Afghan Buzkashi: Power Games and Gamesmen. . - book review

Afghan Buzkashi: Power Games and Gamesmen. By Sreedhar and Mahendra Ved. Delhi: Wordsmiths, 2000. Vol. 1, 286 pages, Vol. 2, 271 pages. $60.00. Reviewed by Ali A. Jalali, former Afghan colonel and author of several books on Afghan military history, including The Other Side of the Mountain, coauthored with Lester Grau. Mr. Jalali is Chief of the Farsi (Persian) Service at the Voice of America, Washington, D.C.

(Editor's Note: This review was written before September 2001.)

The hallmark of the drawn-out civil war in Afghanistan is the fierce competition for power among foreign-backed factions. The competing interests of the domestic players and their foreign supporters have turned the conflict into a zero-sum game blocking a peaceful settlement. Many observers call it a new "Great Game," reminiscent of the British and Russian struggle in the 19th century for influence in Central Asia.

This book views the conflict as a grand Buzkashi game--a strenuous equestrian sport played in Afghanistan and Central Asia. In its traditional form, Buzkashi involves 20 or 30 individual horsemen (chapandaz) who jostle against each other to seize the carcass of a beheaded calf and then force it into the winner's circle while fighting through all the opposing horsemen. The game reflects the individuality, boldness, and fierce competitive spirit of the players who battle for a one-man victory.

Focusing on the external dynamics of the Afghan conflict, Afghan Buzkashi examines the regional implications of the battle for power by outside players in a contest where Afghanistan is the torn Buzkashi calf. Political domination and economic influence are the potential prizes for the winning chapandaz. The authors see themselves as referees on the sideline (although they are hardly impartial). Their book describes the game as a villain/victim showdown and a good guy/bad guy dichotomy. Pakistan is the aggressive chapandaz whose pact with the extremist Taliban movement threatens the interests of the other players. Remarkably, the political ambitions of the other chapandaz, including Iran, Russia, Tajikistan, and India, are downplayed.

Drawing heavily on selective media reports, the book feeds the fears that the Afghan crisis is the source of increasing instability and political complications in the region. It particularly emphasizes the threats of religious extremism, transnational terrorist activities, and the illicit drug trade fostered by the Pakistan-backed orthodox Muslim Taliban movement, which controls more than 90 percent of Afghanistan. Discussing at length the negative implications of the Afghan situation for Central Asia, Russia, Iran, China, and India, the book calls for multinational security arrangements to counter the threat.

One can hardly disagree with the authors that Pakistan is trying to use its patronage of the Taliban movement and its intimate ties with the Taliban militia to advance its political and geostrategic agenda. However, one cannot ignore the damaging effects of interference by other foreign actors that fuel the internal strife in Afghanistan. Similarly, it is easy to bash the Taliban movement, whose extremist policies have caused a lot of pain to the people inside Afghanistan and created security threats to its neighbors. But attributing the problems of Afghanistan solely to the Taliban and their Pakistani supporters risks neglecting other equally important factors that contribute to the continuation of the Afghan imbroglio. Ignoring the internal aspects of the conflict and their social and political dynamism has allowed the authors to draw misleading conclusions.

The authors, an Indian defense analyst and a correspondent for the Times of India, look at the situation strictly from an Indian national perspective. Their view appears strongly influenced by the long-standing Indo-Pakistani hostility over Kashmir. Citing the incursion of Pakistan-backed religious militants into Kashmir (Kargil) in 1999, the authors portray the Taliban as "a main threat to Indian security." The options for India, they say, might require efforts to "break this nexus between mercenaries in the guise of Mujahedin and Pakistani regular armed forces." The authors claim that they have gone entirely by "facts" to indulge in what some critics of their manuscript have called "Paki-bashing" and making the "Taliban synonymous with Pakistan." Clearly, instead of an objective, scholarly quest for credible evidence, the authors have picked the "facts" selectively to support a particular political agenda. They rely heavily on an odd assortment of secondary sources, including statements by Indian diplomats, unchecked one-sided assertions from the Afghan conflict, and a significant amount of pure speculation. In certain cases, the line between established facts and the authors' conjecture is very fuzzy.

The authors' lopsided product asserts that the Taliban is not a genuine Afghan movement but a covert Pakistani intelligence operation. They even go further to deny the actual Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. They claim that it was the Pakistani army that fought the Soviet army in Afghanistan and forced it out of the country, while the Afghan Mujahedin are merely the by-product of the war! In stark contrast with historical facts and reputable studies, the authors claim that the Afghan refugees were forced by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States to fight the Soviet invasion. The authors claim that Pakistan invented the Mujahedin title and provided them with their "ideological framework."

The authors' reinterpretation of the region's history is replete with factual errors and problematic interpretations. They assert that Afghanistan as a political entity was separated from India in 1739 by a treaty between the Mughal Emperor and Nadir shah of Iran. The assessment ignores nearly two centuries of political and military interaction between Afghanistan and India--first under the Afghan Durrani Empire in the 18th century, and then during the British rule in India in the 19th and early 20th centuries that spawned three Anglo-Afghan wars.

The second volume of the book is an elaborate collection of official documents, media reports, background information, and op-ed pieces selectively collated and edited. It offers a ready reference on current Afghan and Afghan-related developments. Despite the trappings of scholarship, the text is not free of errors. The chapter on the Afghan military structure is probably the most disappointing part. What the authors present as the "Armed Forces Organization of Afghanistan" is an incomplete list of Pashto terms identifying the size of military units. The outline of the "Armed Forces Command Structure" is also a distorted roster of ranks in the Afghan army.

In many other sections the authors are also off the mark. For example, they state that Tajikistan's natural gas reserves are five times larger than those of Turkmenistan and that former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Taliban-controlled areas in Afghanistan in 1997. They also state that "Sofism is an amalgam of Buddhist and Shaman Christian beliefs," and that "the 200-odd Peace Corps workers located in Kyrgyzstan" in 1998 were working for US intelligence. With no source given, the book claims that 90 percent of Afghan drug money is taken by Pakistan intelligence.

Finally, in response to security threats emanating from Afghanistan, the authors call for the development of a coordinated policy among India, Iran, Russia, and China to counter the adverse fallout from Afghanistan. One can agree that some sort of international effort is needed to stabilize the situation around Afghanistan. However, the key to long-term stability in the region is restoration of peace in Afghanistan itself. Creating a cordon-sanitaire around the troubled country would not end the threat to the region's instability, particularly when the neighboring nations pursue diverging security policies.

Writing at the beginning of the last century, renowned Urdu poet of the Indian subcontinent Eqbal Lahori hailed Afghanistan for its historical drive and vitality. He called it the "heart of Asia" and said the continent will suffer when the heart is in trouble. Asia is different today, but still the "trouble" caused by instability in Afghanistan is being felt far beyond the Afghan borders. Peace and stability in the region, for many reasons, hinge on restoration of peace and normalcy in Afghanistan. Restoration of that peace and normalcy should begin with understanding. Unfortunately, this book does little to contribute to that understanding, preferring to deal in diatribe and bias. Clearly, the authors see their India as part of the Buzkashi game--tearing at the Afghan calf.

COPYRIGHT 2001 U.S. Army War College
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