Issue 236

"Bet you've never been to dinner dressed like that," said the British army officer to me, kitted out in flak jacket and helmet, sitting inside the Swedish Army Patria six-wheeled armored personnel carrier.

I definitely had not. But it was not a normal sort of dinner party - at least of the sort that one is used to in suburban Johannesburg.

We were leaving the provincial reconstruction team base at Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province for dinner with the local governor, the mujahideen-turned-politician Mohammed Atta.

Despite sharing a name with the leader of the 9/11 hijack party, Atta, 43, is no firebrand radical.

"There is a little bit of mullah in me," he admitted, however, when interrupting a pre-dinner tea conversation to say his evening prayers. He certainly did not strike one as an Islamic fundamentalist, even though he had joined the mujahideen at 17 to fight against the invading Russians.

Closely linked to the legendary Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud (who was assassinated by al-Qaeda two days before the September 11 bombings in 2001), he was forced to flee to Iran and Pakistan in 1993 after the defeat of his largely Tajik-based faction by the Uzbek-dominated Jumbesh-i-Milli of General Abdul Rachid Dostum.

Instrumental in re-taking Mazar from the Taliban, Atta spent half a lifetime fighting, hiding, fleeing, and conspiring to overthrow the status quo. Now he is that status quo, having seen off Dostum's challenge in a heated political showdown back in 2003.

I had tried to imagine him as he was then, gruffly plotting the next attack in a hut somewhere in the hills over a campfire, dressed like his ragtag warriors in customary dishdashes and headscarves, toting AK-47s.

About the only part of the picture that remained true was the AK-47s gripped by his Tajik guards.

We met in the glassy governor's palace in the centre of Mazar, his birthplace.

The walls of the room were bedecked with photos of Atta, the younger warrior, with Massoud, Atta the politician with President Hamid Karzai, a fake Swiss country scene with water, lake and mountains, and a naval wheel clock. A TV on a chrome stand sat in one corner, plastic carnations emerged from a rubber pot plant, mock oyster and pearl lampshades protruded from the ceiling, while various glass-topped tables completed the scene.

Atta was dressed in a tailored suit and patent leather shoes. He was charismatic while cautious, smooth and considered, careful and even shrewd. It was, though slightly unexpected, an appropriate setting for an interview with a new breed of Afghan politician.

How difficult had it been to make the transition from muj to politician, I asked? He answered like a seasoned pro: "I was interested in being among my people and to help them. I see my new civilian position as completing what I started with my military activities."

Atta had spent a long period holed up in the mountains above Mazar, hiding in a deep valley in a place where the Soviet air support could not reach the mujahideen. At night they would come down and attack the Russian air base and sneak back before sunset. Had he ever given any thought to what he might do after the fighting stopped?

"I was thinking only of freedom", he answered, "and never being in a governor's palace." He holds no malice towards the Russians - after all, given the geography, in many respects Russia was and remains a natural strategic partner for the Afghans, especially to the north of the Hindu Kush mountains.

"Why should I," he laughed, inciting his staff to do the same, "after all, we beat them.

"You should rather ask them how they feel about me since they lost."

Atta is not a man, however, who lives in the past - not least because much of his life still lies before him. He is clear where most of the blame lies for the resurgence of the Taliban whom he fought bitterly from 1994 to 2001.

"Pakistani mullahs provoke young Afghans in their madrassas. Some other people, of course, fight for money, while there are some approaches adopted by the government and ISAF - the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, of which I am a part - that have alienated people."

These are charges Islamabad constantly and angrily refutes, though it might disagree less with Atta's solution.

"The madrassas in Pakistan should be closed and we should open our own in Afghanistan … with modern curricula." He skirted carefully around probing questions on drugs, probably because much of the political leadership is implicated to some extent in the drug trade, which provides around half of Afghanistan's GDP.

His view on drugs is a metaphor for Afghan politics in general. The challenge in reforming both is not to impose western norms and morality on their way and business, expecting good governance overnight, but to ensure that the trend lines towards ending corruption, and improving delivery and accountability are moving in the right direction.

The overall test for President Karzai is to ensure that the bad guys he felt forced to inherit for the sake of stability when the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces took over in 2001 are slowly cycled out of the government.

Those for whom corrupt practices became a means of survival and way of life during the long years of struggle, should know they must clean up their acts or be removed.

Atta's metamorphosis from gruff soldier to polished politician and diplomat suggests the long fight he played such a large part in was worth it; peace has given expression to the obvious charm and old world courtesies of such Afghanis even in a high-tech, fast-paced new world age. His outlook showed that, despite the influence of culture, gender, language and other values that many believe have overwhelmed our supposedly post-modern world, universal realpolitik is far from dead.

Atta would be equally at home in a governor's mansion anywhere.

Greg Mills heads the Brenthurst Foundation in Johannesburg, and is currently on secondment as special adviser to ISAF IX in Afghanistan. He writes in his personal capacity

Source: Sunday Independent

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