Armed politics and political competition in Afghanistan Dr. Antonio Giustozzi, Crisis States Research Centre, LSE [Draft: not for quotation]

Introduction The post-conflict transition in Afghanistan is incomplete in more ways than one. Not only open conflict has resurfaced in large tracts of the country and is spreading,1 but even where open conflict is not present the legacy of conflict continues to have a strong impact in several aspects of recovery and reconstruction. The development of a competitive political system is one of the areas where this legacy is felt, due to the continuing presence and influence of non-state armed groups. Such groups intervene in the political process to various degrees, but their influence is always felt. Inevitably, in the absence of a central monopoly of armed force political competition becomes distorted. Neither the effort to disarm official militias (DDR),2 nor the one aimed at disarming unofficial ones (DIAG) even remotely came close to resolving the problem.3 The introduction of legislation to prevent candidates with links to armed groups from running only succeeded in forcing about 32 of them to step down, leaving the large majority undeterred.4 This paper analyses the role of different non-state armed groups in post-2001 Afghan politics and to trace their evolution. It starts by developing a concept of ‘armed politics’ and by identifying ‘ideal types’ of particular models of armed politics. It then identifies different actors in armed politics. A section of the paper examines the techniques of armed politics used in Afghanistan. The rest of this work examines each of these models in the context of Afghanistan, establishing to what extent they have been used, what impact they had and what type of evolution they have known. The paper concludes with a discussion of the prospects of armed politics in Afghanistan. The non-state armed groups this paper is dealing with have their origins in the 1980s jihad against the leftist government and the Soviet army, although some of them fought on the government side as militias. The initial mujahidin were a mixed bag of Islamist, nationalist and Maoist activists, clerics and their supporters, tribal and community leaders 1 For a detailed analysis of the insurgency in post-2001 Afghanistan, see A. Giustozzi, Kuran, Kalashnikov and laptop: the Neo-Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, 2002-2007, Columbia University Press, 2007 (forthcoming). 2 On the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration effort see S. Rossi and A. Giustozzi, Disarmament Demobilisation and Reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR) in Afghanistan: constraints and limited capabilities, Working Paper 2 Series 2, London : Crisis States Research Centre (LSE), 2006. 3 On the Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) see the UN press release dated 20 March 2007, ‘International Community Must Move Quickly to Help Afghanistan as Efforts to Secure Peace, Stability 'Were Being Put to the Test', Security Council Told’. 4 Some 208 out of 5,800 had been reported to the Joint Electoral Management Body as linked to armed groups. See AIHRC-UNAMA, Joint Verification of Political Rights, Wolesi Jirga and Provincial Council Elections, Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005)’, Kabul, 2005.

with their followers and outlaws. However, during the long-lasting war the different social origins of the fighters gradually ceased to matter, leading to the emergence of a military class of ‘specialists in violence’. The process of formation of a military class was not uniform throughout Afghanistan, but after 2001 the remaining non-state armed groups could largely be circumscribed to this military class. Political activists were by 2001 a virtually extinct force in terms of their involvement in armed groups. Clerical activism would soon resurface in the shape of the Neo-Taliban insurgency, which however will not be covered by this paper. Some communities re-armed after 2001, particularly in areas affected by the insurgency, but their interests were largely local and did not play a significant role in terms of armed politics as defined in this paper.

Models and actors of armed political competition Although the term ‘armed politics’ is used in a variety of ways, including to indicate the intervention of state armies in politics5 or political insurgencies tout-court,6 I use it here to describe the distortion caused by the presence of non-state armed groups on the competitiveness of an otherwise open political system.7 In other terms this paper will look at the influence of non-state armed groups on electoral contests and at the competition among those same groups to capture important state offices. I deliberately abstain in this definition from implying that armed force has to be actively used to achieve political aims, even if that might often be the case, as my submission is that both the simple possession of armed force by private actors and the threat to use it are sufficient to fundamentally change the dynamics of any political system. For the purpose of this study I am going to identify a number of ‘ideal types’, each representing a particular model of armed politics.

Self-defensive: characterised by its reactive character and by the merely local use of violence or threat thereof. In a situation of broken or non-existent state monopoly of violence, or wherever armed state agencies are perceived to be factionally biased and hostile to specific groups, political actors and communities may organise armed militias at least initially for the purpose of defending themselves. This was for example the case of several leftist organisations in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Often, these armed militias might end up contributing to the general climate of insecurity and threat and push yet other actors to arm.8

5 See for example Perspectives on Armed Politics in Brazil, Ed. by Henry H. Keith and Robert A. Hayes. Tempe: Arizona State University, 1976. 6 See for example Said Adejumobi , 'Conflict and peace building in West Africa: the role of civil society and the African Union', Conflict, Security & Development, 4:1, 59 - 77. 7 In this sense it is used in Peter R. Neumann, ‘From Revolution to Devolution: Is the IRA Still a Threat to Peace in Northern Ireland?’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 79–92, April 2005. 8 See for example Eve Rosenhaft, Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929-33, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Conservative: militias are used to establish or consolidate the territorial control and influence of leaders or groups and as a resource to forcefully mobilise support or prevent other political actors from operating within such an area of influence. It largely occurs at a regional level rather than national. One typical example is that of Latin American ‘caudillismo’.9

Expansionist: armed politics aimed at expanding the influence of a particular group

or individual and/or conveying a particular image of them. It often implies reducing the spaces of activity of competing groups and its arena tends to be a large region or the whole country. Classical examples include Maoism, which in the early stages of its strategy uses armed force sparingly to achieve psychological gains,10 and fascism, where the emphasis is on the psychological impact of a display of discipline and strength as a demonstration of the resolution of the group to address issues at the core of the concerns of its base of support.11 Expansionism can be driven by personal ambition, ideology or the presence of attractive opportunities.

These models of armed politics can be matched to a number of different political actors on the Afghan scene. Although initially UN officials were reluctant to discuss the existence of non-state armed groups apart from those engaged in open insurgency, by 2004 both they and the Afghan authorities were openly recognising that this was a major problem. The launch of the DIAG program was meant to address the problem, but in the end the main contribution of the program was to map the presence of these groups on the territory. A census which is likely to be incomplete had by 2006 counted as many as 2,000 ‘illegal’ militias with an estimated up to 180,000 members in all of Afghanistan.12 In practice that means the presence of a non-state militiaman every 140 inhabitants. To these, legal or tolerated irregular formations should be added, such as 63,000 members13 of the official militias (AMF or Afghan Military Force), gradually disbanded during 2004-5 but possibly in part at least driven underground, 20,000 or so private security guards, many of whom linked to active politicians, arbakai tribal militias in the south-east,14 a few thousands of governor’s militiamen and some thousands of members of anti-Taliban militias operating in southern, south-eastern and eastern Afghanistan. These groups can be grouped into three ‘ideal types’:

9 For a review of the concept of caudillism, see Michael Riekenberg, ‘Caudillismus. Zu einem Grundbegriff der spanishen and hispanoamerikanischer Geschichte’, Neue Politische Literatur, 40:2 (1995). 10 Metz, S. and Millen, R., Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Carlisle : Strategic Studies Institute (November 2004) 11 See Mimmo Franzinelli, Squadristi, Protagonisti e tecniche della violenza fascista, 1919-1922, Milano, Mondadori 2003; Richard Bessel, Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism: Stormtroopers in Eastern Germany, 1925-34, Yale UP 1984; Gerhard Botz, Gewalt in der Politik. Attentate, Zusammenstöße, Putschversuche, Unruhen in Österreich 1918 bis 1938, München : Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1983. 12 Sylvie Briand, ‘Warlords and weapons -- gunpowder for Afghanistan’, Agence France Presse, 28 March 2007; Asian Development Bank, Country Strategy and Program Update 2006-2008: Afghanistan, August 2005, p. 2; AP, 27 February 2007. 13 This is the official figure of those DDRed accoring to the UNDP-run Afghanistan New Beginning Program (ANBP). 14 See A. Giustozzi, ‘The privatizing of war and security in Afghanistan: future or dead end?’, The Economics of Peace and Security Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2007), pp. 19-23; Giustozzi, Kuran, Kalashnikov…, cit.

