Review of a British Plan for Afghanistan: Will Afghanistan Disintegrate?

According to the British plan, the Taliban will take control of several regions.

(TEHRAN Iran Review) - The British politicians, who have a long record in breaking Eastern countries down into smaller entities, have offered their second plan in the past three years for disintegration of Afghanistan. It was about one month ago when news was broken about a plan offered to divide Afghanistan into eight autonomous regions. Later on, it became clear that the main protagonist behind the plan was a person called Tobias Ellwood who represents the British Conservative Party and is also parliamentary deputy at the British Foreign Office.

Presentation of new plans for the disintegration of Afghanistan dates back to the late 1980s when the former Soviet Union’s intelligence agency, KGB, decided to divide this country into two northern and southern halves. According to that plan, Moscow was supposed to take charge of the northern half of the divided country. The plan was immediately rejected by the Afghan Mujahedeen and it was, in fact, the Soviet Union which broke down into smaller countries after its troops withdrew from Afghanistan. That plan is known as Plan A for the disintegration of Afghanistan. The second plan for breaking down Afghanistan was worked out by the former ambassador of the United States to India, Robert Dean Blackwill, in July 2010. According to his plan, the southern part of Afghanistan was to be ceded to the Taliban with northern part of the country remaining under the rule of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai provided that the United States were allowed to establish military bases in the northern part without any trouble from the Taliban.

Interestingly enough, the main protagonists behind that plan were also the Britons. The plan had been originally forwarded by the then leader of the Liberal Democrat Party Nick Clegg and his party mate, Paddy Ashdown, in September 2009. The plan also asked for the disintegration of Afghanistan. The Plan B for the disintegration of Afghanistan also failed due to strong opposition of the country’s people as well as the Jihadist forces.

In their new effort, the British politicians, who apparently never give up the idea of disintegrating countries, have offered another plan through Tobias Ellwood, which is known as Plan C. According to the new plan, Afghanistan will be divided into eight autonomous regions, each region to be governed by a council under supervision of one or two foreign countries. The head of the central government will not be a president anymore, but a prime minister.

In this way, the presidential system will give way to a parliamentary system of government in which various regions will be governed by federal rulers. The parliament members will be elected from various parts of Afghanistan and, therefore, they will have to be attuned with local rulers in their own regions. The prime minister will be also elected by the lawmakers.

According to the British plan, the Taliban will take control of several regions. This probably means that every branch of the Taliban will be ruling an independent region, especially under present circumstance that their leader, Molla Omar, has become friendly to the Americans. Other groups, however, are still against the presence of the foreign occupying forces.

According to Ellwood’s plan, Afghanistan will be separated into eight economic divisions with major cities such as Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz, Jalalabad, Khost, and Bamyan as their centers. The pretext that Ellwood has mentioned for offering this plan is escalation of tribal conflicts and corruption following withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, which may lead to chaos in the war-torn country. The reality behind the scenes, however, is different. The plan is also direct insult to the sovereign right of the Afghan nation as well as their right to self-determination.

The United States and Britain are worried that after withdrawal of foreign forces, the country may fell into the hands of jihadist forces and Afghan people would chose them as substitute to the current rulers. Let’s not forget that the United States helped the Taliban in 1996 to defeat the jihadist forces in Afghanistan. However, when it saw the Taliban was on the verge of collapse in 2001, Washington moved to occupy Afghanistan and establish a secular government.

Now, the inefficiency of the US-backed government of Afghanistan has been proven beyond any doubt and the people of Afghanistan remember such brave commanders as Ahmad Shah Massoud, Burhanuddin Rabbani, General Mohamad Daud and the likes of them, and want such people to rule their country. The United States and Britain, however, do not consider this to be in line with their interests. Therefore, by bringing forth the issue of “economic federalism” they are bent on providing grounds for the division of the war-torn country along ethnic lines.