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| Reconstructing the concept of ‘security’ in Afghanistan — I |
| Bashir A. Ansari |
| On the 20th and 21st of April, a conference was held under the title of “Security in Afghanistan” by academic, social and research institutes namely
The Masoud Foundation, American University of Afghanistan, The American Institute of Afghanistan and National Centre for Policy Research. Mr. Shahrani, the Chair of the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures in the University of Indiana, and I were invited from the US to participate in this conference.
Afghanistan is in dire need of many things but security is the top priority of the people of this land.
Its history demonstrates this through the royal palaces in Afghanistan which, as Omar Khayyam puts it, have been constructed over the delicate bodies of those who dared to oppose the crown. Its green fields have grown with the blood of the many brothers and fathers killed to reach power.
Geographically, from the walls of Asmayee and the Bala-hesar Fort at the heart of Kabul to the many high towers across the country, all are evidence of the lack of security being a perennial concern for its residence.
In the past 30 years alone we have been witnessing immense amount of bloodshed and the loss of millions of lives. Of the 13 leaders who have reined this land up until Hamid Karzai one of them Abdul Rahman Khan has died an ambiguous death. Seven of these leaders died defending their thrown and power and five of them were exiled from their land.
We heard new perspectives in this conference. Many criticised the Afghan government for its failure to implement a functional national security strategy for the past seven years. The US and NATO forces have constantly stated that instability in Afghanistan is a direct threat to regional and global security, but the problem we see is that the same forces are pursuing a military solution for this issue disregarding prerequisites to security, the most important of which is societal justice. Another major problem the Afghans were talking about is that the international forces are not here to bring security to the nation victimized by the Taliban regime for five years, but are only here for themselves.
Ever since the inception of government in Afghanistan by Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, security has been interpreted under the light of gunfire. This orthodox definition of national security always puts emphasis on the armed forces and the mechanism of the iron fist. All the challenges Afghan state has faced were responded to by the sword.
Today the definition of security has been revolutionized, and security experts have broadened the scope of its definition. One such school of thought which puts emphasis on the socio-economic factors is called Copenhagen.
Alongside legal and social factors, security is also heavily influenced by psychological and cultural elements in society. When a child is born in Afghanistan, its mouth is shut with a pacifier and its movement restricted by tightening a belt around it. To stop the child from crying, fear is instilled in the child with the help of demons and ghosts thus forever removing a sense of security in the most vulnerable stage of its life. These seeds of fear pose a greater danger to that child than do the thousand of mines spread by the Soviets across each step of this land.
Many have defined security to be the contrast point to fear. If we hold this definition to be true, then one can easily claim that the sense of security of the Afghan people has been deeply injured not only in the political and social realms but the individual realm as well. Fear accompanies every person that sets foot in this world, fear from one’s father, one’s mother, one’s teacher, one’s master, one’s principle, the police, the government, from oneself and from others. This fear infects all from birth and remains with them until death.
With the fall of the iron curtain of the Soviet Union we also saw the fall of the notion that security can be achieved through the dominance of the governments over the political scene. Pakistan, who always felt threatened, presumed its security problems were resolved once it had obtained weapons of mass destruction. The leaders of Pakistan were under the impression that they had guaranteed their national security through nuclear weapons, but as we can see today instability in Waziristan, Swat and other parts of the country have clearly proven them wrong.
In Kabul, the centuries-old broken walls of the Bala Hesar Fort clearly tell us not to suffice with military solutions. In the past 30 years Afghan regimes have sought help from the great powers to bring security to this land but none succeeded in doing so.
Security has physical and non-physical factors and the latter increases in significance each passing day. If yesterday the police, barbed wires, forced borders and high walls were important, today political legitimacy, national solidarity, having a collective identity, social unity and cultural authenticity are the pillars of security for a nation. Enshrining such principles in the political system of a nation will lead to a more stable and inexpensive implementation of national security.
When analyzing the meaning of security and its relationship with identity, the theorists of the Copenhagen school of thought point out that most of the wars that have occurred in the third world have been a result of identity clashes such as language, ethnicity, religion and cultural differences.
In Afghanistan, security is directly linked with identity in a couple of ways. Pakistani Governments have always stressed that the religious identity of the tribal areas weaken the strong ethnic link those tribes have with One’s across the border. During the time the Soviet invasion when there was a flow of cash and weapons to this region, Afghan nationalist intellectuals who were Pashtun were assassinated in Peshawar. People such as Majruh and Ulfat are clear examples of such a policy.
The biggest threat to security is tyranny and ignoring the rights of the people. Just as the great cultural icons in Afghanistan such as Rumi and Sanayi have pointed out, there will be no security in a society where injustice and tyranny are dominant. Security will only be achieved when society, with all its ethnic diversity, has played a part in obtaining it. Inversely if a group feels threatened and victimized in their own society, this will set the stage for an eruption of violence. Respecting the values, symbols, history and culture of different groups in the political spectrum of a country is the basis for ensuring security there.
Ethnic affiliation is what makes Hamid Karzai, Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban refer to themselves as ‘we’. This most primitive form of social organizations in Northern Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan is why this region is referred to as the most tribal region in the world. A tribe is like a mini-government with internal executive and judicial elements. One of the main obstacles of security in Afghanistan has been the predominantly tribal structure of society which prevents the formation of a government intending to bring real security to this land. The great sociologist Abdul Rahman ibn Khaldoun (1332-1406 AD) once said that regions with a diversity of tribes have rarely been successful in achieving stable governance. One of the traditional definitions of a government in the west is the one made by Max Weber, where he defines it as the entity exclusively holding power and legitimately using that power in the political sphere of country. With this in mind, security is threatened whenever this official hold on power is undermined, from inside or outside the borders. In Afghanistan, it is the tribe that has undermined the structures of power and has established its own executive, legislative and judicial elements.
A discussion on security cannot take place in Afghanistan without considering the Taliban, whom I refer to as soldiers of graveyard security. Five years of Taliban rule in the Capital and other major cities has demonstrated that what they refer to as Security is nothing more than its complete opposite. If immense fear of the government is what they call security then what better and safer place than inside prison cells, where security is supreme.
(To Be Continued) |
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