Local communities: led by elders or in any case by non-charismatic men of

influence, they tend to have strictly limited and local aims and interests. Since communities too tend to incorporate dissident elements or to be ridden by personal rivalries, the elders might want to enforce unanimous compliance, including in political/electoral matters. As explained in the introduction, however, in post-2001 Afghanistan’s case local communities played a very small role in armed politics.

Strongmen: autonomous charismatic leaders, initially arising from a local/regional

power base, who derive their influence both from some at least partial form of legitimisation (tribal, kin, provision of patronage and security, mediatory/regulatory role) and from the control of an armed force. In the Afghan context, several of them started their career as religious leaders, but religion played little role in their legitimisation after the end of the jihad in the eary 1990s. Their primary interest is to consolidate their influence and prevent challenges. I use this category here as inclusive of various categories of actors, including warlords, as for the purposes of this paper it is not essential to distinguish between them.

Parties: these can either be alliances or hierarchical organisations which are not

entirely dependent on a single charismatic leader but have instead comparatively complex leadership arrangements. In other terms, they at least relatively institutionalised. Their interests are less local then those of strongmen and consist in spreading their influence as wide as possible or claim monopoly over a relatively large area.

The relevance of these ideal types derives from the fact that not all actors were equally susceptible of cooptation into a more mature political system or equally inclined to use armed politics to enhance their position. Another term will be used in this paper, which is useful to clarify: the term ‘commanders’ denotes in this paper members of politico-military organisations with a leadership role. The key difference from the strongmen is that the commanders are not autonomous but belong to a structure with at least an implicit hierarchy.

Techniques of armed politics As it will emerge from the following paragraphs, the most common form of armed politics in Afghanistan 2001-2007 was ‘in being’, i.e. it relied mainly on its deterrent power and on the universal knowledge that reprisal would follow to any challenge from outsider individuals and groups. This deterrent power was usually helped by a good dose of ‘soft’ intimidation, including through personal visits or anonymous telephone calls, where no violence was used but the possibility of ‘incidents’ was hinted. Even during the sessions of the Loya Jirgas this type of intimidation was reported.15 All the protagonists 15 Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan on the eve of parliamentary and provincial elections, New York, 2005, p. 9-11; Human Rights Watch, “Killing You is a Very Easy Thing For Us”: Human Rights Abuses in Southeast Afghanistan, New York, July 2003, chapter IV: ‘Attacks on Political Actors and Political

of armed politics in Afghanistan had an established track record of ruthlessness and resilience, which might not contribute to make them popular but certainly advertised against challenging them in the absence of strong protection from either alternative non-state armed groups or state security agencies. The diffuse presence of factionally aligned armed groups and the unreliability of the police must inevitably have weighted heavily on any political player unable to enlist the support of armed groups16 and not only on them. Their interests were often taken into account even by the UN body in charge of organising the elections (JEMB, Joint Electoral Management Board), which often appointed complacent officials to run elections in the more problematic districts. The most blatant example of abuse in this regard concerned the leader of a minor armed faction, Dawat-i Islami (formerly Ittehad-i Islami). Despite the discovery of a massive rigging effort in his home district of Paghman, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf was allowed to enter the parliament, although with a much reduced score.17 It should be added that some of these armed groups were officially recognised, enhancing their influence and status, like the governors’ militias, or unofficially tolerated, like the southern anti-Taliban militias. According to Afghan law, governors are allowed to form a personal militia of up to 500 members, mainly for the purpose of self-protection. In practice, autonomous militias abounded, particularly in southern Afghanistan and when the leaders were personally close to President Karzai and his family. Dismissed officials, like former chief of police of Uruzgan Matiullah and former governor of Helmand, Sher Mohammed, continued to employ militias of several hundreds well into 2007. These official or tolerated armed groups are likely to have influenced the electoral process more heavily than others, which particularly after the first Loya Jirga were mostly unable to display their weapons in public. Sher Mohammad’s brother was a candidate in the 2005 parliamentary elections and although he was disqualified at the last minute for links to armed groups, he did obtain a large number of votes.18 Although there is no immediate evidence of these militias having being engaged in the electoral campaign, it is clear that their existence was not conductive to a ‘free and fair’ environment. The next most common form of armed politics in Afghanistan is state infiltration/capture. It can mean two things: a reversion of processes of institutionalisation and bureaucratisation leading to non-partisan structures of the state becoming factionally aligned, or groups/factions not coinciding with the coalition in power at the centre taking control of chunks of the state. In the context of Afghanistan, since the abstraction of the state from factional conflict is a process which never went to far in the first place, we are in practice always talking of the second case. It is often motivated by the pursuit of personal gain as well as by the promotion of the interests of a

Activities’; ‘Christian Parenti in Afghanistan: Saturday's Elections Were A Farce’, Democracy Now, 12 October 2004 (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/12/1347201); AIHRC-UNAMA Joint Verification…, cit., First Report (19 April - 3 June 2005), Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005). 16 See Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan on the eve…, cit.. 17 Personal communication with UN official, Kabul, October 2005; S. Mudassir Ali Shah, ‘A fractured parliament’, The Nation, 14 October 2005. 18 Personal communication with UN officials, Kabul, February and March 2007; personal communication with Afghan journalist, Kabul, October 2006; Tom Coghlan, ‘Taliban flee Afghan-led Nato offensive’, Daily Telegraph, 30 March 2007.

specific political group.19 The infiltration and occupation of the structures of the state by non-state armed groups affected most institutions of the Afghan state, from the ministerial level down to the district one. In this paper I will only deal with the issue to the extent that it directly affects political competition and the functioning of the political system. The following institutions are relevant for this analysis:

Police;

National Security Directorate;

Sub-national administrations, particularly provincial governors; At the provincial level, with which we are mainly concerned here, in late 2001-early 2002 police forces were largely taken over by the dominant faction, group, strongman or coalition thereof and staffed with their followers. The predominance of private interests in the police force was perceived as a problem both by at least some sections of the government and by the international coalition supporting it. From mid-2002 a series of attempts to reform the Ministry of Interior started, first with Minister Taj Mohammad, an elderly royalist, and then somewhat more incisively from 2003 with Minister Ahmad Ali Jalali. While a trend towards a greater professionalism and lesser factional bias was clearly perceivable during the first three quarters of 2003, by the end of that year the trend had reverted and appointments seemed again to follow a factional logic. This was particularly evident in Badakhshan, where following former president Rabbani’s pledge to support Karzai in the elections many of Rabbani’s supporters were appointed in the place of professional or non-factional policemen.20 Tension between Karzai and Jalali appears to have been growing throughout 2004 and 2005, until Jalali finally resigned from his post just after the parliamentary elections of 2005. The growing insurgency during 2005 and even more so 2006 led to renewed international pressure for the reform of the Ministry, with much stricter supervision of the policy of appointments and the imposition of recruitment criteria. The results were mixed. Many factionally aligned, incompetent, unskilled or corrupt officials were removed from the ministerial headquarters, but in the provinces changes were muted. Moreover, most changes occurred after the parliamentary elections.21 At that time, most of provincial police forces were still aligned with some faction or strongman and UN officials received allegations that they were involved in intimidation or participated in the electoral campaign.22 Factional control over the NSD (national Security Directorate) was never seriously challenged and by 2005 it remained an unchallenged stronghold of an Islamist faction,

