America At War:
Afghanistan -- What Happens Next?
With Steve Coll
Washington Post Managing Editor
Monday, Nov. 19, 2001; 2:30 p.m. EST

A U.S.-led coalition and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance have driven the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network from most of northern Afghanistan, including major strongholds Kabul and Jalalabad. Northern Alliance troops have taken control of the areas. Men are shaving their beards, women are removing veils and commerce -- in the form of TVs, VCRs, videotapes and other items -- began less than 24 hours after the Taliban's departure.

Despite a seemingly "eviscerated" Taliban, the future of Afghanistan is far from certain. Will the Northern Alliance replace the Taliban as the ruling party, or will they step aside, as some have reported, once a broad-based Afghan government is formed? Will the U.S. and U.N. play a large role in reconstructing that government and restore a level of stability in the region?

Washington Post Managing Editor Steve Coll will be online Monday, Nov. 19 at 2:30 p.m. EST, to discuss the future of Afghanistan.

Submit your questions before or during the hour.

Coll spent three years in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent for The Washington Post.

Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.

Cleveland, Ohio: The last time Northern Alliance was in power, they ended up fighting among themselves and caring little for the Afghan People. This anarchy in a way was responsible for the rapid rise to power of Taliban.

What has changed in the last five years that would prevents the selfish motives of the Northern Alliance?

Steve Coll: Hello everybody. A lot of good questions in the queue. Here's one to start with. Whether or not the Northern Alliance will behave differently this time around, in comparison to when they last governed Kabul in the mid-1990s, is one of the central questions now confronting the United States and the U.N. By far the biggest change is the engagement of the world's major powers. The multi-phased civil war that engulfed Afghanistan during the 1990s was of Afghan making, to be sure, but it was also fueled by interference from regional powers such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran--and by the utter indifference of the United States and other major players on the global stage. This time, the U.S. and Europe seem determined, at least initially, to engage with money, diplomatic influence, and of course, military power. By force and persuasion, the hope is, the West may be able to contain the Northern Alliance's fratricidal tendencies, just as they managed to smooth out seemingly intractable conflicts in the Balkans with robust peacekeeping and copious financial aid.

Annandale, Va.: Is there a way to separate the threads of religious and ethnic (tribal) identity in Afghanistan, and is there any history to suggest that the Afghans could develop a political identity that overrides both religion and ethnicity?

Steve Coll: Most Afghans do have a sense of themselves as Afghans, beyond their ethnic and tribal and religious affiliations. But it is often not as strong a source of identity as the older, enduring identities of tribe. It is possible to imagine a stable, decentralized, federated Afghanistan that achieves a (more or less) peaceful balance between national identity and local power. At the same time, unfortunately, two decades of continuous war has stoked and exacerbated ethnic hatreds that used to not be a very significant factor in Afghanistan. Massacres of civilians based on their ethnic identity alone, while not unheard of in the past, are seen by some scholars as a vile, "modern" aspect of Afghanistan's internal conflicts.

New York, N.Y.: Have you been to Afghanistan?

Steve Coll: Yes, many times, although not recently.

Cleveland, Ohio: What happened to the four western journalists in Afghanistan?

Steve Coll: We're still gathering information from the field. One of our reporters, Pamela Constable, who has been doing outstanding work from Pakistan and Afghanistan during the last several years, was riding in the convoy that included the journalists who were apparently killed. She is safe, fortunately. She tells us that a convoy of journalists departed the eastern city of Jalalabad, intending to make the drive--less than 100 miles--to the capital of Kabul. That road traverses canyons and river valleys that are natural for ambushes and have been havens for bandits for many years. Apparently the journalists in the lead car were stopped by somebody manning an armed roadblock, and reportedly, the victims were taken from their cars by those who stopped them and were shot dead. It's not clear who did the killing. The rest of the journalists in the convoy, warned by a surviving driver, turned around and made it safely back to Jalalabad.

Washington, D.C.: There have been many Afghan women's group pressing to be included in the peace talks. Since women were prominent in politics and other fields prior to 1992, do you think the U.S. will push this issue?

I have heard way too many people talking about "cultural" differences, when in fact Afghan women will tell you there is no cultural, historical reason for them to be left out.

Steve Coll: It's not clear to me how the Bush Administration intends to manage the issue of women's rights in the negotiations that seem now about to unfold. On the one hand, the First Lady, and others in the administration, have spoken out recently against the oppression of women in Afghanistan. On the other hand, much of the American emphasis about the upcoming negotiations has been to let the Afghans make their own decisions and appoint their own delegations to the greatest possible extent--and that approach, if it is followed through, will likely result in the total exclusion of women as political decision-makers, even in the non-Taliban areas of the North.

Alexandria, Va.: The Taliban have offered to surrender their stronghold in the North if the Northern Alliance promises not to kill the non-Afghan Al Qaeda members there.

