The Myth of Afghanistan as ‘Safe Haven’ for Terrorists

Myths are supported by compatible myths, which epistemologically sup­port the structure and content of mythical truth. These are not hierar­chical but rather increase credibility through similarity and familiarity in tropes.

While in the process of the intervention, a parallel discourse about human and especially women’s rights combined with a pervasive development argu­ment emerged, the whole campaign hinges on the security argument. Despite disappointing results in statebuilding (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2010), which might have suggested speedy abandonment of the Afghan mission, the imminent return to terrorist camps and Taliban expansion of its Islamist ‘sharia’ state continues dominating the international imaginary. The security argument haunts Western experts as a Ghani government unsup­ported by Western military and trainers is imagined. If there is no Western presence, the argument goes, terrorists and al-Qaida will immediately return and start another campaign against the ‘West’ (Kühn 2013). This argument misses several points: first and foremost is the schism between Shia and Sunni groups, which feeds much of the violence and has led to religiously motivated violence in many countries, and to an extreme extent in Pakistan (Ispahani 2013). Secondly, before 2001, Taliban and al-Qaeda did not cooperate to take over the world with a Muslim caliphate. Although the Taliban, when in power, used the language of old power structures (‘Emirate’), Taliban thinking was exclusively focussed on Afghanistan and the continuing social crisis provoked by mujaheddin fighting.

First, the ideational backgrounds of proponents of global jihad (gen­erally known as Salafi school), on the one side, and the vast majority of Afghans, on the other (Hanafi, more precisely Deobandi school), pro­vide different outlooks on political affairs. Major differences in their per­spectives on secular rule exist(ed), regional differences notwithstanding (see Giustozzi 2009, 294). For the Afghans, a worldly ruler such as the Afghan King was perfectly fine, as long as he ruled in accordance with their interpretation of Islam. Islam in the Pashtun interpretation, however, enshrined the sovereignty of local communities; that is, state legitimacy was guaranteed as long as no competition between local and state norms arose (Steul 1981, 236; Kühn 2012, 27).

If rulers acted against this principle, the ulema, or Muslim clergy, would cry out in their sermons and mobilize against following the ruler. Most notably, King Amanullah lost the throne in 1929 because Afghan notables were unwilling to accept the modernising influence the ‘young turks’ had on him. His visit to Berlin two years earlier, where his wife was photo­graphed without a veil, led to crumpling support, revolts, and his eventual unseating from the throne. Such local power relations were of minor to no interest to al-Qaida in their rather abstract, globalist orientation. They disregarded practical questions of rule, putting all hopes on the eventual emergence of the umma, which as a divine order would be acknowledged by all true believers without questioning or power struggles.

Second, illustrating the Taliban/al-Qaida differences: Afghan national­ism played a huge role in the jihad against the Soviets. ‘Afghan Arabs’, fighters from Arab countries, were never fully accepted in the mujaheddin ranks (Barfield 2010, 275; Rashid 2010). That Mullah Omar sheltered Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 2001 was read as a solid alliance, but is a result of Pashtun obligations to hospitality as well as old comradeship—not nec­essarily political allegiance or ideological coherence. That Bin Laden had helped the mujaheddin, part of whom would later become Taliban, made it impossible to one-sidedly break with him.

After 1991, about a quarter million soldiers were deployed to Saudi­Arabia after Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait. Protesting this, Osama Bin Laden had to leave Saudi-Arabia. During the unfolding odys­sey from Afghanistan to Saudi-Arabia and Yemen, to Pakistan and back, then to Sudan and finally, after 1996 back to Afghanistan, Bin Laden’s aims turned increasingly global. The Taliban cautioned against such a shift and reportedly (Rashid 2010, 216-20) tried to convince him not to attract too much attention to Afghanistan; increased pressure against harbouring al-Qaida as a result of Bin Laden’s aggressive statements was detrimental to Taliban efforts to establish better relations with the West. They sought to counter Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud’s ties with the West, which helped legitimise the still officially ruling ‘Rabbani’ govern­ment, and portray themselves as a legitimate executive government. The global aims of al-Qaida and the local or national perspective of the Taliban, primarily concerned with restoring order according to their interpretation of Islam and against the marauding mujaheddin, did not converge.

The ‘safe haven’ myth, assessed critically and scrutinised for different periods, worked well, constructing Taliban and al-Qaida as one of a kind, even a political entity. For the period of Taliban rule and Bin Laden find­ing shelter in Afghanistan, relations were strained for political reasons, especially clashing ideologies of a global perspective for al-Qaida, and a rigorously Afghan, if not Pashtun one for the Taliban.

The ‘safe haven’ myth rests on a portrait of Afghanistan as an inherently dangerous place, where violent factions collaborate to create a powerful alliance uniformly opposed to the West. The dangerousness of Afghanistan can be found in the ‘fierce fighters’ myth aligned with myths of the non­state and collaborating nature of the Taliban and al-Qaida as globalised jihadists. Connecting imaginations and assumptions about Afghan cultural and social characteristics, these myths provide the background knowledge for the intervention (see Rashid 2008). That these myths were recounted at different times in the campaign illustrates the purposes they serve. As Blumenberg has noted, myths explain how, not why things happened— and this is what they explain for Afghanistan. From the dangers assumed to be emanating from Afghanistan—not least for the intervention, which is entering the ‘graveyard of empires’—derives an obligation to stabilise an Afghan polity in order to establish a proxy ordering leviathan to protect ‘the international community’ (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kühn 2011).