19 The concept of state capture is mostly used in the context of the area of the former Soviet Union. For its application to Afghanistan see Madalene O'Donnell, ‘Post-Conflict Corruption: A Rule of Law Agenda?’ in Civil War and Rule of Law, International Peace Academy, forthcoming. 20 Personal communications with UN officials, Kabul, September 2004; Antonio Giustozzi, Bad State vs. Good Warlords? A Critique of State-building Strategies in Afghanistan, Working Paper No. 51 of the Crisis States Program, London : LSE, 2004. 21 Personal communications with UN officials, Kabul, October 2006 and February 2007. 22 Eurasia Insight, ‘Afghanistan: Election Officials, Security Forces Prepare for Presidential Poll’, 7 October 2004; AIHRC-UNAMA, Joint Verification…, cit., Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005).

Jamiat-i Islami, both at the centre and in most provinces. The main exception was much of northern Afghanistan, where the NSD was under the control of Junbesh, although by 2004 there were signs that Junbesh’s control over provincial NSD units was eroding, with some officials refusing to follow the directives of Junbesh’s leaders.23 At least one case of NSD involvement in the electoral process occurred during the 2003-4 Constitutional Loya Jirga elections, when police and NSD tolerated a plot orchestrated by some jihadi groups to oust Baghlan candidate Sayyid Mansur Naderi. Unauthorised individuals were allowed into the election site and were reportedly putting pressure on the grand electors to support specific candidates; NSD agents were also present inside the site, contravening the regulations, and did not intervene. Apart from that, harassment of political opponents was reportedly carried out by NSD on behalf of both Shura-i Nezar, Junbesh and Dawat-i Islami. As long as Shura-i Nezar and Karzai were allied, the NSD served the purposes of the president too, for example by putting pressure on the delegates to the Constitutional Loya Jirga to agree on Karzai’s draft.24 Often, police and NSD were rather guilty of omission than of active harassment or repression on the behalf of their local patrons. The knowledge that the security agencies were aligned with certain political players is likely to have contributed to discourage competition, particularly in its most aggressive forms. Several governors were also reported to be involved in intimidation and threats through their militias, including Sher Alam and Asadullah Khalid of Ghazni.25 Armed politics ‘in being’ of course tends to offer diminishing returns over time if it is not displayed in action at least occasionally. Potential challengers need to be periodically reminded that the threat still stands. Moreover, occasionally dissent surfaces for a number of reasons and has to be put down. In Afghanistan, apart from conflicts among armed strongmen and factions, which steadily declined after 2003, direct challenges to local/regional monopolies over political activity emerged periodically and were mostly met with ‘controlled violence’. This typically consisted of instances of beatings and harassment, which were reported during the presidential and parliamentary elections particularly but not only in northern Afghanistan. The main targets were reluctant notables and party activists trying to establish a foothold in the fiefdom of some militia.26 More extreme forms of violence such as assassinations of candidates, delegates and MPs took place in a number of cases, in Badakhshan, Ghor, Laghman and Balkh. Usually, local strongmen and militias were accused of their deaths.27 23 Personal communications with UN officials, Mazar-i Sharif, June-September 2004; personal observation, Kunduz, November 2003; Human Rights Watch, “Killing You…, cit., chapter IV: ‘Attacks on Political Actors and Political Activities’. Naderi would later stand as candidate in the parliamentary elections, winning the largest number of votes in Baghlan. 24 Human Rights Watch, ‘Loya Jirga Off to a Shaky Start’, press release, 13 June 2002. 25 Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan on the eve…, cit., pp. 9, 13. 26 Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan on the eve…, cit., passim; AIHRC-UNAMA Joint Verification…, cit., First Report (19 April - 3 June 2005), Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005). 27 This lift of provinces is limited to cases in which the involvement of non-state armed groups (excluding the insurgents) was reported. Personal communication with Loya Jirga delegates from Badakhshan, October 2003; United Nations, Daily Highlights, 21 May 2002; Pajhwok News Agency, 15 March 2005; Radio Liberty 15 December 2006 (http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/12/216ef1be-d4dd-4d09-b17b-a461db18f501.html); UNHCR, Chronology of Events in Afghanistan, May 2002

Larger scale violence and prevarication also occurred in several instances, despite not being the norm. During the initial years of the post-Taliban transition the hold of non-state armed actors was still precarious, mainly due to the need to assess the intentions of international players, now presence on the Afghan scene with relatively large military contingents and the much feared US Air Force.28 During 2002-3 non-state armed actors needed to show to an uncertain public that they meant business and that international intervention was neither diminishing their resolve nor should be taken as implying open political competition everywhere. By the end of 2003 and even more so by the end of the summer 2004 their bluff had been called, following a series of incidents in which they opted to back down from confrontation with Kabul andits international patrons. From 2004 large scale display of armed force and violence had different motivations and was mainly the preserve of actors who were being marginalised from state power and patronage. They needed to show that they still had the potential to destabilise large regions of the country and that they needed to be incorporated in the ruling alliance. On the whole, the most blatant forms of armed politics in action used during this period and to a lesser extent after 2003 too can be summed up under three categories:

Armed rioting;

Blockading;

Direct seizure of the electoral process in specific localities/regions. During 2002-3 armed politics was practiced quite aggressively and assertively in trying to establish a monopoly of political representation over specific areas. During the first phase of the Emergency Loya Jirga elections of 2002, for example, northern Afghanistan witnessed the blockading of specific areas with the aim to keep ‘hostile’ candidates out of the competition or to prevent from voting some communities known to be hostile.29 Seizures of the electoral process mostly occurred during the first Loya Jirga (2002) and took different shapes. Sometimes the tactics used would consist in seizing control of the whole selection process and pre-selecting the candidates. Other times they would take the shape of maintaining a presence of militiamen in the polling station, as to intimidate the grand electors.30 After 2002 such tactics became difficult to implement on a large scale, due to increased international scrutiny. During the elections to the Constitutional Loya Jirga of 2003-4, no seizure of the first phase of the process (local selections) was reported. During the second phase at least one incident occurred, involving Sayyid Mansur Naderi. Up to two hundreds individual external to the selection process managed (http://www.unhcr.org/home/RSDCOI/415c614b4.pdf); ‘Candidate killed in Afghanistan’, BBC News, 27 September 2005. 28 Interview with former Loya Jirga commissioner, Kabul, May 2003. 29 Dr. Christine Noelle-Karimi, ‘Report on Loya Jirga Elections Phases I and II, Provinces of Balkh and Samangan May 1-28, 2002, Loya Jirga Elections Phases I and II, Kabul, May 29-June 7, 2002’, unpublished report, courtesy of the author. 30 Noelle-Karimi, ‘Report…, cit.

