but militancy, in its turn, militarizes the society and the state. The state becomes a minor co-actor in this network, and yet it does not disappear. However, it has stepped down from its modern (Fig. 7b) predominant position in regard to economy, militancy and society, to become potential winner or loser in the global power competition, alongside the wide array of “non-state” actors. The state, its instruments and resources can also be commodified, and hence they enter the market offered to the highest bidder. In order to survive the developed and vertically integrated criminal organization.” (Richard H. Friman and Peter Andreas, eds.: “Illicit Global Economy and State Power,” Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999): 7. 104 “Like global firms, transnational organized crime groups operate both above and below the state. Above the state, they capitalize on the globalizing tendencies of borderlessness and deregulation. … create demand for their services. They become actors in their own right in the global division of labour and power… At the same time, transnational organized crime groups operate below and beside the state by offering incentives to the marginalized segments of the population trying to cope with the adjustment costs of globalization.” (Mittelman/Johnsten 1999:105)


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intense competition in violence, shifting economic orders and polycentric norm-setting, the state in this way is driven to mime and adjust modes of operation of its new competitors: the differentiation between state and non-state actors is blurred. The state can be drawn into using violent means borrowed from the post-modern type of wars, and it can accommodate the corporate mode of organization of its units and instruments. The three classical tenets of the European state model are challenged by the relationship between local militancy and global economy: the state does not hold monopoly over violence, its territorial delimitation does not play a significant role, and it is not the sole provider of legal and economic order and norms of regulation of behaviour.105 6.3.3. Between War and Peace

In the previous chapters we characterized warlords as dominant militant authorities, with relative legitimacy within their communities, profiting on violence and on illicit trade. Why do warlords, by competing in the elections, showed indubitable signs of willingness to enter the democratizing state structures? Why don not they wage a war against a state which aims to prevent illicit rule and trade? Why 105 It is true that in Afghanistan, there has never been a state regime in this country which has upheld any of these three classical tenets: most state regimes have had to coexist in uneasy, asymmetrical and often illicit cooperation with its own local actors. However, it is the intensification of interconnectedness with a growing number of global actors, and the overriding commodification of militancy and the state that distinguishes the post-modern warlordism of Afghanistan.

does not any one of them challenge the other warlords to expand his influence and establish an autarchy? The answer refers back to the character of the post-modern wars: control of state territory can but does not have to be on the personal agenda of a new warlord. Economic control suffices, so long as the service of violence is in high demand, as external parties are interested to pay for it, by military, economic or political goods as exchange items. In addition, criminalization of opium and permanent demand for security, their two key commodities, increase the prices of the services warlords offer. Between the poles of war and peace, there is a state of permanent, resurgent low-intensity violence of manageable scope and target. It seems that neither war nor peace is desirable state for continuing warlordism. Atmar and Goodhand (2002:114) explain the undesirability of peace: “the war is sustained by the availability of lootable or taxable resources and the low cost of recruiting fighters. Peace would disrupt the systems of production and exchange that provide warlords and their followers with livelihoods.” Their military and societal power puts warlords in position to influence, appropriate and profit on international aid during war or in early post-war years, by taxing it or by providing secure environment for operations of international organizations.106 As their power is based on military

106 “They control paramilitarized criminal networks that provide them with the revenues to maintain patronage networks. They manipulate ethnic tensions and then pose as the sole credible protectors of their own ethnic group. They attempt to control the distribution of international aid, in order both to reinforce loyalty and to prevent the alleviation of conditions that foster political extremism.” (Watts 2005)


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commodity, peace, strong central government and rule of law do not serve their interest, unless they are the ones who guarantee peace, participate in the government and enforce rule of their own law.107 Paradoxically, civil war, no government and no rule of any law are not in their interest either: civil war means continuous and expensive fighting; it costs lives and resources; it disturbs the agricultural (licit and illicit) production and breaks off transport routes.108 In terms of power-struggle, “no government” literally puts all warlords in position to fight against each other for domination of the central government: in this scenario, they may be pitched against each other over a single goal, the whole state, and driven to abandon their traditional ethnic realms where they draw their support from the local community, and to which they traditionally have been limiting their ambitions. No rule of any law (state or customary law) means a

