The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan? Analysis please.

[Zalgiris 1410]

:confused: Lets pretend that I don't know anything about the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan from pre-Soviet invasion, through the occupation, after the withdrawl; before & during the Taliban regime and during & since the US led liberation etc.

(Looking forward to all your informed postings, thanks in advance.)

[ March 26, 2006, 02:33 AM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Wicky]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Northern_Alliance

[Zalgiris 1410]

Oooh thanks Wicky I was looking out for this bloke: Ahmed Shah Massoud the Lion of Panjshir, assasinated by AQ posing cameramen on the 9th of September! :eek:

[Scott B]

Originally posted by Zalgiris 1410:

:confused: Lets pretend that I don't know anything about the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan from pre-Soviet invasion, through the occupation, after the withdrawl; before & during the Taliban regime and during & since the US led liberation etc.

(Looking forward to all your informed postings, thanks in advance.)

There are a few good books out on Afghanistan worth looking at. Steve Coll's Ghost Wars is an obvious choice, as is Martin Ewans' Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics.

What specifically are you looking for?

[Zalgiris 1410]

Thanks Scott B for your book recomendations, that's one handy & helpful area, but well specifically for now I was hoping for an informed discussion to take place here.

I mean I am aware of the Northern Alliance but feel that I lack an informed opinion about it and its history and further more that I havn't had (yet) access to good assessments of it. I've seen an interview here or heard one on the radio there and watched some TV current affairs reportage piece on it when one is done at times and I have had occation to read a few newspaper or magazine articles on it and Afganistan. But this has really all been a bit sparce.

However, while this has all been out of mild interest at times these I feel were merely just in passing. So yeah, some pointers as to where to start and directions on credible assessments of the Northern Alliance is what I'm looking for both as a military force and in the socio-geopolitics of Afganistan., from the NA's origins through the wars until today. I'd really like to know what the NA really is now and both where and how it has come along since it began.

[ April 01, 2006, 06:54 PM: Message edited by: Zalgiris 1410 ]

[Sixxkiller]

Maybe you should sign up and take a tour or two over there. Thats the only real way to understand and be able to analize anything. It actually isnt as fluid or concrete as you would like in an answer.

-Ray

[Zalgiris 1410]

Originally posted by Sixxkiller:

Maybe you should sign up and take a tour or two over there. Thats the only real way to understand and be able to analize anything. It actually isnt as fluid or concrete as you would like in an answer.

-Ray

Regarding signing up, I would have to be bloody good enough to join the SAS, which is pretty much our only unit operating in them Afghan hills over there, alas I admit they wouldn't accept my little arse between the ranks of their members.

In terms of an analysis of the Northern Alliance I now gather from even Wicky's link that the make up of the NA is & has not been concrete and has always been a fluid and loose coalition of sorts. I'm not looking for an easy answer, I don't expect one. I'm sure that there are many multible views upon it.

O.K. purhaps I ought to say what has been bugging me about my understanding of the NA for a while now. Two things actually. Firstly, that the NA is something different to the major Mahoudjadin elements that took over Afghanistan after the Soviets left, especially those elements that became or submitted to the Taliban. Secondly, it is my understanding that the Northern Alliance received much less if even indirectly any support and supplies from the US & Britain etc, than these other elements, during the Soviet occupation. I would also like to know why this was so and such like.

The analogious comparison that I would like to make here, if my understanding is correct, is that between the relatively recent NA situation amid the Mahoudjadin (later Taliban) with the situation of the Chetniks (or local nationalist Serbian partisan bands) and Tito's communist partisans who received vertually all of the massive amounts of airdropped supplies from the British Royal Air Force durring WWII.

I am thinking of this as not one little tactical mistake but as a major strategic mistake made in US foreign policy during the 1980's and didnt rectify during the 1990's and that is now still being of influence on the ground in Afghanistan today.

[Scott B]

Originally posted by Zalgiris 1410:

Thanks Scott B for your book recomendations, that's one handy & helpful area, but well specifically for now I was hoping for an informed discussion to take place here.

Try as I might I haven't been able to come up with a non-snarky response to this. I'll try again in the morning.

Scott

[juan_gigante]

Originally posted by Sixxkiller:

Maybe you should sign up and take a tour or two over there. Thats the only real way to understand and be able to analize anything. It actually isnt as fluid or concrete as you would like in an answer.

