Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia

Citation

Coleman, J. (2002), "Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia", European Business Review, Vol. 14 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2002.05414cab.007

Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia

Ahmed RashidI.B. Tauris & Co LtdLondon2001ISBN 1 86064 4171

This is surely one of the most remarkable books written in recent times, especially remembering that it was first published in 2000. It is easy to read it as an enlightening account of the problems of Central Asia, but in reality it is much more. It throws light on the most fundamental global problems. Rashid quotes Boutros Ghali's comment in 1995 that Afghanistan had become one of the world's orphaned conflicts – the one that the West, selective yet promiscuous in its attentions, happened to ignore in favour of Yugoslavia. There indeed was a conflict that might have been better left alone, which was Lord Carrington's judgement expressed in the recent film Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War.

Afghanistan, as Rashid points out, was probably the most important factor in the downfall of the Soviet Union – owing to the courage and determination of the Afghans – and some kind of response might well have been appropriate as well as the duty of the West, especially the USA. The most significant thing, to my mind, that comes out of all this is the disastrous effect that the domestic democratic process has on the foreign policy decisions of the so-called great powers. Again this is made abundantly clear in the West's decisions over the war in Yugoslavia. It is far too easy to use bloody conflicts abroad to sway voters at home who have little opportunity to appreciate the situation on the ground in foreign lands.

The core and purpose of this book is to throw some sort of light on the Afghan situation. In so doing it seems to me Rashid highlights in the most meaningful way the dilemmas faded by all sides. He shows how impossible the Taliban were to negotiate with, although there might have been a small window of opportunity after September 11 and Bin Laden might have been handed over to some kind of international tribunal instead of still remaining on the loose. The author shows graphically the kind of dilemma the West had to face about supporting the Northern Alliance. Rashid tells how General Dostum wielded power ruthlessly. When he arrived at the General's HQ at Mazar he noticed blood and pieces of flesh in the muddy courtyard of the fort.

"I immediately asked the guards if a goat had been slaughtered. They told me that an hour earlier Dostum had punished a soldier for stealing. The man had been tied to the tracks of a Russian-made tank, which then drove around the courtyard crushing his body into mincemeat, as the garrison and Dostum watched. The Uzbeks, the roughest and toughest of all the Central Asian nationalities, are noted for their love of marauding and pillaging – a hangover from their origins as part of Genghis Khan's hordes and Dostum was an apt leader. Over six feet tall with bulging biceps, Dostum is a bear of a man with a gruff laugh, which, some Uzbeks swear, has on occasion frightened people to death."

It must be hard to square support for such a man with the West's profession of human rights and only fighting "humanitarian" wars.

Ahmed Rashid has a clear long-term view of how the mess in Afghanistan may in the end be sorted out. He rejects as superficial the simple idea of a broad-based government in Kabul and thinks the major groups in the country must have a very large measure of authority, with only a co-ordinating structure in the capital, a sort of Leopold Kohr-style "Breakdown of Nations", which takes into account the needs and difficulties of Afghanistan's neighbours, who are variously affected by the different tribes at their borders.

The final chapter outlines a policy which in the long run would be best for everybody, even the oil companies, and ironically perhaps the events of September 11 may make it slightly easier to achieve. The remarkable praise from the serious press around the world must underline the importance of this book. I think it fair to say that what it indicates is that it is a mistake to indulge in blaming the USA too much but that the West as a whole failed this "orphaned" conflict after the collapse of communism.

John Coleman