107 Allan Bock, in “Afghanistan: An Imperial Dilemma,” in AntiWar Series (27 May 2005), cynically and yet realistically evaluates the contemporary Afghan situation: “Having a weak central government that rules in name only in most of Afghanistan just might be the only workable arrangement in a country that is geographically rugged and full of proud and sometimes vengeful local leaders. The ‘warlords’ will tolerate Hamid Karzai so long as he doesn’t meddle in their business too much and pays them proper respect. If he ever did actually come close to eradicating the poppy trade in a country with little fertile land and few natural resources, he probably wouldn’t last long in what we politely call power. He probably knows this perfectly well.” 108 Much of the local conflicts during and after the Taliban, Rubin (n.d.) observes, have been about controlling trade routes for export of illicit commodities.

disorganized community of potential followers unaccountable to any standard. A weak government, low level of manageable violence and local/manageable rule of law are favourable conditions for “warlordisation.”109 Moreover, in the post-modern phase, the state and the related international efforts, can be commodified and privatized.110 Stephen Watts claims that warlord democracies can coexist with a central state-like power111 and maintain a manageably instable economic system of illegal, informal or illegally appropriated economy. Incentives are distributed through the patronage networks,

109 As Stephen Watts (2005) concludes, “rather than seeking to monopolize control of the government, warlords frequently choose to co-exist with other political groupings so long as the illicit economies from which they benefit are not challenged political exclusion.” 110 “Warlords continue to control armies that dwarf Afghanistan’s national security forces in size. Since 2001, when the U.S. funded and rearmed them to garner their support for Operation Enduring Freedom, they have grown militarily stronger and richer (from Coalition payments, illegal taxes and growing opium revenues). These warlords do not want regime overthrow—they have everything to gain from a weak national security structure, and a government straightjacketed by a lack of funding and capacity… Warlord power will endure as long as two key objectives of U.S. foreign policy (the war against terror and the establishment of a strong central government) work at cross-purposes. By supporting warlords to achieve the former objective, the U.S. may be undermining the latter objective.” (Care International & Center on International Cooperation 2003:2) 111 “Rather than seeking to monopolize control of the government, warlords frequently choose to co-exist with other political groupings so long as the illicit economies from which they benefit are not challenged political exclusion.” (Watts 2005)


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and protection is offered through informal, illegal or illegally appropriated state resources. 6.3.4. Post-modernizing Afghanistan Afghanistan presents a special case of globalizing illicit economy, militant politics and commodified violence, paralleled at present with Western-led (modernist) state-building. Let us use the globalizing terminology to re-state the symptoms listed in the beginning of this chapter (Sec. 6.1.): Historically, Afghanistan has never approximated the modern model of state formation, centralized authority, differentiation of political, economic and military functions, separation of the public and private sphere. Instead, it has been ruled by polycentric traditional forms of authority. The previous state regimes have been regularly checked by its pre-modern communities, fiercely autonomous and resistant to centralization. The systems of violence and profit have been embedded into the social system, regulated by customary laws. Without passing through a modernization phase, Afghan warlords have reached post-modern stage, by means of commodifying their ability to deliver or withhold violence and by means of becoming major players in the global opium trade. The dedifferentiation between violence, profit and politics has submerged not only warlords, but the traditional social system of rule as well. Violence, and hence profit, has whirled away from the control of the customary laws of the indigenous communities, which become

embedded in the militant networks; through them, they become embedded in the economic network as well. The militant network serves as a mediator between communities and their economic sustenance. Ethnic violence is used as an instrument in military and political competition. Ethnicity is thus commodified and instrumentalized. Actors pledge loyalty to the highest bidder. Loyalty is commodified. Afghan warlords post-modernize when they become financially independent from single parties, by means of transferring their dependence onto the opium market. The economic predominance, secured by military potential, enables them to intermittently switch between military and economic strife, as the context requires. Warlords consolidate as militant entrepreneurs when their ability to deliver or withhold violence is put forward for rental to the highest bidder, regardless to traditional social loyalties (ethnicity, religion, etc.) and regardless to the bidder’s motivation and agenda. At present, as violent service providers, warlords cooperate with the U.S. as local military allies in exchange for financial incentives, and with the UN as security guarantors in exchange for political power. Warlords have commodified the newly built state and its democratic institutions: offices, state instruments, state resources, candidacies, political support and individual votes. Dedifferentiated are politics, economy and militancy; state and non-state actors, licit and illicit activities, local and global actors and operations.


