Daily Times

Many Afghans and Pakistani intellectuals often ask about the future of civil war in Afghanistan and the unending series of insurgencies in Pakistan. The partition of the Afghan state will begin with the demand for a federal system of government and independent provinces. Since the revelation of a British MP’s plan for the future political structure of Afghanistan that appeared in newspapers, Afghans of different ethnic groups have remonstrated and expressed concern about the dismemberment of their country on ethnic lines. The plan is supported in the north while repudiated in the south.

As the country has experienced a lot of torture, destruction and humiliation at the hands of Russia, Afghan communists, mujahideen and the Taliban who have fractured its body with bullets, and now that NATO and the US are treating its wounds with their own medicines, the recovery of the Afghan state seems impossible. The injection of the American and European taxpayer’s blood into the disease-infected body of the state has borne no result. Notwithstanding its scattered pieces and war-torn body, Afghanistan still insists on the return of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, sold in 1893 at the hands of Britain in exchange for money and weapons. The debate on the dismemberment of the country on ethnic and sectarian lines is again making headlines in the print and electronic media in Asia and Europe as Britain’s MP proposed a new political structure for Afghanistan last week.

Mr Tobias Ellwood’s plan caused anger in and outside the country as Britain has long experience of the political and socioeconomic tendencies in Afghanistan. In his plan, Mr Tobias Ellwood revealed that his proposed structural shake up would take effect in 2014. Mr Ellwood understands that a decentralised political system can bring fruitful results for the British government. He has proposed the division of Afghanistan into eight states whose capitals would be Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad, Khost and Bamiyan. His view and standpoint reflect my idea of the ethnic division of the country, as I have already highlighted in my recently published book, Civil War and the Partition of Afghanistan.

In my understanding, the reorganisation and reinvention of Afghan state institutions must be a priority so that the country is able to respond to the day-to-day changing political, social and military developments in the region. Unfortunately, there is no functioning state in the country and, therefore, every state brings its own map of geographical division to the country every year. Historically speaking, Afghanistan has not been a functioning state for the last two centuries. As per its tribal structure, the country never built up a professional army as it has been depending on tribal militias for decades. The state has never been able to penetrate tribal society to establish its writ. Military experts understand that, as there are no indigenous economic bases for state formation in Afghanistan, the state has been formed with the help of external resources or by external economic aid, as was provided by Britain during the ‘great game’ before and during the cold war period. To control its tribal territories, Afghanistan should have brought its tribal regions into the tax paying process. The state, finally, remained a weak rentier state as it is critically dependent on foreign aid. In the 1990s, when foreign financial and military aid was suspended by the US and other states, the state in Afghanistan collapsed and fragmented on ethnic and tribal lines.

Consequently, the long established rentier state of Afghanistan has now collapsed. It has fragmented on ethnic and sectarian lines. Weakly established national unity and national concordance have been undermined by the decade-long ethnic and sectarian war. The series of extra-judicial ethnic and sectarian killings from north to south and from south to north, the walls of hatred between the Pashtuns and other ethnic minorities, foreign intervention, poverty and national alienation provided the ground to various ethnic groups to demand the partition of the country. The collapsed and deeply wounded, polarised and fragmented Afghan state caused a vortex of instability, corruption, regionalism and illegal militarisation of society.

The artificial Afghan state has no specific production or proper revenue generation as there is no tax system, no electricity, gas and water bills system and no income tax, wealth tax and property tax to support the day-to-day expenditure of the state and government. Interestingly, there is $ 11 billion worth of arms across the country not under government control. Based on these criteria, Afghanistan is considered to be a failed state.

Normally, a state has to exercise its effective control within its territory but, in the case of Afghanistan, the state has shrunk and confined itself to the capital. It has lost control on its territory, its people and even its rogue army. If a country like Afghanistan is not able to extend its writ to the whole territory, unable to provide basic public services and cannot represent the whole country in the international community, it means the state has withered and failed. The Afghan army is still dependent on NATO for air support, ammunition and roadside bomb clearing. Moreover, high rates of desertion and drug addiction have made it more vulnerable.

Some experts understand that as NATO and US military establishments have found themselves dejected by the war in the country and are looking for a safe exit, therefore they have planned to divide the country on ethnic lines. In his plans for the division of Afghanistan, British MP Ellwood has proposed that all states should directly influence the decisions made in the political systems of the eight states. Mr Ellwood also proposed that some regions be left to the Taliban so that they become part of Afghanistan’s political system. Some experts are of the opinion that this kind of division would lead to warlordism and personal fiefdoms, and that there would be no respect for the central government. But some quarters in the north welcomed this proposed political system for ending the 264 year-long Durrani rule in the country.

The writer is the author of Britain’s National Security Challenges and Punjabi Taliban. He can be reached at zai.musakhan222@gmail.com