Can Neutlity Bring Peace to Afghanistan?

By Wahab Raofi This article was published by The National Interest Due to its location in Central Asia, Afghanistan has long found itself at the center of a rivalry between its neighbors and their regional powers. During the 19th century, Afghanistan was caught up in a conflict between Russia and Great Britain, known as the Great Game, where Great Britain used Afghanistan as a buffer state to protect Russian advances into British India. Today, the game continues, wrote Barnett Rubin in a 2008 Op-ed in Foreign Affairs Magazine. However, Barnett now calls it the Grand Bargain — being played out between India and Pakistan to Afghanistan’s east, and Iran to its west. Each region is desperate to keep Afghanistan under its thumb in an effort to control their rival’s influence. They readily do so by finding and hiring Afghani faction to carry out their proxy wars. Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic society, comprised of many groups and tribes. Among them are Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazara’s and Uzbek’s who have historically competed for power. Over the past two centuries, Pashtuns have ruled the country, causing other ethnic groups to feel disfranchised. This has led to ethnic power struggles with the aid of foreign assistance. When the Taliban (considered a mostly Pashtun movement), took over Kabul in August 2021, ethnic divisions deepened, and non-Pushtan groups were forced to seek outside help. However, as noted by the Crisis Group, regional China, Russia, Iran and India have adopted a “wait and see” approach when it comes to determining who to side with in the region. To date, no country has officially recognized the Taliban regime. The United States and Europe have called on the Taliban to honor the February 2020 Duha Agreement, calling for interim government and the holding of free elections. Former Afghan President Hammed Karzai called for a Loya Jirga — a ‘great council’ — to elect a new head of state. However, as Afghani history has shown, neither an inclusive government nor a Jirga will solve the region’s issues as long as the involved parties’ interests are not satisfied via a binding agreement. Could the answer be found in a neutrality agreement, similar to the Belgian Treaty? Belgium is sandwiched between Germany, France and the Netherlands, and has seen more than a thousand battles among European powers since Roman times. In 1830, when the Belgians rebelled against the Dutch, the members of the Concert of Europe — comprised of Austria, Prussia, the United Kingdom, France and Russia—began protracted negotiations with both parties to create parameters for an independent Belgium. The first iteration of the treaty was signed in 1831, and in 1839 Belgium traded neutrality for security and was rewarded with 75 years of peace. Afghanistan also had a treaty during the Cold War, when King Mohammed Zaher Shah (1933-1973), pursued a policy of non-alliance, which kept Afghanistan from becoming entangled in major conflicts. However, on July 17 1973, he was deposed by his cousin Sardar Daud in a palace coup. With the eventual invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets in 1979, a pro-Soviet bloc was created that provoked the US and anti-Soviet blocs to oust the Russians from Afghanistan by hiring proxies called the mujahideen. The first few years following the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2011were relatively peaceful. In 2005 and 2006, I spent two months in my birthplace of Logar Province, 60 kilometers south of Kabul. Citizens told me it was the first time since the rule of King Zaher that they had lived in peace and serenity. However, that idyllic period was short-lived as President Karzai, who had studied in Indai, promoted a lopsided policy favoring India over Pakistan. This provoked Pakistan to recruit former Taliban leaders that had fled to Pakistan following the US invasion. Pakistan armed them, and gave them sanctuary and logistical support to start a Jihad war against invaders under the pretext of religious obligation. As a result, Afghanistan once again found itself caught between India and Pakistan, which invited the regional powers to take sides. Despite the current turmoil, there is a very real opportunity to once again implement a neutrality policy in Afghanistan. The United Nations should invite its Afghan neighbors, together with the regional powers, to a conference and undertake the following: Pakistan, Iran and India should sign a binding agreement pledging not to interfere in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs and to respect Afghanistan’s sovereignty. The US, China and Russia should sign a guarantee promising that any violation of the agreement will result in severe economic and political sanctions. In return, Afghanistan should cut its security forces to 50,000. A neutral Afghanistan will mitigate the fear of a strong Afghan army, will eliminate the need to hire or support proxies, and allow its people to solve their own problems. As long as the concerns of Afghanistan’s neighbors and their regional powers are not met, Afghanistan’s conflict will continue unabated. Neutrality worked in the past. It’s time to revisit this option.