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Much of the present-day security and informal employment opportunities in Afghanistan are derived from warlords’ activities. Much of the insecurity and paralysis of legal economy is due to their activities as well. Democracy and state-building reflect the same dual relation: these processes are supported by warlords up to a point to which state instruments can be utilized in their personal agendas. A warlord democracy has been consolidated: a regime where formal democratic institutions are manipulated to mask a non-democratic rule by poly-centric power-holders, who dominate the military, economic and political life of the country. Afghanistan is a case where, with a high degree of certainty, it can be predicted that low-intensity conflicts will continue, for two reasons: (a) the embeddedness of the militant entrepreneurs in the global opium trade, and (b) the commodification of violence as an informal service (as clients in the U.S. military patronage network, as political partners in the state-building process, and as local guarantors of security of property, personhood and contract). Afghanistan is also a case which shows how modernist ideas of state-building cannot successfully compete with the flexible strategies of post-modern profit-fare and warfare, within a constellation of post-modern actors which combine and utilize pre-modern and modern features to maximize their personal gain. The local warlords sustained by the global market of opium appear to be more fitted for survival than the state dependent on international aid and foreign military support.

However, as long as local warlords can commodify the state institutions, its instruments and resources, no state destruction should be expected. Instead, a continually weak state and violent conditions are likely to be maintained, an environment where the ability to deliver or withhold violence remains commodity in highest demand, a trump for each party and game, nourishing and being nourished by the symbiosis between the warlords and the global market.


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Chapter 7 - Managing Militant Entrepreneurship

In the previous chapters we examined five conditions which enabled the creation, the political legitimacy and the economic sustainability of a warlord democracy in Afghanistan. The fifth pattern presented a global tendency to transform the societal model of interrelations between economy, militancy, state and society in favour of militarized economy or commodified militancy. Despite the minor role assigned to the state in figures 7c and 7d, the state-building paradigm still treats the state as in figure 7b, as a potential regulator of militancy and economy. Militancy and economy do not treat the state as the state-building paradigm does, and they resist a modern state-model (Fig. 7b) imposed on them. In Afghanistan, apparently, it is not the state-building paradigm and its proponents who have the upper hand.

Afghanistan is not a unique case of warlord democracy. Unfortunately, in many countries (a number of African, some Central-Asian states, Kosovo in the Balkans, etc.), formally democratic regimes mask the underlying predominance of informal forms of warlord rule. These countries seem to mechanically graft democratic institutions onto traditional autarchic cultures, were militant entrepreneurs inhabit and instrumentalize democratic institutions without changing its essence, priorities or agenda. Neither science nor practice has come up yet with a functional body of knowledge for managing militant entrepreneurship. Typically, post-

conflict intervention starts with humanitarian aid, peace-keeping forces and international political power-brokers who design the country’s future institutional framework and governance in cooperation with local actors. I shall refer next to only segment relevant to this thesis, that is, strategies for dealing with local militant figures: (a) elimination - neutralization and persecution, and (b) incorporation - pacification and legitimization. The two sets of approaches will be tested on the case-country through their probable and actual outcomes. I shall conclude with finding a relevant segment missing: the one which is to deal with post-modern, globalized militant entrepreneurship. 7.1. Elimination Elimination includes physical liquidation of warlords (and sometimes of their troops) in armed combat, or legal persecution for war crimes and imprisonment of singled-out figures. Although a strategy with a clear and quick end, its ethical dimension is not so clear. The key weakness of this approach is the possible Manichaean treatment of militants, which homogenizes warlords with emphasized exchange relations with their communities, with those without. Elimination-proponents may confuse relatively legitimate “freedom fighters,” ethnic protectors, and militant entrepreneurs of various kinds. Quick assessment of all former militants as criminal warlords is likely to be superficial or manipulated by local parties to eliminate political competition.


