None of them can be regarded as the most dangerous!

Dear Rob Dodson,

Actually none of these figures can be regarded as the most dangerous one. They are dangerous because they enjoy all kinds of support from their social, cultural and religious stance in the Afghan community. They are not doing anything by their individual power. They are doing that because they have followers who share their view and belief, and willingly apply their command. This is a question of complex mentality among the Afghan population.

One would say that the lack of democratic institutions can provide room for the people like Mullah Omar, Haqani or Hekmatyar. They are mostly enjoying political agendas which are based on ethnocentric assumption. The religion is mostly used as a cover to support this agenda. You have well pictured the feud between Haqani and Zadran. What is that to do with religion? You can find the roots of rivalry between Mullah Omar and Karzai too in their tribal attachments. You are aware of the relation between different Pashtun tribes. In their general standpoint, they have the same feud and animosity towards the other ethnic communities which is the characteristic of all tribal communities. They are marginalized in their limited worldview. They confine the world to their own findings. They find it difficult to accept pluralistic viewpoints. This is why that they do change to Mullah Omar, Haqani or Hekmatyar. This is why that they easily spray acids to the faces of girls, behead the teachers or commit suicidal attacks.

Their fanatical view of Islam is also an interesting story. You know the in-breeding relations between tribal culture and religion. Both has linkage points to come together and easily merge to each other. In this incorporation, culture always plays a central role and remains as the core of the composition. Religion initially plays a role of the cover but gradually they seem as the same. We have a saying in Farsi that: culture is the most astringent phenomena in the human relations. This is true. Culture can sit back, but never dies. Culture is capable of being transformed into different shapes. Islam and Pashtunwali have amazingly incorporated with each other. Islam has lots of points which were the reflections of the Arabian culture. They came and easily found their sisterhood with the ones in the Pashtun community. Through centuries, now it is difficult for you to really distinct what is Islamwali and what is Pashtunwali. This story can be followed in all the Islamic communities. This is the characteristic of the religion: they do not push the culture back. They only find their way of incorporation and interactions with the culture. This is why that you don't have one type of Islamic interpretation. In Pakistan, you can easily find the difference of Panjabi Islam and Patanic Islam. You can find different view on the women issue all claiming to be Islamic. Likewise, inside Afghanistan, all other ethnic communities are Muslims. You have Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmans, Baluchs, and others who make the overwhelming majority of the population. Even inside Pashtun intellectuals who have culturally shifted, you find people who enjoy quite different view about Islam, about women, about human rights, about having relation with the rest of the human community.

Mullah Omar and the likes are reflecting that type of Pashtun culture which is the most tribal and traditional one. Yes, they are currently the majority of the Pashtun community, but it does not mean that they are the whole.

In the meantime, there is another point which has helped Mullah Omar and his likes to be the main figures of the insurgent movement in the Pashtun community: the notion of having Totalitarian regime based on ethnocentric assumption. This has helped the insurgent groups to continue their influence and growth. Even at the time of the Taliban ruling, you could see that nearly all Pashtun figures stood behind Mullah Omar and supported his brutal anti-democratic regime. If there was some to criticize Taliban, it was because of their shortcomings in the face of the international relations, not because of the non-democratic entity of their regime.

Anyway, it would be difficult to mention any of these three guys as the most or least dangerous. They have their own model of living and talking politics. Any of them can be changed to each other as well as they can reproduce lots of other people like themselves.

Aziz