by David Rohde with John F. Burns
October 7, 2001
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Sipping tea in an elegant garden here just 50 miles from Kabul, the foreign minister of the rebel Northern Alliance makes a soothing claim for the future government it hopes to be part of. In it, he said, ''the people of Afghanistan will have the right of self-determination.''
But in past years the alliance itself has been accused of shelling civilians, carrying out summary executions, and engaging in opium and weapons trafficking, according to human rights groups. The groups say the alliance has also burned and looted the houses of suspected Taliban sympathizers.
The last time the alliance's leaders tried to run Afghanistan, Kabul dissolved into factional civil war. More than 25,000 people died in the fighting, which reduced a third of the city to rubble and carved the country into fiefdoms essentially run by warlords.
The record raises serious questions for Afghanistan, and for the alliance's backers in Washington, as to how the Northern Alliance might rule. It also suggests that if rebel groups regain power, in the event of American attacks on the Taliban, they may barely be able to work together.
The last time the allied groups held power, in the early 1990's, the situation became so chaotic that the Taliban found an opening to come to power, promising to restore order to the nation with their strict interpretation of Islam. Now the Taliban are accused of harboring Osama bin Laden.
Adding to the complexity, the Northern Alliance appears to be leaderless at this critical moment. Just two days before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, two men believed to have ties to Mr. bin Laden attacked the alliance's charismatic leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, in a suicide bombing. He died days later, depriving the alliance of a veteran of Afghanistan's long struggle against the Russians and someone whose reputation carried beyond his own faction of mujahedeen, or holy warriors.
In the weeks since, it is still not clear who is the power broker in the Northern Alliance, though new leaders said that a new generation is emerging.
''So much depended on Ahmad Shah Massoud,'' one retired Central Intelligence Agency officer said.
''He was far from blameless, but he had an unquestionable commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan,'' the former officer said. ''Al Qaeda, if it was Al Qaeda, knew what they were doing when they killed him before setting off the apocalypse that's going to finish the Taliban.''
The alliance's designated successor is General Muhammad Fahim, who is not the charming character that Mr. Massoud was. The group's titular leader, Burhannudin Rabbani, is seen largely as a figurehead.
In any case the alliance stands to play a powerful role in any future government, a position strengthened by its warming relationship with Washington. Another reason for its influence is sheer power: it can threaten to keep doing what it has been doing for two decades -- using its soldiers, now 15,000, to keep up the fight.
The foreign minister of the rebels, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, who evidently is determined to cleanse the alliance's image, says that the group has matured greatly over the last five years, and that accusations against it are false or outdated.
Disputes about the alliance go back almost a decade. In 1992 Mr. Rabbani saw his hour come and go after the mujahedeen triumphantly took Kabul when Soviet forces fled. Mr. Rabbani twice brokered deals that elected him president of Afghanistan. But his period in office split the mujahedeen, and the result was a full-scale civil war.
From 1992 to 1996 fighting raged among the factions, largely divided along political or ethnic lines. The real power behind Mr. Rabbani emerged: Mr. Massoud, the military commander. Both are ethnic Tajiks.
By 1996, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan, had control of large parts of Afghanistan, forcing Mr. Rabbani and Mr. Massoud to form the Northern Alliance with other factions in the opposition. The alliance consisted of Mr. Massoud's faction, dominated by ethnic Tajiks, and other factions dominated by ethnic Uzbeks, ethnic Hazaras and Shiite Muslims.
The Taliban are dominated by southern-based ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.
The newly allied groups, which had intermittently fought each other over the previous four years, had only one thing in common -- their opposition to the Taliban. Their efforts failed and the Taliban took Kabul and other big cities.
It was during this period that Mr. Massoud's forces were accused of indiscriminately firing rockets into the capital, killing civilians.
Since then the fractious alliance has suffered military setback after military setback. The Taliban, backed by Pakistani weapons and volunteers, won control of 90 percent of the country.
The death of Mr. Massoud left the alliance at risk. General Fahim and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, two of the current leaders, both have mixed records as men whose loyalties were often in question and who, in General Dostum's case, switched sides at least twice in the early 1990's.
American officials worked closely with the mujahedeen factions now attached to the alliance in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Many of those officials now sigh when asked whether they believe that the fractiousness of those earlier years will be put aside in the quest for a new government.
Aside from the infighting and rights areas, there have also been questions about how the alliance has financed its operations. Alliance officials confirmed this week what has long been known -- that Iran and Russia have supplied it with weapons and financing.
Mr. Massoud was also known to generate funds by selling emeralds mined from the alliance-controlled Panjshir Valley. Alliance officials defend that as legitimate economic activity.
There have also been allegations that the alliance condones opium production and takes a cut of profits to finance operations. Weapons smuggling has also been rumored.
Dr. Abdullah vehemently denied these charges. He said alliance officials had worked to contain opium production by local farmers, who he said profit alone from the trade.
The most serious allegations of human rights abuses stem from the mid 1990's, when the rule of law was virtually nonexistent in areas under each faction's control, according to rights groups. A report released by Human Rights Watch this spring found that all of the factions ''engaged in rape, summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and 'disappearances.'''
In the worst single atrocity of the civil war, Uzbek soldiers under alliance command and Hazara civilians executed 3,000 Taliban soldiers in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997. The soldiers had been captured after an alliance commander reneged on a promise to side with the Taliban.
In 1998, several volleys of rockets believed to be fired by Mr. Massoud's forces landed in a crowded night market in Kabul. At least 76 civilians were killed.
As recently as spring 2000, refugees reported that alliance forces carried out summary executions and burned and looted houses. Ethnic Pashtuns were targeted in the attacks.
In the weeks since Mr. Massoud's assassination, General Fahim has largely kept out of the public eye. In an interview, the 44-year-old general said little and stuck to the alliance's standard line that Pakistan is to blame for all of Afghanistan's problems. The general, Mr. Massoud's longtime top aide, is colorless compared with his predecessor. But other alliance commanders insist his many years at Mr. Massoud's side give him credibility.
Dr. Abdullah speaks energetically of the future, and indeed this week a large contingent of alliance soldiers paraded in brand-new uniforms, said to have come fresh from Iran, along with functioning, if weathered, tanks and equipment. On every tank was a portrait of Mr. Massoud.
Dr. Abdullah tries to convey the sense that after two decades, Afghanistan's moment has at last arrived. ''Now, there is this promise,'' he said, ''there is this hope.''