It is spoken out in our media on the rule of Afghan Warlords and the Taliban in Afghanistan. This article will explore the process of emergence of the two movements or the two Afghan Political Phenomena over the last three decades in our country.
A. How Warlords emerged in Afghanistan?
The Afghan communities have been historically ruled not by royalties and states, but by traditional and customary laws. Afghan warlords emerged from a locally regulated social function of controlled violence. During the Cold War, local warlords were sponsored by the two super-powers. The Cold War on Afghan territory was fought as an inter-ethnic war, with massive casualties on all sides. Ethnic cleavages deepened and poverty increased. With foreign financial aid and advanced military technology, they formed extensive and expensive militant networks. They became dependent on external high-income sources.
After the Cold War, in its continuation in a civil war, foreign aid ceased and warlords started becoming increasingly dependent on the opium market as their main source of income. They started gaining economic predominance and independence, based on their ability to control the opium production and market by military means. The traditional forms of self-rule were damaged and rendered open to military and economic rule. Military conquest of territory was frequently substituted with large-scale payments to traditional and military rulers. Alliances were often bought, and allies shifted sides to the highest bidder. Warlords become militant entrepreneurs, with their ability to deliver or withhold violence put forward for rental to the highest bidder.
The present post-Taliban phase reflects the power relations of the pre-Taliban phase. Warlords are key power-brokers in the democratizing state. They have consolidated their positions in the state instruments of coercion (army and police), and they have consolidated their opium networks, drawing in them an increasing part of the impoverished population. At present, warlords cooperate with the U.S. as local military allies in exchange for financial incentives, and with the UN as security guarantors in exchange for political power. Warlords and their proxies dominated the electoral ballots in the Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 2004, 2005 and 2009. They obtained formalized political predominance, in addition to their previously established military and economic predominance. They use their political power to legitimize themselves and obtain impunity for their war crimes, their networks and illicit operations.
Much of the present-day security and informal employment opportunities are derived from warlords’ activities. Much of the insecurity and the paralysis of legal economy is due to their activities as well. Democracy and state-building reflect the same dual relation: these processes are supported by warlords up to a point to which state instruments can be utilized in their personal agendas. A warlord democracy has been consolidated: a regime where formal democratic institutions are manipulated to mask a non-democratic rule by poly-centric power-holders, who dominate the military, economic and political life of the country. Four main patterns contributed to the formation of a warlord democracy: the historical and cultural conditions, the act of imposing democracy by foreign military intervention, and the assumptions of the democratic paradigm limited to institutional reforms.
However, these symptoms and conditions are not specific only to Afghanistan. They are symptoms of a larger pattern of change in power-relations enfolding in a number of countries worldwide. This pattern is connected to the emergence of the so-called “new wars” and the notions of globalization. The introduced terminology and concepts will delineate the fifth pattern which enabled the creation of a warlord democracy as a symptom of the post-modern age.
The relation of the four factors has basically produced two prongs which maintain warlords power in strength: (a) the first prong is based on the commodified ability to deliver or withhold violence, put forward for rental to the highest bidder on the market (formal and informal, licit and illicit) in societal, political, military and economic contracts; (b) the second prong is based on the militarily-maintained economic predominance over opium trade, which far outweighs optional licit income. With these two prongs, Afghan militant entrepreneurs gain relative independence from sole demand-sources, such as states and society, and transfer their dependence onto the global market. From their economically and militarily independent position, they can enter inclusive contracts and parallel alliances with multiple local and international, state and non-state, licit and illicit actors. They can break these contracts and alliances if they do not support their military, economic and political predominance.
In the next entry I will discuss on the following:
B. How and Why the Taliban Emerged in Afghanistan?
