Amin Saikal

Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Question of Pashtun Nationalism?

The Pashtun people that straddle Afghanistan and Pakistan are divided along family, clan and tribal lines, but constitute an ethnic-based nation in the classic sense of the term. Since the end of 2001, many of them find themselves subjected to intense efforts by the Afghan and Pakistani governments, backed by the US and many of its allies, to expunge the Pashtun-dominated radical Taliban Islamic movement from their midst. However, many Pashtuns now see themselves as squeezed in by adversarial forces, encroaching upon their religion, land, resources, honour, and cultural-social norms and values. In the absence of a return to peace and stability in their lives and locations, they are becoming increasingly prone to accommodating the Taliban not only as a religious, but also as a nationalist movement, and could eventually brush aside their historical divisions, and rally behind the Taliban leadership in pursuit of their historical goal of an independent “Pashtunistan”. This paper identifies several ways of acting to avert such a development—a consideration that seems to be missing in the strategic calculations of the Afghan and Pakistani governments, as well as their international backers.

Authoritarianism, revolution and democracy: Egypt and beyond

The pro-democracy Arab popular uprisings have been spontaneous, but perhaps not all that unpredictable. They have come against the backdrop of a growing gulf between the rulers and the ruled, political repression, social and economic inequalities, demographic changes, unemployment and foreign policy debacles. Although the uprisings began in Tunisia, it is the case of Egypt that illustrates the situation more compellingly and the impact that it has had on the rest of the Arab world. It is not clear at this stage what will be the ultimate outcome. But what can be said with certainty is that the Arab peoples have set out on a long journey in pursuit of genuine self-determination. The journey will be arduous and unsettling for the Arabs and outsiders, but this has to be treated as part of a transition from a dictatorial past to a politically pluralist future.

The Roots of Iran's Election Crisis

The Iranian leaderships handling of the dispute over the June 2009 presidential election not only bitterly alienated a sizeable proportion of the population; it also deeply split the ruling clerics. The government has lost the support of many ranking Islamist figures, whose continued backing is necessary to maintain its coherence and effectiveness, and its legitimacy has been eroded. If it fails to modify its authoritarian Islamist mindset and power structure to claw back some, if not all, of its lost clerical and public support, the scene is set for a greater popular backlash in the long run. The current turmoil, ostensibly sparked by the election results, stems from a confluence of factors, including growing public discontent with the regimes theocratic behaviour, economic mismanagement and foreign-policy embarrassments, especially since Ahmadinejad became president in 2005. These are symptomatic, however, of deeper structural problems in the nature of the Islamic government that has evolved in Iran.

Dimensions of state disruption and international responses

In the post-Cold War period there has been a dramatic increase in the number of states which can be classified as disrupted, thus creating a major source of political, social and military turbulence and instability in world politics. The causes have been varied, ranging from the fragmentation of the national elite and breakdown of social order, ethnic antagonisms, ideological struggle, confessional or sectarian strife to legitimacy crises and separatism. This has focused attention once again on the future of the international system. This paper considers the nature of disrupted states, the external and internal sources of the disruption, and the options that are available to the international community, in particular whether there is an appropriate role for the United Nations.

Islam and the West

Relations between the Muslim world and the Christian West, led by the United States, are complex and multidimensional. Yet two strong but contradictory views continue to raise serious concerns about the state of this relationship at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and each view comes with varying nuances (for a detailed discussion, see Esposito, 1992; Said, 1997, especially Chapter 1; Halliday, 1995, especially Chapter 3). One view is that Islamic ‘fundamentalism’, as propounded by those political forces of Islam which are contemptuous or distrustful of Western, and more specifically American, values and international behaviour, lies at the core of problems between the two sides. This view presents the phenomenon of fundamentalism as poisonous, and calls for the arrest and if possible the elimination of its influence in international relations. This view, which gained salience in the late twentieth century following the Iranian revolution of 1978/79, still resonates strongly in the thinking and policy behaviour of a number of influential elements in various Western capitals — most importantly, Washington. The emergence on the international scene of such radical Islamic forces as the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, Harakat ul-Ansar and its successor Harakat ul-Mujahideen in Pakistan, a cluster of Kashmiri groups associated with the last two, the Lebanese Hezbullah, the Palestinian Hamas, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and the Algerian Islamic League — an outgrowth of the Islamic Salvation Front — has helped to perpetuate this view.

The UN and Afghanistan: A case of failed peacemaking intervention?