If the Al Qaeda fighters survive and go home to the Arab countries, Chechnya and Pakistan won't the Al Qaeda problem get worse, not better? If they get away then someday some of the surviving Al Qaeda members will get student visas to come to America, I am sure.

Steve Coll: I would imagine that decision-makers in the Bush Administration see this issue more or less as you describe it. I would guess that they do not want to be party to mass executions of the non-Afghan fighters holed up in Kunduz, but on the other hand, the prospect of allowing these fighters to leave unmolested would seem directly in conflict with key American goals in the war.

Intelligence Question: My question has more to do with intelligence gathering. It seems that Europe's intelligence agencies are way ahead of the CIA and other agencies in the U.S. I have also heard that we lack sufficient staff who can speak foreign languages and do basic things like read documents in Persian, Pashto and others. Do you think if we had had a first-rate intelligence service that was more responsive to the public and the government it serves, we could have avoided the need to attack Afghanistan? Or indeed foiled the Sept. 11 attacks?

Steve Coll: I'm not sure that European intelligence agencies knew anything more about al Qaeda before September 11 than the Americans did. Certainly they allowed a fair number of al Qaeda cells to flourish in their midst and are now changing their approach to this threat very rapidly. But I don't have enough first-hand information to judge that question one way or another. As to the expertise of the U.S. intelligence agencies, it's true that during the 1990s, the entire U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy allowed its Afghan expertise to atrophy to some extent as decision-makers turned their attention elsewhere. During the 1980s, when the U.S. supported anti-Soviet mujaheddin rebels in Afghanistan, there was far more active expertise in the government and it was more widely dispersed across the foreign policy bureaucracy. It is difficult to recreate that expertise on the fly, but that's what has been happening since September 11--including calls being put through to many former Afghan experts to come out of retirement, which they are doing.

Brooklyn, N.Y.: Do you think that the Taliban will have any role in the new government?

Steve Coll: It seems clear that important commanders, governors, and other leaders who had prominent roles when the Taliban ruled Kabul will end up with prominent roles in post-Taliban Afghanistan. But whether they will call themselves "the Taliban" or not, and whether such a political party or movement will be permitted in the arrangements now to be negotiated, seems uncertain at this stage. The Taliban ended up building a coalition to rule Afghanistan and swept up all sorts of tribal leaders and military commanders who did not fully share their religious and political philosophy. The Taliban leadership now largely deposed was quite a specific, cultish group whose view of Islam was formed in a small network of Deobandi religious schools along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. That specific, often intolerant and severe idea of Islam is not common in Afghanistan and was in many respects imposed by a relatively small group of Taliban leaders. The political future of that smaller group--Mullah Omar, his cabinet, the Kandahar Shura, the Kabul Shura--now looks in doubt. But others in their former coalition will undoubtedly survive, and they may even seek to resurrect the banner of the Taliban as a political movement.

Washington, D.C.: Is there a model that Afghanistan should follow when instituting a legitimate government?

Steve Coll: I would not hazard advice. I can describe the thinking that others propound. The Bush Administration, as it prepares for the negotiations about Afghanistan's political future, seems to be operating on the hypothesis that a very loose, localized federated form of government will be the best system. This approach reflects their belief that when Kabul governments have attempted to impose a uniform political system in Afghanistan--whether communist, as in the late 1970s, or Wahabbi Islam, as with the Taliban in the late 1990s--it almost always ends badly, because central rule cuts too much against the grain of Afghanistan's local ethnic and tribal arrangements. But getting from here to there, even if that model prevails, will be a rocky road. The first meaningful conference bringing the major factions together in the same place has yet to occur. "Soon" is again the watchword for that conference--in Europe, perhaps in the next week--but it's been coming "soon" for a number of weeks now, so we'll have to see.

Washington, D.C.: Do the Northern Alliance warlords have it in them, now that they've reconquored some major cities, to turn around and share power with people they've just fought? In order for peace to work, Pashtuns and people from other southern ethnic groups will have to be included in the government, but that will require the Northern Alliance to work with their former enemies. Do you think that can happen?

Steve Coll: Maybe. It sort of depends on what your average Northern Alliance warlord really wants. If you assume he (always he, I'm afraid) wants power, patronage and money more than, say, ideological purity or national hegemony, then a fully engaged international community may--in some sort of rough and imperfect way--may ultimately be able to tamp down the factions in their localized realms, and keep them relatively stable by pouring a ton of money in through aid, jobs, and reconstruction packages. This is more or less what NATO did in the seemingly intractable Balkans after the West decided to intervene there. I'm not sure that model can translate to Afghanistan, but where there are strong local governors--such as in Herat, where Ismail Khan governs now without much opposition, and in the Panjshir Valley, and to a lesser extent in Mazaar--yes, it may work. The problem right now is that the South and the East look like such scrambled eggs in military and political terms that it's not clear when coherent local leaders who are not violently opposed by somebody or other will emerge.

