Ravan Farhadi was serving as a diplomat for the Royal Government of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C., in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated. Today, as the United Nations representative of the Northern Alliance, an Afghan coalition that opposes the Taliban government, Farhadi faces an even greater challenge as part of the international debate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In a speech sponsored by the Princeton Committee Against Terrorism with support from the Wilson School, Farhadi will speak on the role of Afghanistan in the current crisis at 6:30 p.m. today in McCosh 50.
Afghanistan has served as a haven for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network, experts say, but the foundations of the current crisis were laid decades before Sept. 11.
The story begins in the 1980s, when Muslims fought to end Soviet control of Afghanistan in what Dr. Zia Mian of the Wilson School's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies called "the last great battle of the Cold War."
The United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan encouraged these mujahideen, or holy warriors, and supported them with money and arms, Near Eastern Studies professor Michael Doran said. The warriors, among whom was bin Laden, came from many Islamic countries and united to expel the "godless" communists from Afghanistan, Mian said.
At the same time, some 2.5 million Afghan refugees amassed just across the Pakistani border. While the men fought, their children attended religious seminaries teaching a rigid fundamentalist Sunni Muslim doctrine.
The Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, and for a few years the Soviet government hung on, Mian said. However, the old government fell soon after and the mujahideen came into power, breaking into factions along ethnic and religious lines. These groups included a faction that would become the Taliban — a group composed mainly of people of Pashtun ethnicity and adhering to a strict Sunni doctrine — and the groups that would become the Northern Alliance — a coalition of ethnic-based organizations that opposed the Taliban, Mian said.
In 1992, the Northern Alliance took control of Afghanistan in a series of brutal battles, Mian said. But their ability to govern the country was not commensurate with their capacity to wrest military control. "They'd been fighting the Soviet Union for 10 years, so these weren't people who had any experience actually governing a country," he added.
In 1996, as civil war continued to ravage Afghanistan, the Taliban took power and restored a certain level of stability to the country, Mian said.
The Taliban can be seen as "Frankenstein's monster," brought to life by the United States and Pakistan, Doran said. "But the U.S. could not take credit for the Taliban — nor should they have to," he added.
Under this climate of a fundamentalist Muslim government ruling a country emerging from 20 years of civil war, bin Laden further developed his terrorist network and gathered his strength.
Bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian by birth, had fought beside some of the Taliban leaders against the Soviets, and the two parties now shared "a coincidence of interests," Mian said. "[Bin Laden] gave them money, he gave them equipment, he gave them outside contacts," Mian explained, and in return the Taliban gave him a base for his terrorist operations.
Some Americans have promoted the Northern Alliance as an alternative to the Taliban, one they claim will not permit terrorism to flourish inside its borders.
"We are privileged to host their emissary, who will assuage the concerns that many have raised that America is waging a war on the people of Afghanistan," said Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky '04, a PCAT organizer. "To the contrary, Dr. Farhadi will demonstrate that our countries share a mutual cause."
Robert Finn GS '78, a visiting Near Eastern Studies professor and former U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan, said, "I think our goal is to create a situation in which a new government can be created in Afghanistan." The hope is that a new government would be a more inclusive one, Finn said, and one unlikely to support anti-U.S. terrorism.
Currently, U.S. support for the Northern Alliance seems to be limited to creating a situation in which the Taliban could be removed from power, allowing a new state to assume power, Finn said.
However, Doran said, this support for the Northern Alliance could destabilize long-standing relations in the region and beyond. "If the U.S. was to support the Northern Alliance," he said, "it means it would be supporting the traditional enemy of Pakistan and the traditional ally of Iran."
Pakistan supports the Taliban because the two have a large number of Sunni Muslims and Pashtuns, Doran said. There are also millions of Afghan refugees within Pakistan. Though Pakistan has agreed to cooperate with the United States, if American support for the Alliance grew it could alienate Pakistan, souring their cooperation with America, Doran said.
"Our nation will support them to some extent," he said, "but stop short of installing them."
"The simple solution is to support the Northern Alliance, but by doing so it goes against a web of established relations," he added.
Some experts are also concerned that if the Taliban topples, the ensuing internal power struggles will again devastate the country. "If they really want to fight terrorism, they should make sure it has a feasible government," said Near Eastern Studies professor Negin Nabavi, "one which has laws and can prosecute terrorists."
The Taliban has restored some degree of stability to Afghanistan, Mian said, but is often criticized for an "abominable" human rights record. The Northern Alliance's record of violence and brutality is no better, he noted.
From 1992 to 1996, while the Northern Alliance held power in Kabul, they ruled brutally. "There were numerous abuses," said T. Kumar, an official with Amnesty International-USA, "Extrajudicial arrests, rapes, kidnapping, murder . . . everything under the sun."
According to a Feb. 2001 U.S. State Department report, "Armed units of the Northern Alliance, local commanders, and rogue individuals were responsible for political killings, abductions, kidnappings for ransom, torture, rape, arbitrary detention and looting."
"If [a nation] is trying to hold hands with any Afghan groups, they're all going to have blood on their hands," Kumar said.
And the next sentence to this story may be told tonight in McCosh 50 by Farhadi.
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