to storm the polling station in Kunduz and riot against his candidacy, eventually forcing him to withdraw his candidacy.31 As outright military confrontation came to be seen as an unacceptable challenge to the occupation and peacekeeping foreign forces deployed in Afghanistan, non-state armed actors used their supporters to create ‘popular revolts’ which were aimed at legitimising their demands and embarrass the government and its foreign sponsors. In 2004, larger riots organised by the militias occurred in Maimana and Sar-i Pul, in both cases succeeding in dislodging administrators appointed by Kabul. In Herat (also 2004), were they aimed at protesting against the removal of Ismail Khan from the position of governor, the riots failed however to achieve their aim, although Ismail was later appointed minister in compensation for the loss of the governorship. In 2005, demonstration at least in part organised by non-state armed actors were repeated in Baghlan, again with success.32 There seems to be sufficient evidence that actors of the same kind were involved in the Kabul riots of June 2006.33 Their involvement may also have occurred in a number of riots in eastern and south-eastern Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006, of which the Jalalabad riots of May 2005 were the largest, but it is not proven. The last form of armed politics which I will review is armed propaganda. In post-2001 Afghanistan, the only significant manifestation of this has been the effort of Hizb-i Islami to mount a symbolic insurgency, mainly in eastern Afghanistan. As of early 2007, tens of small armed groups, mostly numbering 3-15 men, were active with small scale military activities. In their case, armed activity and violence were meant to convey an image of strong opposition to the presence of foreign troops, against whom most attacks were targeted. Afghan police and army were mostly spared or at least not actively targeted.34 These military activities seem to have been meant to work in tandem with a ‘political front’ and attract the support of (expanding) sections of the population who resented foreign presence in the country. The task of the political front was to capitalise on the image of opposition to foreign presence in the country, which armed resistance created or reinforced, and turn that positive image into political gains (see Ideologies, parties and expansionist armed politics). The creation of political fronts is far from unusual among insurgent groups, but what qualifies Hizb-i Islami’s insurgency as ‘armed propaganda’ is the fact that its purpose is not to directly conquer control of the state, but to create an image of strength and resolution. This is akin to the violent tactics used by fascist movements in the 1920s-1930s Europe – violence was used on too limited a scale to seriously weaken the opponents; it real

31 See note 23 above. 32 Personal communications with UN officials, Mazar-i Sharif, June-July 2004, and in Kabul, September 2004; ‘Afghans Stop Governor From Assuming Office’, Arab News, 13 June 2004 (http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=46704&d=13&m=6&y=2004&pix=world.jpg&category=World); Carlotta Gall, ‘Afghan Crowds Loot and Burn Over Governor's Dismissal’, New York Times, 13 September 2004; Pamela Constable, “Afghans Riot over Dismissal of Governor in Herat”, Washington Post, 13 September 2004; Arman-e-Milli, 6 September 2005; Waheed Rahmani, ‘Two northern Afghan governors replaced’, Pajhwok Afghan News, 4 September 2005. 33 Personal communication with ISAF officer and journalist Carlotta Gall, Kabul, June 2006. 34 For more details about the military activities of Hizb-i Islami, see Giustozzi, Kuran, Kalashnikov…, cit.

purpose was to mobilise specific sections of the population around a leadership and conquer power through ‘legal’ means. The difference is that fascist movements mainly relied on the display of military discipline to achieve their aim, as aspect absent in Hizb-i Islami. A strictly ‘fascist’ style of armed propaganda never had much currency in Afghanistan, despite long years of war and the rising issue of ethnicity and ethno-nationalism. The fact that the Afghan war was never about large battles and that training and indoctrination by the various players in the conflict was limited at best are probably the key factors in explaining why the specific fascist model of armed propaganda, with its stress on discipline and esprit de corps, never made it very far. Despite some influence of Turkish far right groups among Uzbeks after 2001, not even the most radical wing of Junbesh, that is its youth movement, ever flirted with demonstration styles and tactics which vaguely resembled the fascist model. Even the most successful of Junbesh’s street demonstrations, when in Maimana (2004) they succeeded in dislodging an unwanted governor and the commander of the local 200th Division of the Ministry of Defence, resembled more riots than displays of discipline and efficiency.35

Conservative armed politics, or ‘caudillism’ in Afghanistan Armed politics in post-2001 Afghanistan has predominantly taken a conservative character. Until 2001, Afghanistan’s ‘caudillos’, that is the strongmen, had mostly been playing feudal politics, that is use their regional influence to bargain with factional leaders and form alliances in terms as favourable as possible. The strongmen should not be confused with the so-called ‘commanders (kumandanan)’ tout court, as the strongmen have an autonomous power base and are virtually independent, even when they maintain some formal affiliation with a faction. In a sense they could be described as the top tier of the ‘commanders’. The power of the strongmen had been rising throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as the Afghan state grew weaker and weaker and unable to exercise any direct control over the countryside. At the same time, opposition political organisations based abroad were also in most cases too weak and too keen to expand their influence to exercise effective control over their affiliates inside Afghanistan. The only interruption to the power of the strongmen was the emergence and consolidation of the Taliban movement in 1994-2001, which almost eliminated the strongmen from the scene. By the end of 2001, however, the strongmen were re-emerging fast, filling the vacuum left in much of the countryside by the collapse of the Taliban regime.36 In this paper I will distinguish between individual strongmen, who rely on a personal following without significant organised support, and factional strongmen, who were part or leaders of organisations targeted at structuring and expand their following. From 2002 onwards, the individual strongmen increasingly adopted three separate survival strategies in order to adapt to the post-conflict environment. The first one was a modified version of the old ‘feudal politics’ of the 1980s and 1990s, whereby the strongmen tried to strike alliances with individuals and factions in power in Kabul in 35 Personal communication with UN officials, Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif, June-July 2004. 36 See on this A. Giustozzi, Respectable Warlords? The Politics of State-building in Post-Taleban Afghanistan, Working Paper No. 33 of the Crisis States Program, London : LSE, 2003.

order to secure their regional influence and possibly gain a foothold in Kabul as well.37 The alternative strategy was to enter electoral politics, either directly or indirectly supporting allies and relatives. The two strategies were not necessarily at odds, although inevitably the weaker the link with Kabul, the stronger the temptation to seek an alternative sources of legitimisation and influence in elections.38 The third option was to seek employment by the state in high status positions or to devote themselves to money-making activities such as business and crime.39 The slim chances of making it to the parliament was a factor in the decision of many to stay away from politics. In fact, the ‘withdrawal from politics’ option was mainly the choice of the smaller strongmen, usually controlling not much more then a single district, often even significantly less than that. Lack of resources might have been another factor for the poorer strongmen, as the electoral campaign was widely expected to be expensive. Finally, a few strongmen were banned from competing because of allegations of maintaining armed militias, or opted to stay out fearing that they would otherwise attract unwarranted attention to their ‘underground’ activities. Badly connected strongmen were particularly ill positioned for an entry into electoral politics: since all strongmen maintained underground militias, being singled out for exclusion was likely to be a political choice made in Kabul. In this paper, I shall deal exclusively with the electoral strategy. The first manifestation of the strongmen’s involvement in competitive politics was during the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga elections. These were indirect elections, in which 30,000 grand electors were to be selected by the different districts and would then in turn elect 500 delegates to the Loya Jirga. A number of individual strongmen was strongly intentioned to run, but were initially prevented to do so by the UN-sponsored regulations, which banned leaders of armed groups from the contest. As the selection process was ongoing, however, such principled stand was rapidly abandoned and the strongmen were allowed to compete.40 At the following Constitutional Loya Jirga elections of 2003, which followed a similar selection system, the strongmen were allowed to participate from the beginning. Finally, at the parliamentary elections of 2004 the individual strongmen also did well and several of them were elected as MPs, although a few of them were prevented from running because of evidence of being linked to armed groups (see Map 1). In many cases, they ranked at the top in terms of votes at the provincial level (see Table 1). The strongmen’s involvement in politics did not end with their national electoral campaigns, as others ran for election in the provincial councils. Map 1: locations where individual strongmen were elected to parliament.

