From warlords to peacelords?

• Author: Peake, Gordon
• Position: The Future of Afghanistan

In a country with a deep tradition of localized and personalized rule, the prospect of a centralized government--the base around which reconstruction efforts were to be harnessed in the aftermath of the war against the Taliban--remains distant. Instead of becoming peacelords, many Afghan warlords are now closer to peacemongers.

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MEETING THE LEADER

The ceremony involved in meeting any leader in Afghanistan encapsulates a number of features that underpin leadership in the country. Bypassing phalanxes of armed guards, one is led through a series of atria, each filled with followers who have come seeking arbitration, judgment and adjudication on issues ranging from property disputes to business. The longer the queue, the more important the leader. Entering a large receiving room, one is then ushered in to meet the leader, normally found holding court among a coterie of advisers, followers and petitioners. A video camera records the moment, which often makes its way onto the local evening news. (1) The message is clear: A force of arms, allied with the cultivation and maintenance of followers and dependents are the key features of what makes a leader in current Afghanistan.

LEADERSHIP AND POLITICAL CHANGE

Engaged leadership is essential for countries to survive the transition from conflict to more peaceful futures. In anomic states, this observation is even more true, as, bereft of institutions, the influence of leadership and its capacity to effect political change is further increased. Since their key roles in abetting and alleviating conflict are almost intuitive, a great deal of academic literature has discussed the role leaders play in conflict situations. Much of it, however, seems inapplicable to present-day Afghanistan. (2) The literature focuses on transitions led by leaders who identified the need for profound political change and acted accordingly, but in Afghanistan local leaders played little or no part in engineering either the pace or nature of the transition from conflict to peace. (3) Leaders were catapulted along in the tumult, and their current behavior largely can be characterized as scrambling to maintain their positions. In an effort to make sense of the current state of Afghan politics, this article explores the historical trends of political leadership in the country, its current influence on developments and lessons that can be drawn for other countries facing similar leadership crises.

WARLORD POLITICS

It is almost a cliche to refer to many of the current crop of Afghani leaders as warlords. An evocative term, it conjures up a series of cinematic images of leadership in societies beset by protracted, violent conflict. With positions of power and authority organized around ethnic, tribal, sectional and clan lines, this type of leadership emerges from failed states where the structure, authority and power of the central government have either decayed or fragmented altogether. (4) Beginning as a term to describe leaders in pre-Communist China, the label has also been assigned to leadership in Liberia, Somalia, Lebanon and Burma, among other places. Although the countries are geographically disparate, the traits exercised by such leaders are similar in a number of respects.

Warlords are characterized as leaders who control and police specific areas of territory within the state where the writ of the central government does not run. Their political ascendance is inextricably linked to their military power. Through either trade in extractive resources or the levying of taxes and duties, they exercise degrees of economic and political power, which often exceeds that of the country's central government. With a personal and charismatic form of leadership, a warlord's style is autocratic with little formal consultation.

Many in the current crop of Afghan leaders neatly fit this description. Rooting their legitimacy in their backgrounds as military commanders, many of Afghanistan's significant leaders have regional power and authority that collectively match--if not outweigh--that of the fledgling central administration, set up in December 2001 to replace the Taliban regime. Their role in the fall of the Taliban earned many of them high international profiles. Northern leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, Defense Minister Muhammad Fahim and Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Shirzai have name recognition matching that of the country's president, Humid Karzai.

Amid the world's newfound attention on their leadership and the reconstruction of Afghanistan's government to a more representative and inclusive form, is it accurate to re-label these warlords as "peacelords"--a transition once envisioned, if not expected, by many? At this point, the assessment is bleak. In a country with a deep tradition of localized and personalized rule, the prospect of a centralized government--the base around which reconstruction efforts were to be harnessed in the aftermath of the war against the Taliban--remains distant. Instead of becoming peacelords, many Afghan warlords are now closer to peacemongers. They retain control of their own areas in order to reap the large economic gains and take benefits that suit them in the process of their country's reconstruction, such as national title and financial rewards, but they fail to contribute fully to the achievement of lasting peace. Their relationship with the central government is ambivalent at best.

So far, the various international actors in the country have done little to halt this drift toward regionalization. Indeed, at times their actions have even encouraged it. Having used some leaders and their fighters as local proxies in the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the U.S. presidential administration continues to support these leaders on an individual basis, giving them little incentive to centralize. (5) Other international actors, most significantly the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), created to shepherd the country through the early throes of reconstruction, have insufficient leverage to reverse this tendency. (6) Their mandate is too restrictive to have significant influence on political developments. They have neither carrot nor stick to sway local leaders. It is a similar story with the large number of international development organizations that regularly liaise, consult and cooperate with local leaders. (7)

WHO ARE THE LEADERS?

Most leaders' political prominence derives from their history either as commanders of the mujahedeen in the war against the Soviet-backed government or as leaders of militias. At the end of the war, these leaders maintained existing positions of authority by retaining a loyal corps of fighters and distributing patronage through wages. By controlling security, a leader controls the flow of trade and goods in and out of the area under his control. With personal charisma, a leader builds up a client base, which helps to accumulate the resources and funds required to cement his position of authority. Through the intertwining of security and business interests, local networks of dependence, influence...