Pak hand looms over Kabul vote

The question that8217;s tantalising Afghanistan on the eve of its landmark Assembly and Provincial Council election is: what role is Islama...

2 min readKabulSep 18, 2005 12:00 AM IST

The question that’s tantalising Afghanistan on the eve of its landmark Assembly and Provincial Council election is: what role is Islamabad playing in the UN sponsored vote.

In the fray are around 5,800 election hopefuls, all registered as independents. But Afghans are as politically turbo-charged as Indians or Pakistanis, and voters are well aware of the party or warlord associations of most candidates. A key issue is whether a candidate has foreign backing—usually from Pakistan, Iran or the US. After all, Afghanistan is the old hunting ground of the Great Game.

The Pakistan Hand appears to be in the forefront of election rhetoric. ‘‘Pakistan destroyed our country and made Muslim fight Muslim in the name of jihad,’’ said former Communist Sourya Parlika 60 at an election meeting in Kabul. ‘‘Now it wants its agents inside the National Assembly, so that it can destroy it from within.’’

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said last month that he had information that there were people in government who had links to a foreign intelligence agency—which, though unnamed, appeared to refer to Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.

Candidates most suspect are those from either the Taliban or Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami, two groups with deep links to the ISI. Hekmatyar is known to be a crafty operator, so it is suspected that, with the ISI’s backing, he is following a two-pronged strategy: mounting terrorist strikes against Kabul, while also planting a foot firmly within the emerging democratic structure. Nothing could indicate this better than the fact that Hizb-e-Islami’s democratic incarnation is led by none other than Hekmatyar’s son-in-law, Humayun Jarir.

But the most intriguing controversy about the Pakistani Hand involves an exCommunist: former defence minister Shahnawaz Tanai, who took refuge in Pakistan after a failed coup in 1990 against then President Najibullah. Najibullah was close to India and Tanai’s coup was said to have had ISI backing, something which he vehemently denies. Having suddenly resurfaced in Kabul, Tanai is not standing for election, but many from his group are.

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