37 See Giustozzi, Good state…, cit. 38 For more on this see A. Giustozzi, ‘Afghanistan: Political Parties or Militia Fronts?’ Chapter 8 of Transforming rebel movements after civil wars, ed. by J. de Zeeuw, Lynne Reinner Publishers, forthcoming 2007. 39 See A. Giustozzi, ‘War and Peace Economies of Afghanistan’s Strongmen’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.14, No.1, January 2007, pp.75–89. 40 Personal communications with former Loya Jirga commissioners and UN officials.

Table 1: how well did the individual strongmen did in the elections.

Province Percentage obtained Ranking

Ahmad Khan Samangan 23.9 1Piram Qul Takhar 6.2 1Hazrat Ali Nangarhar 3.4 1Padsha Khan Paktya 4.7 3Alam Khan Azadi Balkh 5.4 2Fataullah Faryab 5.3 2Dr. Ibrahim Ghor 11.2 1Amir Lalai Kandahar 5.0 5Haji Abdur Raouf Kunduz 3.8 2Ismatullah Mohabat Laghman 7.3 3Payenda Mohammad Khan Sar-i Pul 8.8 2

Source: JEMB electoral results. All these strongmen were staking a claim to local/provincial leadership and to representation of local, tribal, ethnic or regional interests. Apart from benefiting from the support of armed militias, they also invested sizeable resources to guarantee good

performances which would legitimise their claims and consolidate their status of strongmen.41 Coming on top was in a sense a requirement for them, in order to justify their claim to provincial leadership. From the perspective of analysing the impact of armed politics, the most important question to be answered here is to what extent their relied specifically on it to secure election to representative bodies. Particularly after the two Loya Jirga elections, there is only limited evidence that most of them actively used their armed followers to intimidate voters and threaten alternative candidates.42 The parliamentary electoral system, based on provincial boroughs, and the extreme electoral fragmentation contributed to make threats to other candidates redundant: in some cases it turned out to be possible to become the most voted candidate at the provincial level even with just over 3% of the votes. Most of the strongmen had also access to substantial financial resources, which already conferred to them a key advantage over the mass of challengers. The financial strength derived depending on the cases by their ability to tax sections of population, involvement in smuggling and trafficking of various sort, proximity to foreign powers, support by sections of the trading class, land and property grabbing and exploitation of state resources through alliances with local authorities.43 As a result, violent incidents and abuses happened on a small scale and even armed force was rarely displayed, contrary to what had happened particularly during the 2002 and 2003 Loya Jirga selection processes. Some presence of militiamen was reported in parts of Parwan province, Ghor and Kunar, while threats and physical attacks occurred at least in Dai Kundi, Herat, Ghor and parts of Nangarhar.44 As mentioned in Techniques of armed politics, the main contribution of armed politics to securing representative posts to the strongmen came from the climate of fear which they had successfully established in their respective areas between 2001 and 2005. This combined with other factors such as patronage and protection against local rivals to deliver electoral success. Some of the strongmen might have benefited from a falsification of the electoral process. This was alleged for example in the case of Piram Qul in Takhar province, although it was never proven.45 Fraud cases apart, the votes received by the strongmen seem to have been to a large extent real enough. As well as the implicit threat of violence and financial strength, their success was also likely the result of the ability to provide a modicum of security in the absence of strong state institutions, similarly to what had been the case of the Latin American caudillos. Their ability to provide a modicum of security to specific sections of the population was more pronounced in some cases, such as Ahmad Khan’s and Hazrat Ali’s. Moreover, several strongmen tried to improve their political standing and

41 Personal communications with candidates and UN officials, Kabul and provinces, August-September 2004 and October 2005; Andrew Wilder, A House Divided? Analysing the 2005 Afghan Elections, Kabul : AREU, pp. 27-8. 42 See AIHRC-UNAMA, Joint Verification…, cit., First Report (19 April - 3 June 2005), Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005). 43 See Giustozzi, War and peace economies…, cit. 44 ‘Afghanistan: Where the rule by the gun continues’, IRIN, 7 April 2007; AIHRC-UNAMA Joint Verification…, cit., First Report (19 April - 3 June 2005), Second report (4 June – 16 August 2005); personal communication with party activist returning from Kunar, Jalalabad, February 2006. This list of course excludes the insurgency affected provinces of the south, south-east and east. 45 Telephone communication with UN official, Kunduz, October 2005.

legitimise themselves by sponsoring popular causes. Ethnic and tribal causes were the most common choices. Ahmad Khan, for example, openly sympathised for the cause of Uzbek ethnic rights and was linked to Gen. Dostum’s Junbesh-i Milli Islami from its early days until 2006. To a lesser extent, Payenda Mohammad Khan and Haji Abdur Raouf also did the same and were also involved with Junbesh, although the latter only superficially. Both maintained a high degree of autonomy throughout their relationship with Junbesh, which is why I have included them among the strongmen. Although Hazrat Ali was not so obviously touting his Pashai ethnicity as a legitimisation tool, probably because he was hoping to cast his candidate’s nets far wider than this small ethnic minority, in the end his distribution of patronage among Pashais was the key factor in getting him elected. He appears to have received very little support from non-Pashai voters. Others, like Alam Khan Azadi, played both the ethnic card (in his case Arab) and the religious/ideological one (in his case Ikhwani). Some, like Piram Qul, stressed their role in the jihad and their anti-communist profile, while Padsha Khan campaigned on a ‘more royalist than the king’ platform. Finally, Amir Lalai tried to cast himself as a jihadi figure and at the same time appealed to tribal voters.46 The relative ‘ideologisation’ of the strongmen blurred the boundaries between individual strongmen and factional strongmen or parties. Apart from being dictated from tactical considerations, it can also be taken as a sign of the ongoing evolution of the Afghan political scene, but major differences remained. In particular, the conservative character of their actions set them apart from their more sophisticated colleagues. Such conservatism was to a great extent the result of their limited organisational capabilities and to the absence of institutionalisation.

