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

Parameters, Winter, 2001 by Ali A. Jalali

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."