Better the Devil You Know?
The Ecologist February 2002

Zubeida Malik reports from Afghanistan on the new horror of ethnic cleansing in the wake of the Taliban's fall.

Suhail sits in the dust, surrounded by two of his six remaining children; he seems oblivious to the flies, the dirt, the hunger and misery of what remains of his family. Any hope and energy has been used up making it to the border with Pakistan.

He's walked all the way, occasionally hitching a lift, from Mazar-e-Sharrif to Peshawar in Pakistan. Suhail's voice is emotionless as he describes how his wife and two daughters were kidnapped and raped by men fighting for local warlords, his sons were killed because they were men. Asked why this should happen to him, he says, 'because I am a Pathan'.

His is not an isolated story. Many other refugees I spoke to had chillingly similar tales to tell, of incidents that had happened to themselves or friends and family. Afghanis are now making their way to the border with Pakistan at Peshawar and Quetta in their thousands. It's not just US bombing they are trying to escape, but the looting, killing and rape that has been unleashed upon them. The retreat of the Taliban has led to the return of the warlords and of ethnic rivalries.

Over 60 per cent of the population in Afghanistan is Pashtoon, known locally as Pathan, who by and large supports the Taliban. The rest is Tajik, Uzbeck and Shi'ite. The Northern Alliance is made up of these minority groups. The Soviet withdrawal and the onset of civil war in Afghanistan laid bare these ethnic divisions. The five-year rule of Kabul by the Northern Alliance saw robbery, murder and rape as an everyday occurrence, and ended once and for all any possibility of the Pashtoons accepting Northern Alliance rule ever again.

With the Northern Alliance in power once again, controlling most of the country, stories are beginning to filter out of Pashtoons being killed by warlords and anti-Taliban forces. Refugees tell stories of men being rounded up and killed, women being taken away and raped, children being mutilated. The numbers may be small but in any other war this would be called ethnic
cleansing.

Jamshaid, a refugee in Quetta, tells of how he saw soldiers in Herat kill a group of Pashtoon men, and then tell people that they were Taliban fighters. As he says, 'they were just ordinary men, yes they had guns, but everyone has guns here... by calling them Taliban it makes it easier for no one to ask why they were killed'. His friend Abdullah nods in agreement. He talks of a similar incident when three men were killed in the bazaar for no apparent reason.

Many of the ordinary people I spoke to in Jalalabad said they were already tired of the fighters, they didn't pay for their food and lodgings, and roamed around the city harassing people. One shop-owner said he was frightened of asking the men for money because they would kill him. Another was telling me how he missed the law and order that the Taliban ensured.

While he was talking to me a Northern Alliance soldier came up to him and started shouting and pushing the man for saying anything positive about the Taliban. The man quickly changed his story.

The 'soldiers' that we met were not disciplined in any way and were capricious in the way they enforced law and order, demanding money from people and truck drivers at checkpoints. As for the women, they were terrified of going out on their own for fear of being raped. Those that I met in Kabul still wore the Burqa. When asked how they felt about the Northern Alliance being in control of Kabul again, they were horrified and begged the West to send in the UN or an international peace keeping force... anything, they said, but Rabbani and the Northern Alliance. Noor, a doctor in a women's hospital told me, 'it isn't safe for women to go out now, the Taliban were strict but at least they didn't touch us'. I asked if she had heard of women being attacked, she nodded yes, but said it was 'shameful' to talk of these things.

Southern Afghanistan is now in anarchy, a patchwork of fiefdoms controlled by warlords. Elsewhere, armed gangs roam the land, backed by local warlords who in turn have the tacit support of the US. Mazar-e-Sharrif is under the control of the Uzbeck warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who has made his hatred of pashtoons clear. Eastern Afghanistan is under the control of a 'shura' or council. We heard stories from refugees from all these areas, all of them spoke of random killings, rape and mutilations.

No wonder neighbouring Pakistan is worried. It has a substantial Pashtoon population and over two million Afghan refugees. If these stories of ethnic cleansing spread then there is real concern that the conflict will widen. And so the bombing raids go on. The hunt for Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden continues, but no one wants to talk about the ethnic cleansing that is gradually being unleashed in Afghanistan.

Zubeida Malik is the reporter on Islamic issues for BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme. She was the first British broadcaster, and the only woman, to interview the Taliban during the war on terrorism.