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Secondly, the wished-for quick solution is not likely to be so quick either. Eliminating one warlord is likely to be superseded by rebellion of other warlords who may see their coming fate similar to the eliminated one. An eliminated warlord is likely to have a successor, or a number of them, who, through the bond of loyalty, may seek revenge over the executing party, or may enter power-struggles amongst them for assuming the top position of the eliminated leader. Karzai and many of the international decision-makers are aware that attempting to neutralize warlords, firstly, is ethically unclear; and, secondly, may be the end of the fragile stability of the country, and the beginning of a new civil war. “Security is a necessity, justice a luxury Afghanistan cannot afford now,” Karzai summarized112. From this perspective, the choice of Afghanistan lies in-between the poles of justice and security, and at present obviously the right course would be more toward security, less toward justice.113 Further on, we saw that even the issue of justice is a difficult and ambiguous one. Whose justice is to be followed? Against whom, and against whom not? For

112 Ahmad Karzai: BBC World News interview with Lyse Doucet. (in Barnett R. Rubin: “Transitional Justice and Human Rights in Afghanistan,” International Affairs 79, 3, 2003a: 567-581): 574. 113 An IWRC report joins a third pole to this dilemma: the report gives voice, alongside popular discontent with warlords in the government, the view that these warlords have fought against the Soviets and the Taliban in the past, helped the U.S.-led Coalition Forces in the toppling of the Taliban government, and therefore expect a just recognition and reward in the new Afghan political system, or they would resume fighting (Institute for War & Peace – IWRC: “Revolving Door for Afghan Governors” Report, ARR No. 181, 06 August 2005).

which deeds, and for which not? Who will fill the local security vacuum when a warlord is eliminated?114 The postponement of the issue of justice in Afghanistan may be a disappointment for human right zealots. Meanwhile, the call for justice has been frequently manipulated against dangerous competitors for private ends. International war crime tribunals, although dealing justice selectively and retrospectively, may offer an alternative. However, the fundamental value differences between the Western-modelled international law and the local customary laws may open new grounds for dispute and dissatisfaction. 115 7.2. Incorporation

Another way to approach militant entrepreneurs is to work with them on the clearly stated and agreed upon common goal. This was attempted in Afghanistan where the UN-stated goal was the state formation through democratic processes, and the U.S.-stated goal in

114 A USIP (2003) workshop with Afghan and international participants records diverse views of warlordism: (a) warlords are a problem, but in the rural areas, they provide the only stability which enables local farmers and merchants to do their daily work; (b) the warlords need to have a way out. If cornered by justice calls, if their choice is between the Hague and criminalized warlordism, naturally, they would choose warlordism; (c) "everybody who was exercising power was a war criminal in one way or the other because there wasn't any other way to exercise power." 115 On the other hand, the difference between killing and letting others die is a dubious division, as Derrida (2003:108) points out. So far, no super-power has been put on trial for leading proxy-wars and militarizing whole regions.


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co-opting warlords was the fight against the Taliban and the hunt for bin Laden.

The consequences of the incorporation/co-option strategy resulted with no adjustment of warlords’ behaviour in accordance to the democratization paradigm, but brought to adjustment of democratic institutions to the warlords’ paradigm. We saw that the warlord agenda can include support to state-building so long as the state is weak, utilizable and non-interfering. Clearly, they can offer their military services to the U.S., despite a probable anti-American sentiment. Peace and military alliance in the last five years have been temporarily rented from warlords in exchange for political power.

7.2.1. Unintended Consequences

The warlords and their allies used the political and military power granted to them by the UN and the U.S. to expand and consolidate their informal economic and military networks. Rubin’s warning, given before the U.S. attack on the Taliban, that peace would transform the criminalized war economy into “an even faster-expanding criminalized peace economy” proved correct (Rubin n.d.). He further warns that there are no major incentives the state (licit) economy can offer. Contrary to that, “the economic incentives for misgovernment are nearly irresistible. Only the drug and transit trade are really worth the effort of taxation, while the rest of the economy is hardly productive enough to make governing it worthwhile,” he says (Rubin n.d.).

Ever since the consolidation of the Afghan militant entrepreneurs in the global market economy, their independence has grown. If the two international contractors, the U.S. and the UN stay in the country, the warlords will function as military contractors for the prior party, and as security guarantors for the latter party. Even without these two contractors leave, warlords may again function as security providers for local actors and international companies. 7.2.2. Taming Violence and Profit The question relevant to science and state-building practice is what sort of long-term strategy to adopt – within post-modernized Afghanistan - in order to increase the chances of the country for survival. One way is to attempt differentiation between violence and profit: to signal two future paths militant entrepreneurs can take – to choose either the path of taming and legalising entrepreneurship, or the path of taming and legalizing violence. The first path includes strong disincentives for illicit economy, and strong incentives for licit one. Developmental investments can be made from the opium money. Illicit networks can be transformed into licit activity networks, without disrupting the dependence of a number of families on them, without alternative livelihoods. The path of legalizing violence includes formation of national multiethnic, internationally monitored army and police, and - private security firms. Both paths need meticulous international monitoring, in order to bring clearly decoupled military