If there is one conflict which has constantly defied the UNs efforts at conflict resolution it is that in Afghanistan. The UNs political response to this conflict has been profoundly imperceptive. The sheer complexity of the Afghan situation has overwhelmed the UN, which has proved incapable of tackling the conflict from other than the rigidly conventional angle that has generally characterized its approach to conflict resolution. Successive representatives of the UN Secretary‐General have found their missions frustrated by their inability to adjust rapidly to Afghan reality, and the approaches that they have adopted have almost invariably proved to be void of an adequate understanding of the nature of Afghan society and politics. This lack of success in the political arena has in turn affected the UNs humanitarian operations, limiting the organization, with some notable exceptions, to a largely cosmetic contribution to the well‐being of a majority of the Afghan people.

The UN and Afghanistan: Contentions in Democratisation and Statebuilding

Following more than a decade of NATOs intervention in Afghanistan, it is often argued that the UN, alongside its international partners and the Afghan government, has failed to facilitate good governance and a stable democratic political order. In charting the evolving UN role in ‘democratizing’ Afghanistan, this article analyses why this is so. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), facing considerable historical and institutional constraints, has had neither the will nor the capacity to implement its ambitious democratization mandate. Instead of aiming for a system of governance along ‘Western’ lines, it should focus primarily on promoting an appropriate, institutionalized, workable political order, regional consensus, and national reconciliation as the necessary foundations for bringing peace and stability to the country.

Afghanistan on the Edge of a Political Abyss

Ten years into the war on terror, the Karzai government and its international backers, namely the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), continue to face bleak prospects in Afghanistan. The country suffers from political uncertainty and instability, with a resurgent Taliban movement in control of vast swaths of territory. This article argues that five key factors have interacted inauspiciously to contribute to this situation—the mosaic nature of the Afghan society, an inappropriate political system which has subsequently led to poor governance, the flawed US and NATO political and military strat-egies, the prominence of Afghanistan’s narcotics trade and a number of counter-systemic actors, chief among them being the Taliban. A change of US policy by placing a greater emphasis on reform, reconstruction and containment is needed if Afghanistan is to have a chance of getting out of its current deteriorating cycle of violence and bloodshed.

Iran's new strategic entity

This article focuses on the two political factions in Iran, the Jihadi (traditionalist combative) and the Ijithadi (creatively interpretive) and their competition and accommodation since the Revolution. The author argues that US-policy and developments in the region have favoured the Jihadis and enabled President Ahmadinejad to act more intransigently and assertively than would otherwise been the case. At a time of profound shift in the sectarian and strategic balance in the region, the challenge for the US and its allies is to widen the arena for Ijithadis within Iranian politics.

The Iran Nuclear Dispute

The dispute over Iran’s nuclear program has reached a turning point. The US and some of its allies, especially Israel, have accused Iran of secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons. Iran has repudiated this accusation with a persistent claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and in conformity with its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). However, on 4 February 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voted to report Iran to the Security Council of the United Nations for possible sanctions. The IAEA resolution called on Iran to extend ‘indispensable and overdue’ cooperation to the agency and assist it to ‘clarify possible activities which could have a military dimension’. Russia and China supported the resolution, but only on the condition that it did not contain an immediate threat of sanctions, and the IAEA agreed to put off any action until its chief Mohamed ElBaradei had delivered a report on Iran’s compliance at the next IAEA meeting in March. However, given the absence of a breakthrough with Iran, the IAEA finally reported Iran on 8 March to the UN Security Council. These developments have constituted a boost for the US, and three US European allies*/Britain, France and Germany*/which had been negotiating unsuccessfully with Tehran since early 2004 to persuade it against its nuclear program. Tehran has condemned the IAEA’s actions. In response, as it had forewarned, it has ordered the IAEA to remove all its ‘containment and surveillance measures’ in Iran and end its snap inspections. It has also announced a resumption of full-scale uranium enrichment, which it had frozen voluntarily for two years as a confidence-building measure. Further, the Iranian conservative Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been very critical of the US and Israel, intimated on 10 February 2006 that if Iran were forced to limit its nuclear activities in denial of its rights for peaceful use, it may even be willing to consider abandoning the NPT. While Tehran has remained unmoved in its resolve to press on with its nuclear program, and the US and Israeli governments have vowed to do everything possible to contain the Iranian Islamic regime as a major threat to their interests, the Iranian nuclear dispute has the potential now to result in a major crisis. There are three main questions. If it comes to a military confrontation, what are Iran’s non-military and military options, and could an awareness of such options lead all sides involved towards the path of a negotiated resolution? Can the dispute be resolved without having to be addressed in the context of the