Our scary new best friends
Afghanistan's Northern Alliance may be the enemy of our enemy, but it has its own grim history of violence and abuse of power.
By Ken Silverstein
Sept. 25, 2001 | WASHINGTON -- As the United States gears up for a seemingly inevitable military conflict in Afghanistan, the Bush administration speaks with great excitement about the support it expects to receive from an anti-Taliban group called the Northern Alliance. Though it only holds about 10 percent of Afghanistan, Congress is discussing sending the Alliance money and weapons, and the Pentagon reportedly has tentative plans to train it with the help of Special Forces units.
Last Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the rebels "know the lay of the land" and "can be a lot of help" in a campaign against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. The press has dutifully followed the lead. The New York Times, in its lead Monday story, pointed out that the Northern Alliance has enjoyed the support of Iran and Russia, and supporting it would therefore "help the United States balance the interest of its outside partners." The Washington Post noted that the "rebels have been fighting the Taliban since the mid-1990s, and no one knows the territory better than they do." The Post quoted an Alliance leader as saying that there is "a unique opportunity on the horizon" to topple the Taliban and that his group is more than willing to "fight against terrorism." On the Fox News Channel, a defense analyst named David Isby called the rebels the "on-the-ground alternative to the Taliban."
Lost, however, amid the hype around our newfound allies, which ruled Afghanistan from 1992 until 1996, is their own troubling history -- including shocking human rights records, thievery and a sheer governing incompetence that in large part led to the rise of the Taliban.
"Many of their leaders should be indicted for war crimes," says Patricia Gossman, a consultant on human rights in South Asia who has traveled widely in the region. "Some top [alliance] commanders have records almost as bad as that of the Taliban."
Summing up the group's four years in power, a Human Rights Watch report issued in July reports that there "was virtually no rule of law" in any of the areas it controlled and that its constituent members, constantly warring with each other, were guilty of summary executions, arbitrary arrest, torture and "disappearances." One terrible outburst took place in 1995, when one faction of the group captured a neighborhood in Kabul that had been an opposition's stronghold. The "troops went on a rampage, systematically looting whole streets and raping women," according to a State Department account of the events.
The level of ignorance about the anti-Taliban rebels is so great that the government and press don't even call it by its proper name. The Northern Alliance was the name of a coalition of forces, including some in the current anti-Taliban movement, that existed in the early-1990s. The organization that the government and press now speak of so fondly is actually called the United National Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, or the United Front. The United Front supports the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA), the regime ousted by the Taliban five years ago.
But it was disgust with the United Front that paved the way for the Taliban, which arose in 1994 and effectively gained power two years later. Since then, the various United Front factions have been mostly on the run, though they have all continued to be responsible for terror attacks on their enemies. In 1997, in the strategic town of Mazar-i Sharif, Junbish troops systematically slaughtered at least 3,000 captured Taliban troops, some of whom were stuffed down wells and blown up with hand grenades, according to accounts cited by Human Rights Watch. The United Nations all but ignored the Taliban's demand that it investigate the massacre. Of course, the Taliban was less interested in promoting human rights when it took back the city and slaughtered between 2,000 and 8,000 people in the streets.
In September of 1998, troops believed to be under the command of recently slain military leader Ahmed Shah Massoud fired rockets into Kabul. One hit a busy market, where as many as 180 people were killed. In late 1999 and early 2000, people fleeing from villages near Sangcharak reported to humanitarian workers that United Front troops, who had held the town for four months, had carried out summary executions, burned down houses and conducted wide-scale looting. Some of those executed were reportedly killed in front of family members.
Even today, the United Front is less of a front than a very loose coalition united by its hatred of the Taliban. It is torn by factional clashes and personal rivalries, with the various partners so mistrustful of each other that they have never merged their military structures and have no united strategy to confront the Taliban.
But the United Front's ugly side can't be a surprise to the press. Since Sept. 11, several thousand people, presumably many of them journalists, have requested the July report from Human Rights Watch, which details much of what is reported here. Instead, most reporters and pundits seem to be patriotically turning a blind eye to our new partner's shortcomings. Last weekend, columnist George Will effectively wrote that any partner will do in the war on the Taliban. He approvingly cited Churchill, who once said that he'd find something good to say about the devil if Hitler invaded hell.