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and economic engagements into state-aimed, that is, society-interested activities. However, in reality, most options in Afghanistan are not of the either-or nature, but of the and-and type of solution: warlords, as flexible rational players, choose all promising paths at once. They may use democratic rights as trumps when it suits their purposes, and they may continue illicit engagements. They may re-establish their fiefdoms within government and maintain autonomy and independent political, economic and military capabilities under governmental roles. Moreover, legitimate means may not have the effectiveness to compete with warlords in their flexible game of dedifferentiation between illicit and licit, and formal and informal means. The state may be driven to adopt illicit and informal practices in order to manage illicit and informal actors. Despite the apparent peace-seeking wisdom of gradual incorporation and pacification of the Afghan warlords, the influence of the global economic system on the political life of Afghanistan cannot be avoided. It can hardly be controlled and is likely to remain a predominant force dictating the process of state-building (state shaping, state shattering and dissolution) as a force beyond the power of the modern state. The warlords are intertwined with the local opium production and with the global opium market in a way that neither their neutralization, nor integration, nor pacification can disrupt significantly or permanently the military-economic symbiosis between the local and the global actors. Militant entrepreneurs have extremely benevolent conditions for further maintenance, strengthening and

extending their previously established patronage networks, which enforce their military, economic and political power to a globally relevant level.


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Conclusion

This thesis attempted to describe a complex system of pre-modern, modern and post-modern features of dedifferentiated cultural, economic, military and political relations of power in Afghanistan. Five enabling conditions for creation of a warlord democracy in the country were discerned: electoral-political, military, and economic conditions, the condition of a regime change by military intervention, and the condition of institution-limited state-building and democratization paradigms. The main emphasis was put on the emergence of militant entrepreneurship of Afghan warlords as (a) providers of the service of security and violence, and (b) economic providers of opium-generated income.

The emerging pattern of militarizing entrepreneurship develops in context of globalization and post-modernization. The process of globalization includes major dedifferentiation between economy, politics and militancy. The society, the state and the militants become commodified, while economy militarizes. The system of violence becomes disembedded from the society and embedded in the global economic system. Violence and profit blend, state and society are subjected to them, with pre-modern and modern values and motives for communal action subordinated to the goal of gain maximization.

The military and economic predominance of Afghan warlords nourished by global market forces enforces their position a degree that

renders them virtually invincible for the instruments of the modern state and for modernist international models of post-conflict intervention. Warlords utilize state-building and democratization processes to legitimize their positions within the local and international political system, which leads to creation of a warlord democracy. I shall conclude with several observations:

(a) The global community does bear responsibility in the creation of the new wars in remote regions of the world. Transforming the tradition of proxy-wars from the Cold War period, powerful actors continue to cause instability and violence in remote areas of the world. Moreover, as the opening epigraph suggests, what is lasting security and prosperity for some, may be the lasting war and poverty for others. (b) Strictly national interests by foreign intervening parties are rarely compatible with global interests or sensitive to the interests of intervened parties. Hence, foreign policies promoting national goals are likely to endanger the world communities. National interests enforced abroad may trigger commodification and militarization of target areas, as intended or unintended consequence, and may provide enabling conditions for fostering local warlordisation. (c) International aid and engagement often focus on early elections without providing security and building local economies. Intervention programmes often initiate irreversible processes based on imperfect perception of the case-country and imperfect set of strategies for approaching warlordism. Thus, state-building and


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democratization process, as well as international aid and state resources, may enable local actors to entrench themselves in local politics through domination of the local economy and security. (d) Global licit/illicit economy is one of the key players in the local games of power and war. Illicit economy is not likely to be neutralized only through elimination of producers of illicit commodities, so long as the demand is high. The economic and the military factors are intertwined, and their interplay significantly shapes political outcomes. (e) State-building and democratization programmes are more likely to succeed if built on local traditions of self-organization, which can be achieved by means of translating democratic terminology and institutions in local terms, and not vice versa. A form of democracy as expression of local culture and values can be fostered, open to indigenous notion of perfectability unrestricted by Western models. (f) Finally, one of the key problems for scholars and decision-makers in post-conflict settings is the problem of knowledge. Carothers summarizes it precisely: the theoretical upgrades of the transitional paradigm consists mainly of recasting the problem of change in different terms, which in practice “has ended up being more a restatement of lack of knowledge about how change occurs than an answer to it,“ (Carothers 2004:138).