-Ray

Sixxkiller, sorry if this sounds a little hostile, but it kind of irritates me when people say you can't understand an event, especially war, unless you participate. As though joining the military is required to have an understanding of what war is like. I won't deny that experience in the field in question is helpful, but I think that when people say "Unless you were in the military, your commentary doesn't matter." I know you didn't say exactly this, Sixx - it's more the general idea. There are countless of examples of people being experts whose opinions should be considered and valued who never physically participated in what they are an expert in. David Glantz, I am sure, knows more about the Battle of Kursk than those soldiers who participated did.

It is possible to be an expert in something without actually having done it.

[civdiv]

The Northern Alliance was pretty much a Western invention. There were a number of groups that opposed the Taliban, but like just about everything in Afghanistan, describing them as a single, cohesive and unified group is a bit of a stretch. They are sort of an off shoot of something called, I think, the Five Parties. That Wiki article is particularly bad, I hope that is a rough draft as it makes little sense. I mean, look at the beginning;

"After the overthrow of the Taliban government by the USA, Afghanistan had a UN recognized government led by Burhanuddin Rabbani. When it was dislodged from the capital, Kabul, it continued leading the war against the Taliban from the northern mountains of the country."

What the heck does that mean? Rabbani's government was in place AFTER the Soviet withdrawal. The Taliban seized Kabul FROM Rabbani. So the timeline in this part of the article is wrong.

Anyways, the NA was sort of an offshoot of the Five Parties that controlled Kabul for a brief period of time before the Taliban took over. However, not all groups participated. Hekmatyar, in particular, a member of the original Five Parties, allied himself with the Taliban and actually fought the Five Parties. His group, Hezbe Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), is now one of the insurgent groups fighting against the new government.

And your comment about the NA not receiving a significant amount of aid during the resistance to the Soviet occupation is a little flawed. At the time the NA didn't exist. The NA was really invented after the Taliban took over, long after the Soviets were gone.

In regards to aid provided to the various groups during the Soviet occupation, Hekmatyar received the most aid. This was due to his close relationship with the Pakistani ISID (Inter Service Intelligence Directorate, sort of their CIA). The ISID controlled where all of the aid went. They preferred the ISID to equally effective groups such as Massoud's group, as they felt they had some measure of control. Massoud, though a devout Muslim, was a nationalist. Hekmatyar was more of a Marxist-Muslim. The ISID felt they would have more control over Afghanistan through Hekmatyar.

[ April 03, 2006, 04:53 AM: Message edited by: civdiv ]

[Bigduke6]

Rant Warning

The term "Northern Alliance" is a sloppy shorthand expression used to describe a grouping of Afghan tribes that worked together, with the overt and covert assistance of the US, to kick the Taliban out of Kabul. Tadjiks and Uzbeks were especially well-represented, unsurprisingly as they were the best-armed partisans in the northern hills when the Taliban had purported control over the country.

The Taliban drew, and draw their support, from the Pushtuns (prior to that Pathans, currently referred to as Pashto or Pashtun) in the south of the country. It is important to remember that the Pushtuns have plenty of relatives and allies in northern Pakistan, and as far as the Pushtuns are concerned, there is no Afghan-Pakistan border; just different valleys controlled by different warlords of Pushtun ethnicity.

The CIA World Fact Book gives this breakdown of ethnicity, Afghanistan-wide:

Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%

I repeat, as far as the Pushtun/Pashtun are concerned, their ethnicity is a lot bigger than that, as their relatives are all over northern Pakistan.

Here is the linguistic break-down, same CIA source, also Afghanistan nation-wide:

Afghan Persian or Dari (official) 50%, Pashtu (official) 35%, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%, much bilingualism

The Northern Alliance drew its support from a portion of the non-Pushtun particularly disgruntled with Taliban rule. The educated urban Afghans frequently signed on, as did some non-Pushtuns whose warlords either (a) had it in for the Taliban or ( got a nice offer from the Americans. There was also a bit of support for the so-called "Northern Alliance" from the smaller ethnic minorities with folk traditions of a brand of Islam not so "pure" as what Taliban tried to force down the country's throat, for instance the supposedly Mongol Hazaras and the Turkmen, who continue some animalist traditions to this day, particularly suffered from Taliban fundamentalism.

A big base of support for the "Northern Alliance" was the opium industry across the country, or more exactly, those portions of the opium industry that had not cut a deal with corrupt portions of the Taliban.

