Afghanistan’s bloody conflict
“Even in a very far village in Afghanistan, Saudi means something,” said Anas, who today runs Al Magharibia, a satellite television channel based in London.
Still, getting the Saudis on board took some persuading. The events of 9/11 had deeply embarrassed them.
Both the kingdom and the United States had nurtured the mujahedeen to push out a Soviet occupation in the 1980s, but the subsequent behavior of the Taliban infuriated the United States. Harboring Osama bin Laden was the last straw.
For the Saudis, it was more complicated. Even when the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden – Turki, the Saudi intelligence chief, requested it in person in 1998 – the kingdom still did not break with them.
Saudi Arabia supported the Taliban government up to 2001 and beyond, in alignment with Pakistan, the kingdom’s main ally to check Iranian influence in the region.
“The problem is Saudi Arabia sees Afghanistan through the lense of Pakistan,” Anas said, describing a prime challenge of his peace initiative.
To achieve peace, Anas said he wanted to encourage the Saudis to build a relationship with Afghanistan directly.
People involved in the effort – who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was conducted in confidentiality – say King Abdullah was moved to – the effort out of a personal sense of compassion.
He did so, they said, even in the face of resistance from other Saudi royals who were unhappy with the US occupation. Yet others were wary of further involvement in Afghanistan.
To overcome Saudi reluctance, Anas took the Saudi emissary to Afghanistan to show that it remained a freely practising Muslim society, despite the presence of US troops. Karzai wrote Abdullah, who had ascended to the throne in August 2005, a deferential letter requesting his intercession. It worked.
Abdullah met the Afghan leader at the door of his plane during a pilgrimage visit. Karzai speaks highly of his friendship with Abdullah, who died in 2015.
“He would never, never, never leave my call unanswered,” he recounted in an interview. “The same day he would get back to me, talk to me and do all that I asked.”
The Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz, personally oversaw the negotiations, sending his emissary between Motasim of the Taliban and the Afghan government for two years.
But when talks neared a critical endpoint, the Taliban were gripped by a vicious power struggle. The Saudi demand that the Taliban renounce terrorism and its ties to al-Qaeda was never met. Motasim was accused of embezzlement and removed.
The next year, 2010, his main protector, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s chief operational commander, was arrested in Pakistan, while an assassin shot Motasim and left him for dead outside his home in Karachi, though he survived.
Both events were interpreted as Pakistan’s opposition to any peace process being negotiated without its participation, several of those involved in the process say.
“It was then that this process was sabotaged,” Motasim said.
Abdullah intimated to Karzai in 2010 that there were obstructions beyond his control.
“I wish to help Afghanistan,” Karzai recalled the king’s saying. “I want it to be peaceful, I want you to sit down and talk to the Taliban, but you must recognise that all I can do is what Saudi can do.
“That was a very meaningful word,” Karzai concluded, “meaning there were other forces who were probably not willing to allow this to happen.”
Trouble on the horizon
Despite those covert efforts, the Saudi kingdom, publicly and officially, has been largely absent in Afghanistan. While paying lip service to the US mission, Saudi Arabia has not built a significant project in its own name in Afghanistan in 15 years.
Yet the official Saudi neglect stands in stark contrast to the wealth of private Saudi funding that has done more than bolster the Taliban and allied militant groups in the region.
It has also spawned hundreds of universities, madrasas and radical groups that have extended Sunni influence and that Afghans fear are sowing seeds of future turmoil.
One of those Afghans is Nisar Karimzai, who runs a small research office, the Organization for Research of Peace and Stability.
During the Soviet occupation, Karimzai went to school in Pakistan, where he fell in with a Sunni extremist crowd. “They teach that the Shiite are not Muslim,” he recalled, referring to Shiites.
He eventually discarded extremist thinking. But his own experience made him wary when he saw a cousin become involved with an Islamist group called Jamiat Eslah.
“I recognise the way they are training them,” Karimzai said. “It was exactly the same way they taught me.
“Personally I am scared,” Karimzai added. “In five years we will face a danger from them. One day they will fight and we will have a very big problem.”
Jamiat Eslah promotes a strict Islamist worldview and describes itself as a self-financed, non-political organisation focused on humanitarian and educational work.
But the size of its operations, with 40 to 50 buildings including offices, a university and a hospital, indicates substantial outside funding, said Nabil, a former head of Afghan intelligence.
The group’s bank accounts show no foreign bank transfers, according to an internal government report. Nevertheless, the report concluded that the group is financed by sources in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The group is just one of a proliferating number that have sprouted in recent years as Sunni Arabs from the Persian Gulf compete with Shiite Iran for influence here.
The Iranians, too, have been busy building madrasas, universities and cultural centres for the Shiite population, and even a road to the border with Iran.
The rivalry underlying the scale of such competing funding, Afghan officials and others warn, spells trouble. In 2001, Afghanistan had just 1,000 madrasas. Today, there are more than 4,000, the majority of them built in the last few years.
After a summer and fall of violent attacks, including at the American University of Afghanistan and against Shiite gatherings, Afghans worry at the growing sectarian tilt of Sunni extremist groups.
Which Saudi now?
Upon his election 2014, Afghanistan’s current president, Ashraf Ghani, chose Saudi Arabia for his first official trip. Then five months later, after a second trip to meet the new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, Ghani pledged Afghani support for Saudi Arabia’s military coalition for Yemen.
In return, Ghani wanted Saudi Arabia’s rulers to stop the flow of funds from rich Saudi sheikhs to the Taliban and encourage the Taliban back into negotiations.
“The signs are positive,” said Atmar of the National Security Council. “We have not yet seen concrete movements against this, but we believe that we have a strong commitment.”
Yet other Afghan officials and local diplomats are deeply sceptical.
One diplomat in Kabul said tracking the flow of illegal money was virtually impossible. Another, who had served in Saudi Arabia, doubted that Riyadh would change, adding that the vast royal family is split into fiefs often working at odds with each other.
The scale of the Taliban’s recent offensive also has left many Afghans wary.
“The level of finance, the level of logistical support in terms of weapons and other materials, and the level of organisational support in terms of leadership of the war they have received is unprecedented,” said Nader Nadery, chief adviser on strategic affairs to the president.
“It clearly indicates a declared war against Afghanistan,” he added, accusing stalwart Saudi ally Pakistan.
Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s chief executive, recently led a delegation to Saudi Arabia. They went seeking investment, but Abdullah also asked Saudi leaders to press Pakistan to end its safe haven for terrorists, a request Karzai also made repeatedly.
“They said they will do that, and they said they will try in the Gulf region to use their influence to mobilise against terrorism,” said Nasrullah Arsalai, director general of the council of ministers secretariat in Afghanistan, who was part of the delegation.
“Saudi Arabia knows if we fight together, it means the Taliban will not be able to bring money from there,” he said.
Yet Ruhullah Wakil, a tribal elder who is now a member of the Afghan peace council says he, too, recently beseeched Saudi officials to sponsor the work of the council, which is authorised to pursue negotiations. The Saudis were uninterested. “They are deaf,” he said. “We asked them to help. We asked them even just to give us some dates to serve to guests. But they gave us nothing.”