Between conservatism and expansionism: the factional strongmen The importance of organisational capacity and institutionalisation is well illustrated by the case of Hazara factional strongman Mohammed Mohaqqeq, whose fast (and short-lived) conversion into charismatic political leader was in a league of its own. Contrary to Junbesh or Jamiat, the Hazara-dominated Hizb-i Wahdat did not include many strongmen in its ranks and its factional commanders were largely small and politically weak. The only significant exception was Haji Mohammad Mohaqqeq, who had risen to prominence during the resistance against the Taliban, when he had led Hazara resistance in northern Afghanistan. Tension between political leaders of Wahdat and Mohaqqeq surfaced in 2003, when he was expelled from the government following a controversy with Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani.47 His expulsion opened a gap between the political leadership, embodied by Deputy President Karim Khalili, who remained associated to Karzai, and Mohaqqeq, who proceeded to mobilise the small field commanders of Wahdat, mostly left without occupation or status. Mohaqqeq also attracted the Hazara youth, the intelligentsia and the junior clergy around a platform of resentment and ethno-nationalist

46 Personal communications with UN officials, Kunduz, Mazar-i Sharif, Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar, January 2004-February 2007. 47 Amin Tarzi, ‘Dispute Erupts Over Afghan Minister's Purported Resignation’, RFE/RL Report, 11 March Volume 3, Number 10, 2004.

claims. He launched his own party, Hizb-i Wahdat-e Mardom-e Islami (Unity Islamic Popular Party) and became a serious rival for Khalili’s claim to leadership. Although Khalili run on Karzai’s ticket during the presidential elections of 2004, running as an alternative candidate Mohaqqeq received a large majority of Hazara vote with 11.6%. During the parliamentary elections of the following year, Mohaqqeq not only entered parliament as the country’s most voted MP, but out of a total of 38 Hazaras in the Wolesi Jirga, 13 more were loosely affiliated with his party. Although there were allegations that Mohaqqeq utilised his armed force in northern Afghanistan in order to limit access to alternative Hazara candidates,48 it is clear that he succeeded at least temporarily in mobilising support on purely political ground in Kabul, Bamian and other Hazara-populated areas outside his northern fiefdoms. Mohaqqeq’s decisive exploitation of ethnic feelings was key to his success and was helped by the fact that such feelings are probably stronger among the Hazaras than any other Afghan ethnic group. Mohaqqeq’s example illustrates that the transition from strongman to politician could happen quite quickly even without much resort to armed politics. It also shows, however, that the qualities and skills required as a politician differ markedly from those of a strongman or military commander. Mohaqqeq rapidly lost the support that he had gathered once he dedicated himself to clumsy political machinations in Kabul. In particular, his supporters did not forgive his alliance with the political leader most hated by the Hazaras, Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, whose race for the position of speaker of the lower house he supported. His popularity was reportedly in rapid decline during 2006. Despite having launched a party, Mohaqqeq was never able to give it any effective organisation. Once his charismatic leadership started to evaporate, nothing was left to retain the support earned during the previous years.49 From the perspective of my ideal types, after leaving the mainstream Wahdat Mohaqqeq resembled more an individual strongman than a factional one. In the new post-conflict context, a strong rationale for maintaining such structures continued to exist in the eyes of most of their members. It is clear that the influence of the individual strongmen was significant at the peripheral level, but less so at the national one. Their numbers in parliament were small and their ability to influence legislation or even the main political trends was at best modest. Other ‘caudillos’ who tried to send their men to parliament without the support of a strong organisation usually performed poorly. This is for example the case of Gul Agha Shirzai, who in Kandahar province could only get elected one of his men (Khalid Pashtun). By contrast, the real factional strongmen proved able to cast their influence and domination much wider than individual strongmen. They also proved to be much more resilient. Their power was based on two developments, which were the result of wartime pressures and other factors.50 One was the establishment of alliances of strongmen, often formed under external pressure, where one of them is recognised as leader. The other was the establishment of formalised hierarchical

48 Human Rights Watch, Afghanistan on the eve of parliamentary and provincial elections, New York, 2005, p. 11. 49 Personal communication with Niamatullah Ibrahimi, Crisis States Research Centre, Kabul, March 2007. 50 On Herat see A. Giustozzi, Genesis of a Prince: The rise of Ismail Khan in western Afghanistan, 1979-1992, Working Paper 4 Series 2, London : Crisis States Research Centre, 2006.

structures and sometimes of some degree of institutionalisation, which could take the shape of a political party. As a result, factional strongmen like Ismail Khan’s and Gen. Dostum’s were able to cast their influence over wide regions, bring to parliament more substantial numbers of supporters (respectively 8 and 2251 MPs) and most importantly maintain their influence throughout the ups and downs of Afghan politics. In Herat, strongman Ismail Khan thought himself above membership of parliament, but put part of his resources to the disposal of allies and followers who were competing for seats in the parliament and in the provincial council. This evolution from the simpler charisma-based leader/followers model of the individual strongmen was a consequence of Ismail Khan’s ability to build a more complex and hierarchical power system, in fact a proto-state with some degree of identification among the followers. That, combined with his appeal to conservative Islamic networks, allowed supporters and allies to win half of Herat’s parliamentary seats in 2005. The winners were mostly ideological jihadis rather than strongmen or commanders themselves. Although Ismail Khan had nowhere as intense an appeal or popularity as some of the individual strongmen of other parts of Afghanistan, through his power system he was able to maintain a strong influence. Strongmen and commanders who did not like Ismail’s hierarchical system defected from his group and courted the favours of Kabul, receiving positive answers. In 2004 they were instrumental in bringing him down, but were not able to establish an effective network or alternative power system afterwards. 52 In northern Afghanistan the power structure developed by Gen. Dostum differed substantially from Ismail Khan’s. In some regards it was even more complex and sophisticated than the latter’s, mainly thanks to the contribution of remnants of the left wing party which had been in power in 1978-1992 (HDK, Hizb-i Demokratik-i Khalq). In addition to the effect of intimidation deriving from the existence of underground militias, Dostum relied on KGB-like structures, sometimes hijacked from the official NSD and sometimes existing separately and autonomously. These structures were carrying out most on the intimidation and harassment against potential political rivals. On the other hand, Dostum was not able to enforce on his militias the same degree of discipline as Ismail Khan did. In fact several of Junbesh’s supporters were almost largely autonomous strongmen like Ahmad Khan and Payenda Khan or lesser figures.53 The importance of this lack of discipline and weak control over the militias becomes clear once we look at Junbesh’s attempts to increasingly move the focus of its activities towards political organisation and electoral politics. On the one hand, it is true that it succeeded in making recourse to violence and intimidation rarer and rarer. Already by 2004 episodes of violence were mostly limited to aggressive demonstrations of civilians under the armed ‘protection’ of militiamen standing at the back. On the other, the 51 This number includes some of the strongmen mentioned in the previous paragraph: Ahmad Khan. Payenda Khan, Fataullah. 52 Interviews with former commanders, notables and intellectuals in Herat, April and November 2004, May 2005 and September 2005; Giustozzi, ‘Good’ state…’, cit. 53 A. Giustozzi, The ethnicisation of an Afghan faction: Junbesh-i Milli from the origins to the Presidential elections (2004), Working Paper No. 67, London : Crisis States Research Centre, 2005; personal communications with UN officials, Mazar and Kabul, June 2004-September 2004.

