The Fragmentation of Afghanistan

The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan has made clear that the crisis in that country was not only one of foreign intervention but also of the breakdown-indeed, fragmentation-of a state. Having sacrificed over a million lives, the people of Afghanistan today face the unhappy alternatives of a government they reject and a resistance they fear. The turbulence of this once isolated land can no longer be a matter of indifference to a world whose powers have invested so much in the struggle. Five to six million Afghan refugees-more than a third of the country's population-strain the resources of neighboring Pakistan and Iran. The United States and U.S.S.R., having spent years of effort and billions of dollars and rubles, continue to pour in sophisticated firepower. A disaster for the Afghan people, a permanent danger for Pakistan, a serious irritant in U.S.-Soviet relations, the conflict in Afghanistan continues.

Is there a way out?

II

Afghanistan consists of the Hindu Rush mountain range with its fertile but isolated valleys, and the deserts, river valleys and steppes that flank it. The dispersed peoples of this sparsely settled area belong to a variety of ethnic groups, several of which are divided into rival tribes and clans. The dominant group is the Pashtuns, composed of the Durrani tribes from whom came the kings who ruled Afghanistan from 1747 to 1973 and their rivals, the Ghilzais and the eastern tribes, which spill over into Pakistan. There are also Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazaras, Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and Turkmen and others.

These peoples became the inhabitants of a buffer state demarcated by Britain and Russia in the early twentieth century. The state that developed within the boundaries drawn by these imperial powers never developed the capacity to extract sufficient resources from its own territory and population, but instead depended on the financial and military resources it obtained from foreign governments. A tribally based monarchy oversaw a weak administration imposed on a mosaic of peoples not integrated into a common economy or nationality. They retained their local systems of self-government, often tribal institutions, which also provided the basis of popular military organization against foreign invaders or an overweening ruler.