Got that straight? I hope so, because every one of those fractions can according to the rules of Afghan politics sub-divide at the Afghan's need along lines contradicting ethnic ties, i.e. (1) Family (I am a Pushtun, but I married into an extended Uzbek family) (2) profession (we are all sorts of nationalities in our company distributing Bollywood video tapes, but since the Taliban hates images of women with nice figures, we all hate the Taliban (3) Education (We in the Air Force may be mostly Pushtun, but if the Taliban keeps it up, there will be no Air Force, therefore, we will fly helicopters for the so-called Northern Alliance (4) Personal experience (those Taliban fanatics yelled at me in the street for not having a beard, even though I'm a Pushtun like they are.

And so on, that's a partial list.

Point is, even a cursory look at the people living in the territory we call Afghanistan makes any attempt at any nation-wide blanket rule, or even words describing the place in terms of good guys and bad guys, simply laughable.

Afghanistan is one of the most heterogeneous countries in the world, and most of those people are armed and quite happy to fight one another. That is what their tribes have done since before recorded history began. That is what the vast majority of them do now, and it is undoubtedly what they will do when the Americans leave.

The peoples of Afghanistan, most of them, have no tradition of long-term loyalty to anything beyond their family and to a lesser extent tribe. Remember tribes subdivide into valleys, and frequently valleys divide into villages.

From the Afghan point of view, The Northern Alliance is a sound bite, and a dumb one at that. It is a term foisted onto the U.S. public which, on the whole, being uneducated and unwilling to learn about things foreign, willingingly and uncritically accepted.

Northern Alliance exists as political term primarily, because it is just too complicated for the average American taxpayer to make sense of the ethnic chaos that is Afghanistan. The average American lacks the training in geography and foreign languages to even begin to comprehend a place like Afghanistan. So, after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans willingly and uncritically lateraled making decisions on Afghanistan to his or her elected leaders, so he or she could get back to watching football or shopping, as he or she desired.

There was plenty of sense in the U.S. kicking the Taliban out of power for sheltering extremist Arabs willing to use terror against the U.S.

The term "Northern Alliance" had very little to do with that. It was almost like a brand of dish soap. It was an idea, a hope, a sales pitch, that somehow U.S. military intervention in a tribal snakes' nest like Afghanistan somehow had to do with spreading democracy, improving living standards, and in general continuing allegedly mostly philanthropic U.S. behavior abroad, rather than just killing tribal Muslims, in spite of the laser-guided bombs, Arc Light strikes, and Stryker Brigades.

It is fair to say the Nothern Alliance can only exist, really, in the mind of some one ignorant about a place like Afghanistan. The proof is all the former members of the Northern Alliance now in the hills fighting against it - while the U.S. public somehow vaguely believes the Northern Alliance continues to exist and they're the ones on the side of democracy and suburbs for every one.

And that ignorance - and it is willful, there is plenty of information on Afghanistan, one only needs to use the Internet or a library - is no civilian monopoly. There are plenty of U.S. soldiers wandering around Afghanistan right now without half a clue about Afghanistan's tribal divisions, never mind shifting personal alliances.

But most of those U.S. soldiers will probably say his or her presence in Afghanistan is helping the country become more "democratic." More than a few of those soldiers will claim to be experts on Afghanistan, without being able to speak a single sentence in Pushtu, to name one-quarter of the ethnicities in the country, or even being aware the assorted Afghan tribes ejected the British and the Soviet empires from their land in the last century alone.

Personal experience is nice. Balanced knowledge of the facts is better. A critical mind able to look for as many facts as possible, and intellectually capable of weighing them, is best of all.

[Redwolf]

Gary Schoern's book "First In" has all the details you might want (from first hand observation).

[Zalgiris 1410]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

[QB] The term "Northern Alliance" is a sloppy shorthand expression used to describe a grouping of Afghan tribes that worked together, with the overt and covert assistance of the US, to kick the Taliban out of Kabul. Tadjiks and Uzbeks were especially well-represented, unsurprisingly as they were the best-armed partisans in the northern hills when the Taliban had purported control over the country.

The Taliban drew, and draw their support, from the Pushtuns (prior to that Pathans, currently referred to as Pashto or Pashtun) in the south of the country. It is important to remember that the Pushtuns have plenty of relatives and allies in northern Pakistan, and as far as the Pushtuns are concerned, there is no Afghan-Pakistan border; just different valleys controlled by different warlords of Pushtun ethnicity.