inherent tension between the ‘armed’ and the ‘politics’ sides soon manifested itself. During the Emergency and Constitutional Loya Jirgas, Junbesh presented many commanders, alongside more political figures. However, by the time of the parliamentary elections, Dostum’s advisers had convinced him that the party needed to send to Kabul a group of educated and professional representatives, rather than a bunch of semi-illiterate commanders. As a result, friction occurred between the commanders, now supposed to play a more discrete role on the back scene, and the ‘politicians’, chiefly former members of the HDK. The frustration of the commanders and the Junbesh-aligned strongmen was highlighted by concerns about their future status. Only in Jowzjan was Junbesh able to fully prevent commanders from running (with the obvious exception of Dostum himself) and even here he had to intervene directly to stave off the resistance of some of them. Elsewhere, Junbesh was forced to accommodate a number of prominent strongmen to run, such as the already mentioned Ahmad Khan, Payenda Khan and Fataullah. In the more remote (from Junbesh’s core areas) Takhar province the tension between the civilian and educated candidates chosen by Junbesh and the commanders effectively led to a massive exodus of strongmen from Junbesh. Only a handful of them and not the most powerful ones stayed with Junbesh. As a result, although Junbesh did rather well in Takhar during the elections, its main competitors for the Uzbek vote were its own former allies among the strongmen. Although only one of them was elected (Piram Qul), the damage done to Junbesh was considerable as it lost most of its military base in Takhar.54 The worst, however, was yet to come. Many of the 22 MPs linked to Junbesh in the new lower chamber were seriously interested in improving relations with the government as well as Junbesh’s tarnished image, gradually leading to growing tensions between the MPs and Dostum himself. Widely seen as part of Junbesh’s image problem because of his reputation of ruthless warlord, Dostum was also increasingly frustrated by his inability to convince Karzai to appoint him in a position of responsibility and status, rather than the merely honorary positions held after 2001. His increasingly aggressive behaviour towards some of the MPs culminated in the open split between the majority of the parliamentary group and Dostum, with open demands that he retire from active political life. The split seems to have affected the delivery of external help to Dostum, leading to financial shortages and the defection of many commanders throughout northern Afghanistan, mostly to the side of the government, all too keen to weaken a source of regional autonomy. In the end Junbesh was saved by the fact that both foreign supporters and MPs (particularly those who were lacking an autonomous power base) needed Dostum as the only figure able to keep together the political and military wing of the party. Although Dostum’s creation (Junbesh) was clearly more resilient than Mohaqqeq’s, its case highlights the difficulties and the drawbacks deriving from the attempt to create a more institutionalised organisation.55

54 Telephone communication with UN official, Kunduz, October 2005; personal communication with UN official, Kabul, May 2006. 55 Interviews with local notables and Afghan intellectuals, Mazar-i Sharif, Kabul and Kunduz, May 2005, May 2006, September-October 2006.

Ideologies, parties and expansionist armed politics Because the Jamiatis had occupied Kabul at the end of 2001, they had in hand a golden opportunity for using state infiltration as a route to highjack the political process and turn it in their favour. A composite group, Jamiat included plenty of loosely affiliated strongmen, ranging from small ones to ‘prince’ like Ismail Khan, as well a more tightly knit party militia which had been developed by late commander Massoud. Despite their increasing internal fragmentation, the Jamiatis were united in pursuing the capture of state institutions, particularly at the centre where it monopolised the Ministries of Defence and Interior. Their ability to maintain an esprit de corps distinguished them from the individual strongmen who entered state institutions. At the provincial level, they monopolised positions in the regions under their control (north-east, west, Kabul’s region), they had to concede positions to the other factions which controlled territory. Where a vacuum existed, like in Logar, Wardak and Paktya provinces, they put their men in place. Map 2 shows the situation in late 2001 – early 2002, as far as provincial governors are concerned. Although in the parliamentary elections of 2005 49 MPs from the various branches of Jamiat were elected, it is of course difficult to quantify the impact that this degree of state capture might have had, not least because part of it had already been eaten away. However, it is worth noting that neither in Wardak nor in Paktya were Jamiat’s factions able to elect anybody during the Wolesi Jirga elections of 2005. The two MPs elected by them in Logar only partially offset this impression of scarce impact, as Jamiat had had a significant presence in Logar from the 1980s and therefore it cannot be considered as area of new expansion. Map 2: governorship positions in 2002, by affiliation.

Source: local notables, administration staff, Afghan intellectuals, UN officials. The leader of Jamiat, Prof. Rabbani, did his best to fill the Afghan state with his men during his tenure of the presidency in Kabul in November 2001, but a trend in the opposite direction soon started under President Karzai, who had to place his own friends. Rabbani even managed to reconcile with Karzai and supported him in the presidential elections, in exchange of a new wave of appointments of party faithful, but this fell much short of what needed to satisfy the plethora of Jamiati strongmen. As a result, turmoil started surfacing within the leadership and soon among the strongmen too.56 Like in Junbesh’s case, reconciling ‘armed’ and ‘politics’ turned out to be problematic. Minister of Defence Fahim was caught between participating in the political process and his unwillingness to break completely with the militia commanders and eventually would lose both. Not only was he dropped from Karzai’s presidential ticket, where he was supposed to occupy one of the two the vice-presidential posts, and sacked from his position of Minister of Defence, but he also lost much of his support base among the mid-rank commanders because of his concessions to foreign pressures on disarmament. When in August 2004, after learning that he had been dropped out of the presidential ticket, he tried to organise a ‘pronunciamiento’ in his favour among the MoD units deployed in and

56 Tanya Goudsouzian, ‘Analysis: Former Afghan President Says Election Process May Divide Afghan People’, Radio Liberty, 14 August 2004; Carlotta Gall, ‘Ex-President Says He'll Back Afghan Leader’, New York Times, 4 October 2004; Abdel Wali, ‘Jamiat Faces Break-Up’, Afghan Recovery Report, No. 18, July 09, 2002.

around Kabul, he failed to gather sufficient support and had to back down.57 By then the leadership of Shura-i Nezar was losing its cohesion and it was proving increasingly difficult to control the increasing restless commanders, who were increasingly unhappy about demobilisation of the militias and the lack of alternative routes to social prestige and status. In Badakhshan, for example, the promotion of one of these commanders (Zalmay Mujaddidi) by Karzai deeply alienated bigger commanders like Nazir Mohammed and Sardar Khan, who were prevented from competing in the elections because suspected of holding on to weapons and lacked the Kabul connections to circumvent the ban, contrary to Mujaddidi who had been able to establish a personal relationship with Karzai when taking care of his personal security in Kabul.58 Threats to shut down Panjshir and other valleys from government influence were often heard. It could be argued that it was only the heavy presence of international troops in Kabul that prevented the situation from degenerating.59 Jamiat’s armed politics did not manifest itself exclusively in terms of state seizure. Even after the end of official DDR in 2005, small armed groups continued to patrol many parts of Parwan, Kabul and Kapisa provinces. The purpose of these groups seemed to maintain territorial control and reassure/convince local communities that the militias of Jamiat-i Islami and derivative groups were there to stay. In much of Parwan and Panjshir this had a clear impact on the electoral campaigns of 2004 (presidential) and 2005 (parliamentary). Candidates not aligned with Jamiat reported feeling intimidated by the presence of armed men even when they had good personal relations with Jamiati leaders and those among them who could afford it hired armed escorts in order to be able to campaign.60 The Jamiatis were not the only ones making use of ‘expansionist’ armed politics. Apart from the smaller groups, which I shall not mention here, the other main branch of Afghanistan’s Islamist movement, Hizb-i Islami, used armed propaganda after 2001, mainly in eastern Afghanistan, as mentioned in Techniques of armed politics. An essential component of Hizb’s armed propaganda was the formation of a political front able to capitalise on the image of resilience and opposition to foreign presence which it was supposed to convey. Such political front had a troubled start during 2002, when early attempts to bring together militarily inactive members of the party met severe repression in Kabul from the Jamiat-dominated National Security Directorate and police. Hundreds were arrested, although most of them were not detained for long following the intervention of foreign diplomats. After them, attempts to organise a ‘political’ Hizb-i Islami simmered for a while, until in 2004 the decision was made to launch a party of the same name under the leadership of Arghandiwal and Farouqi, two long-standing functionaries of Hekmatyar’s organisation. Again the attempt faced resistance in Kabul, under the rather spurious claim that a party of that name already existed. Finally, registration occurred in 2005.