We attempt to make changes for better in worse-off societies without really knowing how change takes place. State-building and democratization theories and policies rise popular hopes and expectations in target countries to a level which is unlikely to be met. Local depoliticization and disbelief in democracy and in the international community follow. In the environment of post-modern wars, democratization is not likely to be more than formal exercises put into service of militant entrepreneurs until violence is de-commodified and economy is demilitarized. Warlords as military entrepreneurs should be regarded as a product of a post-modern world, dependent not on the state but on the global market forces. Consequently, managing warlordship and war must involve coordinated international activities through the market. A “new” language should be devised to enable scholars and policymakers to understand and manage militant entrepreneurship. Political science and state-building strategies need post-modernization to deal with democratizing post-conflict societies. Strategies for post-conflict interventions by the UN and other international agencies need to be re-modelled in accordance to the specific modes of operation of post-modern wars, with reference to their embeddedness in the global economic system. So long as state-building theories are caught within modern models, assumptions, expectations and strategies derived from them are likely to fail. Furthermore, international aid, operations and organizations are likely to be commodified and misused in the local/global military entrepreneurship of the post-modern era. This we see in the case of


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Afghanistan at present, in many cases in Africa, Central Asia, South America and the Balkans, and we are likely to see it in the future, unless global economy and violence are tamed and embedded into service of the global community.

Abbreviations AIHRC – Afghanistan Independent Human Rights commission AJP – Afghan Justice Project ANA – Afghan National Army ANFREL - Asian Network for Free Elections ANP – Afghan National Police CFs – Coalition Forces FCCS – Foundation for Culture and Civil Society FEFA - Free and Fair Elections for Afghanistan ISAF – International Security Assistance Forces IWRC –Institute for War & Peace JEMB - Joint Electoral Management Body of Afghanistan HRW – Human Rights Watch NA – Northern Alliance PRT - Provincial Reconstruction Teams UNAMA – United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan UNDP - United Nations Development Program OHD - United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime UF – United Front USIP - United States Institute for Peace


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Glossary of Afghan Words Arbakai, local police Jang salar, commander, warlord Jirga, peace mission, assembly Khan, the highest traditional title given to a ruler, a lord Loya Jirga, Grand Assembly, National Assembly Malik, traditional power-broker on village level Meshrano Jirga, Upper House of Parliament Mullah, Islamic cleric Shura, traditional local council of elders Wolesi Jirga, Lower House of Parliament

Illustrations Cover page photograph: Ruins in Afghanistan. Location: Ajiristan District, Ghazni Province, Southeast Region of Afghanistan. Photograph property of Eckart Rohde©2005, published by the courtesy of the author.

Figure 1. Afghanistan’s power brokers. Source: Barnett R. Rubin, “Briefing on Afghanistan – AFNORTH” (2003b).

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Figure 2. Perception of security. Source: Asia Foundation: “Voter Education Planning Survey: Afghanistan 2004 National Elections,” Kabul (2004), in “Afghanistan’s Millennium Development Goals,” UN Report, Vision 2020 (2005).

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Figure 3. Afghan Presidential Elections: secrecy of the ballot. Location: Kharwar District, Logar Province, Central Region of Afghanistan. Source: UNAMA field materials (2004).

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Figure 4. Afghanistan opium production, 1980-2005. Source: ODC Statistical Annex to “The Opium Situation in Afghanistan 2005,” (2005).

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Figure 5. Gross income of poppy cultivation per hectare in U.S.$, Source: ODC “Afghanistan Opium Survey 2005,” (2005).

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Figure 6. Income from Opium Compared to International Aid to Afghanistan (2002-2003). Source: Barnett Rubin, “Road to Ruin” (2004b).

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Figure 7a. Pre-modern model.

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Figure 7b. Modern model.

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Figure 7c. Post-modern model.

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Figure 7d. Optional post-modern model – Warlordism.

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