The Northern Alliance drew its support from a portion of the non-Pushtun particularly disgruntled with Taliban rule. The educated urban Afghans frequently signed on, as did some non-Pushtuns whose warlords either (a) had it in for the Taliban or ( got a nice offer from the Americans. There was also a bit of support for the so-called "Northern Alliance" from the smaller ethnic minorities with folk traditions of a brand of Islam not so "pure" as what Taliban tried to force down the country's throat, for instance the supposedly Mongol Hazaras and the Turkmen, who continue some animalist traditions to this day, particularly suffered from Taliban fundamentalism.

A big base of support for the "Northern Alliance" was the opium industry across the country, or more exactly, those portions of the opium industry that had not cut a deal with corrupt portions of the Taliban.

Got that straight? I hope so, because every one of those fractions can according to the rules of Afghan politics sub-divide at the Afghan's need along lines contradicting ethnic ties, etc, etc.

Afghanistan is one of the most heterogeneous countries in the world, and most of those people are armed and quite happy to fight one another. The peoples of Afghanistan, most of them, have no tradition of long-term loyalty to anything beyond their family and to a lesser extent tribe. Remember tribes subdivide into valleys, and frequently valleys divide into villages.

From the Afghan point of view, The Northern Alliance is a sound bite, and a dumb one at that. Northern Alliance exists as political term primarily, because it is just too complicated for the average American taxpayer to make sense of the ethnic chaos that is Afghanistan. The average American lacks the training in geography and foreign languages to even begin to comprehend a place like Afghanistan. So, after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans willingly and uncritically lateraled making decisions on Afghanistan to his or her elected leaders, so he or she could get back to watching football or shopping, as he or she desired.

The term "Northern Alliance" was almost like a brand of dish soap. It was an idea, a hope, a sales pitch, [and] that somehow U.S. military intervention in a tribal snakes' nest like Afghanistan somehow had to do with spreading democracy.

It is fair to say the Nothern Alliance can only exist, really, in the mind of some one ignorant about a place like Afghanistan. The proof is all the former members of the Northern Alliance now in the hills fighting against it - while the U.S. public somehow vaguely believes the Northern Alliance continues to exist and they're the ones on the side of democracy and suburbs for every one. QB]

Thanks for the rant Bigduke6, thanks for providing that informative montage about the nature of Afghanistan and the Northern Alliance.

This is more like it, a discussion, and I agree with you that just being in the military on an operational posting to a foreign area doesn't make one (especially an American) an expert about it and certainly not an authority on the place and its people and their politics. In fact if anything military personal are going to have a distorted view of the situation, biased by their mission requirements propaganda decided for them by their higher-ups who have probably been looking down at the very same ground on maps with overlays and flawed computer models through rose coloured classes with glossy self-deceiving but comforting SIT-REP assessments!

Granted, such said military personage are going to have much better ideas and clearer understanding of the place 'over there', than the man in the street or their neighbours (especially when them being Americans) because of their actual experiences. Remember though that their personal experiences are just that and therefore are limited in scale and scope and as I've indecated squewed somewhat, both intentionally for morale purposes and operational security reasons, but mostly unintentionally by their superiors ineptitude even if that is very far up and not from their immediate circle of commanding Officers. :eek:

Back on the subject though AIUI, the term Northern Alliance was not just created out of the arse of some Western spin doctor in order to dupe the public, but that the term was in use at least from during the earliest Taliban ruling days describing colectively or however the opposition groups in the North of Afganistan resisting the Southern, meaning Pashtun dominated, Taliban imposing authorities. Your mention of the especially well-represention of Tadjiks and Uzbeks in the Northern Alliance is a hint of this. That said, 'NA' may have been a sound bite all the same, just a local Afghan sound bite that may or may not have had significant meaning in the right context. It may now have lost its applicability.

(I've not come across this use of the word lateral before, or come to think of it the word 'lateraled' ever before; quote: 'So, after the World Trade Center attacks, Americans willingly and uncritically lateraled making decisions on Afghanistan to his or her elected leaders', however I understand the allusion Bigduke6, but I'd have used the word deligate or blindly deligate or somethink. I'm wondering if it is just me? Anyone else?)