Austin, Tex.: Do you see any one person able to lead a coalition government (Zahir Shah, Rabbani, etc.) in Afghanistan or do you believe that something like a "group of peers" or something along that line will need to be convened amongst different tribal elements and from that a leader potentially (or ultimately) selected?

Steve Coll: A group of peers or something along that line seems likely to have the best chance of success at this stage. Probably in the form of a coalition government where power is divided and shared between a presidency and a prime minister, and then among key cabinet positions and local governorships. Zahir Shah is regarded even by his family as too aged to govern Afghanistan actively, even if he could win broad support, which is itself questionable. Rabbani, while the U.N.-recognized president, in real politik terms represents only the ethnic groups at the heart of the Northern Alliance and probably could never win a strong following in the South. Nor is there an anti-Taliban Pashtun leader of special prominence, outside of the aged king. So at least for this transition period, some sort of coalition seems inevitable.

Washington, D.C.: I remember that the U.S. ambassador to Afganistan -- a man named Dubbs -- was assinated during the 1980s. Who was responsible for his death? Along these same lines, I also recall Secretary of State Albright saying a few years ago that "problems left alone overseas come home to America." Yet in the last presidential election there was relatively little focus or concern about U.S. foreign policy and engagement. Do you think the American people and our leaders are finally ready to get and stay behind a really proactive U.S. engagement now, unfortunately only after Sept. 11? For example, will we now agree to spend more than just a penny of every federal dollar on foreign affairs and foreign aid?

Steve Coll: The ambassador was kidnapped and murdered in a Kabul hotel room--I believe by leftists, but I could be mistaken. As to the other question about American isolationism, I wonder. The last great surprise attack on America--Pearl Harbor--signalled an epochal turn in the U.S. from what had been the isolationism of the 30s to the internationslism of the 40s and early 50s. Surely there will be more engagement in foreign affairs, and more money allocated to foreign aid budgets, for the next five or ten years, than there was in the previous five or ten years. But how much more I wouldn't want to try to forecast.

Kuwait: After the departure of Taliban this is expected that the political vacuum will engulf the Afghanistan. In 1980, the CIA and U.S. government pumped billions of dollars into Afghanistan. However, all this money was eaten up by corrupt ISI officers and some warlords.
Technically, the U.S. now appears a decisive force in Afghanistan. And it has a moral duty to provide social and political justice to this war torn country.

This is very important -- that a stable government on the wishes of people is established not for the convinence of neighboring countries who want a puppet government in Afghanistan.

This is also utmost important that all monetary help to be executed by the U.S. or British staff himself and no brokers should be hired for this purpose.

Establishing a big hospital and providing bedding blankets or establishing a medicine producing factory developing vaccines is utmost important.

Problem of madarssahs producing Taliban can only be met if proper and good schools are established and teachers from all around the world to be hired.

An aid reaching directly to the poor people will have a positive effect and any aid given to brokers going to their bank accounts will have adverse effect.

Steve Coll: The Bush Administration has announced on a number of occasions since September 11 that it believes U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after the Cold War was, in retrospect, a mistake. (If so, it was a mistake that began during the presidency of George W. Bush's father, and then was perpetuated during the Clinton Administration.) What policies this will lead to by way of aid and reconstruction is something just now being formulated in Washington. There is a big aid donors conference here this week and sizable aid packages are likely to be developed during the first months of next year, assuming the war takes no surprising turns.

Portland, Ore.: Even with the withdrawal of Taliban presence in certain areas, are women in Afghanistan truly safe removing their veils and travel alone openly? Do the (non-Taleban) men support more freedom for women, or are there many who seem keen to maintain control. In short, will the repression of women continue?

Steve Coll: Even in the non-Taliban areas of Afghanistan, women enjoy few legal rights or social freedoms. One minimal question, however, involves access of women to education and their right to work. Prior to the rise of the Taliban, even in rural areas, at least some girls and women could hope to learn to read and to pursue education, and in some cases to migrate to cities and marry and hold jobs. Not exactly the life of a singleton in Manhattan, but in the context of rural Afghanistan, modestly progressive. The Taliban came in an ended all of that, forcing women into roles of isolation and subservancy, and making them victims of violence, to an extent not known in Afghanistan for at least a century, if ever.

Wilmington, Del.: With the recent murders of journalists in Afghanistan does The Washington Post provide bodygaurds to their employees working over there?

Steve Coll: We talk with our correspondents continously about how to best manage risk and stay safe. Often they're in a better position than we are to judge what is the best course in a particular setting. There have been places, such as Somalia and Algeria, where foreign correspondents have routinely hired bodyguards. In other cases having a bodyguard may simply put you at more risk by attracting rival gunmen. Whatever the right course in a particular situation, we will spare no expense to keep our correspondents safe.

Steve Coll: Okay, I guess I'll sign off now. Thanks to everyone who wrote in questions.

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