Following the attempt on Mullah Naqib’s life last week, AfghanWire spoke with Tom Coghlan, writing for the Telegraph newspaper about the ways this might affect how things play out in southern Afghanistan.

 

 

“Mullah Naqib is a pretty major tribal figure in southern Afghanistan.  He’s one of the most important leaders of the Alikozai tribe, which is one of the largest tribes in Kandahar province, and they have a pretty large presence in Helmand province which neighbours Kandahar.

 

I think the reason we should take note of what has happened to Mullah Naqib is because Afghanistan - southern Afghanistan in particular – is a tribal society and the politics of the society are framed by tribal power structures.  You really can’t consider the south without trying to understand what the particular tribal politics and tribal tensions are at any given point within that southern Afghan society.  Decision making is done on a tribal basis, and tribal competition sits behind much of the trouble that we’re seeing at the moment in the south.

 

So that is why Mullah Naqib being attacked in Kandahar has a much wider significance than might first appear.”

 

 

“Mullah Naqib, like many of the other prominent tribal figures in Kandahar, is not short of enemies.  He’s one of a generation of leaders who came to the fore during the Soviet occupation, one of those jihadi leaders whose status came largely from their charisma as guerrilla fighter-leaders.

 

It’s not clear at this point who was responsible.  It might be an attack by the Taliban, in which case that has pretty interesting, or potentially interesting, implications for the power dynamics in the south.  Or, it may be one of a large number of old enemies that he has from tribal feuds from the jihad period.

 

Like many of these leaders, he’s shifted his allegiances over time, so there’s not a shortage of potential suspects.”

 

 

“Mullah Naqib as fairly seriously injured in this attack.  One of his sons was killed, and another son lost a leg, I believe, in this attack.  It is entirely logical that he will seek to find out who has done this and will seek to take revenge, which is a pretty strong part of the ethos of Pashtunwali, the social code that orders the behaviour of the tribes down in the south.

 

Now, he’s a big tribal figure within the Alikozai, and as I said the Alikozai are a major tribe within southern politics.  For the last few years, Mullah Naqib has been one of these fence-sitters.  He hasn’t really come out on either side in the southern troubles.  He’s been fairly anti-Taliban in his rhetoric, but pretty muted in his support for the Karzai government.  I spoke to him a few months ago and he was extremely unimpressed by the support, and in particular the patronage, that the Alikozai had received from the Karzai government.  He felt that the Karzai government had been pushing the support for a number of other tribes, particularly Hamid Karzai’s own tribe, the Popolzai, but also the Barakzai tribe.  He felt the Alikozai were not getting their fair share of the spoils down in the south.

 

So, another question is: if he decides that the Taliban have been responsible for his attack, then he might well push the Alikozai towards a much more stridently anti-Taliban position.  At the moment, the Alikozai have a real live-and-let-live policy with the Taliban I’m told, particularly in the district of Arghandab which is close to Kandahar which is Mullah Naqib’s stronghold.

 

They allow the Taliban free passage through that district, but forbid the Taliban from mounting any operations in that area.  Now that is a fairly pragmatic position that Mullah Naqib has.  If that were to change, and if the Alikozai were to start fighting the Taliban, then that could be pretty important.  Whether that will happen or not at this point remains unclear.”

 

 

“In terms of international press coverage, it’s very hard for journalists to interest their newsdesks back in London or wherever that might be with news that a tribal leader that few people outside Afghanistan will have heard of has been injured.  There is a pretty limited understanding, in my opinion, within the international community of the importance of tribal politics in Afghanistan.

 

And so it follows that for something of this sort, the potential significance of it might well be missed.  And I don’t want to overstate this.  It may be that this might not result in some greater and long-term change to the situation in the south, but I think it has the potential to, and it’s rather indicative of a wider problem, I think, that too often the international community doesn’t really understand that this is how things work in the south of Afghanistan.  That charismatic leaders of this type are the people who dictate whether things work or whether they don’t, and that feuding and tribal politics underpin all of what happens down there, or a great deal of it anyway.”