[Zalgiris 1410]

Originally posted by civdiv:

The Northern Alliance was pretty much a Western invention. There were a number of groups that opposed the Taliban, but like just about everything in Afghanistan, describing them as a single, cohesive and unified group is a bit of a stretch. They are sort of an off shoot of something called, I think, the Five Parties.

Anyways, the NA was sort of an offshoot of the Five Parties that controlled Kabul for a brief period of time before the Taliban took over. However, not all groups participated. Hekmatyar, in particular, a member of the original Five Parties, allied himself with the Taliban and actually fought the Five Parties. His group, Hezbe Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), is now one of the insurgent groups fighting against the new government.

And your comment about the NA not receiving a significant amount of aid during the resistance to the Soviet occupation is a little flawed. At the time the NA didn't exist. The NA was really invented after the Taliban took over, long after the Soviets were gone.

In regards to aid provided to the various groups during the Soviet occupation, Hekmatyar received the most aid. This was due to his close relationship with the Pakistani ISID (Inter Service Intelligence Directorate, sort of their CIA). The ISID controlled where all of the aid went. They preferred the ISID to equally effective groups such as Massoud's group, as they felt they had some measure of control. Massoud, though a devout Muslim, was a nationalist. Hekmatyar was more of a Marxist-Muslim. The ISID felt they would have more control over Afghanistan through Hekmatyar.

Thank you very much for this helpful if not absolutely clear posting civdiv. (Who are you refferring to as 'They' who preferred the ISID to [aid] equally effective groups such as Massoud's group?) Obviously not Hekmatyar.

I disagree with you that the term the 'Northern Alliance' in and of itself was not a Western invention, diplomates and journalists posted to Afghanistan and responsible for making reports upon the situation there, I assume picked-up the term being used by locals even if any when answering their questions as to who was who and what was going on. Of course the locals themselves had to have developed a short hand tag, at least those trying to make sense of the split of the Five Parties and who was continuing to resist when the Pashtun and thereby Southern based Taliban came to power...in Kabul. That said I am no expert but that's my hunch, and I think that the 'NA' was always being applied to a vague collective group of differrent political militia groups not all of whom were actually allied.

Anyway I now feel confident to now really look in to this more and in much greater depth from an initial set of assumptions that hopefully will help even if they are not entirely accurate. Now to find the time to do so... :eek:

[aka_tom_w]

GREAT post by Bigduke 6!

(Great handle by the way)

VERY informative and to the point..

and yes, it sort of "sounds" right on to me!

(i.e. the oringinal "rant warning" post)

thanks!!!

-tom w

[cassh]

Might I recommend Olaf Caroe's book "The Pathans 550B.C. - A.D. 1957" as a great book to get one a better understanding of the history and culture the Pathans (Pashtuns/Pakhtuns).

The Pathans

Also very interesting and informative - and still relevant is John Masters's Bugles and a Tiger which covers operation in the NWFP and Wazirstan.

Bugles and a Tiger

I think the most insightful though is a classic little volume by Qazi Rahimullah Khan (ed. H.L.Ogden) - "The Modern Pushtu Instructor" where the underlying soul of the culture is indicated in some lovely example phrases and vocabulary exercises:-

Awal war bāndé awāz wo kra aw biā yé wola - Challenge him first and then shot.

Zamā khāli yau vrōr woh aw haghuh hum yau sakht juram wō kar aw mafrur sho - My only brother committed a serious crime and became an outlaw.

Hagha dazé da suh dee? - What is that firing?

Nasibé dushmanān dā kala rāse nā jora shaway yé - May your disease become the lot of your enemies. How long have you been ill?

N.B. Linguistically this volume relates to the NWFP and Pakistani Pushtun regions.

The Modern Pushtun Instructor

[Bigduke6]

Two quick comments:

1. Bugles and a Tiger is one of the very best English-language books on the military subcontinent of the last century, in my opinion. It is not too terribly distant from Kim IMO.

2. I don't speak Pathan, but I think in that last example sentence I doped out the word "enemy": dushman. This is interesting because one of the slang terms for the mujahaddin the Red Army used was "dushman"; for example, "The dushmani are using Stingers against our Hind gunships." What's more, "dushman" predates Afghanistan in the Russian language by a long stretch; you can find references to fighting the "dushmani" in Soviet references to conquest/re-establisment of Moscow's authority over Central Asia in the 1920s.

Interesting how words get around.