57 ISAF sources; personal communication with military attaché, Kabul, May 2005. 58 Personal communication with UN official, Kabul, March 2007. 59 Personal communication with UN official, Kabul, May 2005; personal observation, Shamali plains, February 2005; interview with former official of the Minister of Interior, Kabul, January 2006. 60 Interview with candidates from Parwan, Kabul, October 2005 and October 2006.

The legal Hizb-i Islami did not play much of a role during the parliamentary elections of 2005 as an organised structure, similarly to what happened to all other parties. However, a substantial number of members and sympathisers were elected. According to one count, as many as 42 former members of Hizb-i Islami made it to the Wolesi Jirga in 2005, although quite a few of them completely cut their relations with the party long before. The actual number of MPs with some ongoing connection to Hizb-i Islami was probably no more than 30, still enough to represent one of the largest blocs in the parliament if they were formally united under a single banner. After the elections, Farouqi’s Hizb-i Islami engaged in a campaign to bring together the many MPs linked to Hizb-i Islami under his banner, with some success. As of October 2006, about 15 had joined him, while negotiations were going on with some more. Several of those elected had received support from other groups, including some faction of Jamiat-i Islami, and were reluctant to show ‘ingratitude’ towards their new patrons. Although formally Farouqi’s Hizb-i Islami claimed to have broken up with Hekmatyar, when challenged on this issue all the members refused to condemn Hekmatyar. Quite the contrary, they maintained that he had been ‘a great leader’ and that he had ‘done a lot for Afghanistan’.61 This, together with the half-hearted insurgency led by Hekmatyar and a few commanders of the party, can be seen as a confirmation that the political front and the armed insurgency are two components of a single strategy of armed propaganda. While it is very difficult to judge the extent to which armed propaganda contributed to the electoral successes of Hizb-i Islami, the geographical distribution of the successful candidates shows a concentration in areas where Hizb-i Islami is most active militarily (see Map 3). Map 3: MPs with links to Hizb-i Islami. MPs wit a past in Hizb-i Islami but currently affiliated with other groups have been excluded.

61 Interviews with former and current members of Hizb-i Islami, Kabul, London, Jalalabad 2006-7.

Source: interviews with former and current members of Hizb-i Islami; personal communications with UN and diplomatic staff.

Armed politics as self-defence In post-2001 Afghanistan self-defence played little role. To some extent it can be argued that different factions maintained a defensive armed presence in areas where they were a minority force in order to prevent the largest militias from prevaricating and closing the political space to their disadvantage. This was particularly the case of northern Afghanistan, as well as of some parts of north-eastern Afghanistan. Another type of armed politics of self defence which in Afghanistan is community militias. However, despite having been originally formed for self-defence purposes, their intervention in the political environment was often aimed at intimidating dissident elements. Elders mostly mobilised during the presidential elections of 2004, when in many parts of the ‘Pashtun belt’ they actively endorsed Karzai’s candidacy, in some cases going as far as threatening non-compliant members of the community with punishments such as burning their houses and being ostracised from social rituals.62 There is however little information available about the threat to use armed force by elders during the parliamentary elections. In any case, both party and community self-defence were clearly ambiguous cases in Afghanistan and the distinction from conservative armed politics was at best blurred.

62 Crispin Thorold, ‘Vote threat to Afghan tribesmen’, BBC News, 24 September 2004.

Conclusion: the uncertain transition of armed politics At the roots of the continuing importance of armed politics in Afghanistan are several factors. First among them is of course the inability of the post-2001 government to establish an effective monopoly of armed force, that is to impose disarmament to the factions and the strongmen. There were other reasons too, however. The most important among them is the inability of the ‘renascent’ Afghan state to act as an effective regulatory force and a broker among interest groups, a fact which in turn made disarmament more difficult to achieve. It is debatable whether the government in Kabul should have been more inclusive or not, but the slow progress in de-patrimonialising the security agencies prevented the state from being able to appear as impartial to many major players. The internationally-imposed adoption of meritocratic criteria at the Ministry of Interior, for example, as of mid-2007 was still struggling with patronage and factionalism in the appointment of key personnel. After many years of civil war, different organisations and individuals were unable to trust each other. The UN in part replaced the government as a regulatory body and broker and successfully started processes of reconciliation particularly in parts of northern and north-eastern Afghanistan, but also in the south and south-east. This led to a very partial process of disarmament and to a decline in factional fighting after 2003. However, the UN’s efforts to de-factionalise the state were repeatedly frustrated, which prevented the process of reconciliation from going very far. Under these conditions, an effective disarmament was probably never a real possibility in post-2001 Afghanistan. Even if a fully inclusive government had been formed after 2001, it would likely have taken several years for some degree of mutual trust to develop among formerly rival groups. By 2006 the expanding violence was further removing any incentive for the armed groups to disarm. Indeed, there were signs during that year that rearmament was going on in northern and north-eastern Afghanistan. The logical conclusion deriving from these considerations is that a more realistic approach towards the realities of armed politics in Afghanistan was needed to achieve greater success in gradually pushing arms away from the political scene. After 2001, virtually all the most powerful armed actors present on the Afghan scene tried to convert into political parties and to establish a foothold in the new parliament, although many individual strongmen opted to retire from public life. Their main concern seems to have been to legitimise their political role in the new post-conflict environment. Voters’ support, no matter how genuine, came to be seen as the best way to be shielded from complete marginalisation at the national level and to entrench as local leaders. As I have pointed out, the process was inevitably deeply controversial, as in order to maximise chances and dimensions of success they had to make at use of their original source of influence, that is armed force, while at the same time distancing themselves from it. This is indeed the curse of armed politics. Particularly for the more sophisticated factional strongmen and the ideological groups, the transition to political legitimisation implied not only the need to overhaul their image, a problem which they shared with the individual strongmen, but also a conflict of interests between the actual commanders of militia groups and their more political leadership. This was most evident in the cases of Jamiat and Junbesh. This conflict of interest opened a window of opportunity in which the process of transition away from armed politics might have been strengthened and

accelerated, had these organisations been given the right incentives. Kabul, however, opted to exploit the divide between commanders or strongmen and the organisations to which they were affiliated, in the hope of crucially weakening them. In reaction, the organisations moved to consolidate the relationship with their armed wings, greatly slowing the transition away from arms. Kabul’s courting of small and big strongmen and commanders in order to lure them away from the large non-state organisations combined with the varying degree of success of some of their members in achieving status and power within the post-conflict environment to result in the organised factions gradually losing cohesion. The decreasing pressure to stand united in the face of a diminished danger also contributed to make factional alignments less important. From 2002 it was instead the rise of narco-mafias throughout the country to increasingly dominate the political landscape, leading to new cross-ethnic, cross-regional and cross-ideological alliances. Time will tell whether this development has the potential to bring about the appearance of a new type of armed politics, based on the desire of narcotics producers to have at their disposal tools to pressure local and national authorities and to ensure that elected representatives respected their wishes.63

63 On this point see Giustozzi, War and peace economies…, cit.