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The contentious re-election of Afghan President Hamid Karzai is raising tensions in several provinces. One flashpoint is Balkh province in the north, where there are fears the Governor may take up arms against Karzai’s government. Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Jean Mackenzie, Kabul correspondent for the Global Post.
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JEB SHARP: All politics is local, and that’s especially true in Afghanistan. The country is a patchwork of local interests, complicated by layers of historical, cultural, and religious differences. For example, take the province of Balkh, in northern Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai’s re-election is not sitting well with Balkh’s provincial governor and many of its people. Jean Mackenzie is a reporter for the on-line news source Global Post News. She’s been monitoring politics in the province. She’s now in Kabul. Jean, welcome.
JEAN MACKENZIE: Thank you very much.
SHARP: Let’s set the scene first. Like all of Afghanistan’s provinces, the population of Balkh is mixed, but it’s predominantly Tajik. So let’s start with that. What is a Tajik?
MACKENZIE: Tajik is an ethnic group here. It’s the second largest ethnic group in the country, the first being the Pashtuns. They do predominate in Balkh province, along with Uzbeks and very small pockets of Pashtuns.
SHARP: And the Tajiks provided the backbone of the northern alliance that fought alongside the US to overthrow the Taliban, so these are not natural allies of the Taliban insurgency, right?
MACKENZIE: The Tajiks were one of the main groups that formed the northern alliance. Yes, it is true to say that Tajiks would not be natural allies of the Taliban.
SHARP: And so as in every province in Afghanistan, Balkh has a governor appointed by Hamid Karzai, and in Balkh, his name is General Atta Mohammad Noor. He’s now fallen out with Karzai, right?
MACKENZIE: That is correct. Many people thought he hoped to be picked as Karzai’s running mate, and when he was passed over, he reportedly became quite angry and decided to divert his support to Karzai’s major rival, Abdullah.
SHARP: And how has General Atta responded to this whole election process?
MACKENZIE: Well, things have been getting progressively tense. Atta has a past as a warlord. He has militias under his control and we’ve received several reports that he has been arming these militias and getting them ready to fight.
SHARP: And can you help us understand how likely would it actually be that this could break out into fighting?
MACKENZIE: The problem is that no matter how Karzai and Abdullah resolve their differences, their proxies in the north have been getting angrier and angrier at each other. We have had several assassinations of Pashtun leaders in the past several months and this has made the Pashtun community quite angry. The Tajik community is very upset over a growing insurgency that is spilling over from neighboring provinces. So you’ve got two populations at each other’s throats with many too many arms for this to end peacefully if things go bad. So what we are hearing from people in Balkh is that it feels like they’re on the brink of armed conflict.
SHARP: And what about international forces? Are there substantial numbers stationed up there in the north?
MACKENZIE: Yes, there are. The provincial reconstruction team in Mazar-e Sharif, which is the capital of Balkh province, is headed by Sweden, and there are significant numbers of soldiers, including American soldiers, up in Balkh. The problem being that they normally support the provincial government, this being Atta. If a conflict were to break out between the provincial government and their rivals, who are supporters of the president, supporters of Hamid Karzai, it would put the international forces in a very, very difficult position.
SHARP: So the worst situation is, the West becomes embroiled in what amounts to a new civil war.
MACKENZIE: Well, if conflict breaks out in Balkh, it is a civil war. It’s going to be very difficult to cast this as any kind of Taliban or al Qaida or any other kind of antigovernment insurgency, since both sides represent different factions of the government. We just have to hope that cooler heads will prevail and this situation will be defused. Right at this point, it does not look good.
SHARP: Dr. Abdullah is scheduled to speak again tomorrow publicly. What do you think he needs to say to keep a lid on it?
MACKENZIE: I think he needs to call for calm. I think he needs to call for his supporters to respect the decision of the Independent Election Commission, and not to go out on the streets and protest. I think the Kabul especially seems to be braced for that. There are police on every corner. There are security forces everywhere. So I think he needs to put a little bit of pressure on his supporters not to go out onto the streets.
SHARP: Jean Mackenzie is Kabul correspondent for Global Post dot com. Thanks very much.
MACKENZIE: You’re quite welcome.
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