Мохаммад Касым Фахим: Ауған саяхатшысы және маршалы

Afghan politician (1957 2014)

Mohammad Qasim Fahim (, popularly known as "Marshal Fahim"; 1957 – 9 March 2014) was an Afghan military commander and politician who served as Vice President of Afghanistan from June 2002 until December 2004 and from November 2009 until his death. He was considered a powerful and influential figure during the Karzai Administration. Affiliated with Ahmad Shah Massoud's Jamiat Islami (Shura e Nazar) party, Fahim captured the Afghan capital Kabul in the fall of 2001 from the Taliban government as a military commander of the Northern Alliance. Between December 2001 and December 2004, he served as Defense Minister under the Afghan Transitional Administration. In 2004, President Hamid Karzai provided Fahim the honorary title Marshal and a year later, he became member of the House of Elders. He later became a recipient of the Ahmad Shah Baba Medal. Fahim died due to natural causes in 2014; the president declared three days of national mourning in honor of him. He is reported to have finished his studies in Islamic Sharia law at an Arabic institute in Kabul in 1977. Most reports show that he had been fighting the Communist rulers since the late 70s. A TOLOnews video chronicling his life reports that Fahim joined the Muslim Youth Movement of Afghanistan while he was still in college. He fled Afghanistan after the Communist coup of 1978, he became a refugee in Peshawar. He returned to Panjshir and began to work under Commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

When the Soviet backed Afghan government collapsed in 1992, Fahim became a key member in the new government. He was appointed head of the Afghan intellgicence service KHAD, under interim president Sibghatullah Mojaddedi. He continued to serve as the country's head of intelligence under president Burhanuddin Rabbani. In 1996, Fahim personally offered to evacuate former President Mohammad Najibullah, then in custody in Kabul, from the advancing Taliban forces, but Najibullah refused to be evacuated and was captured and executed by a Taliban mob. Fahim continued to serve as head of the Intelligence and Minister of National Security of the internationally recognised United Islamic Front Government, even when it was ousted and the Taliban took the power over most provinces of Afghanistan in the second half of the 1990s. During this time of Taliban rule in Afghanistan Fahim was active as military commander for the United Islamic Front in the north of Afghanistan, especially in Panjshir and Mazar i Sharif. In the wake of building pressure of the US against the Taliban regime after September 11, 2001, as general commander of the mujahideen resistance forces, Fahim became America's main proxy in the fight against the Taliban. On 7 October, the day the US started bombing Taliban targets, he proclaimed an offensive on the northern and western fronts. On October, 20, a US team of Green Berets landed in Afghanistan and teamed up with Fahim. On 30 October, Fahim met with American General Tommy Franks where they discussed the idea to launch the first major strike of the war against Mazar e Sharif, a city that Fahim a month earlier named as the first city that he would conquer. Mazar e Sharif was captured by opposition forces on 9 and 10 November and only a few days later, the Taliban evacuated Kabul. US President George W. Bush had requested that opposition forces would not enter the city before a new, broad based, multi ethnic government was formed. But Fahim went into the city with a group of specially trained security personnel, although he made sure to leave the main body of his troops outside the city. At the end of November, forces loyal to Fahim captured the city of Kunduz. That brought Fahim in charge of two of the five biggest cities, since other main cities were captured by militias of Gul Agha Sherzai and Hamid Karzai (Kandahar), Ismail Khan (Herat) en Abdul Rashid Dostum (Mazar e Sharif). In the first days after the fall of Kabul, a supreme military council, headed by Fahim, was set up to administer the captured parts of the country. The military council gave itself a three month mandate in which they proclaimed not to hand over the power to United Islamic Front president Burhanuddin Rabbani.

During these three months, the international community sponsored a conference on Afghanistan in Bonn to decide about the future leadership of the country. With crucial US military help, the opposition forces had captured virtually all of Afghanistan from the Taliban in the beginning of December 2001, and in Bonn the formation of an interim administration was discussed. As the US started bombing Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, it became clear that the United Islamic Front of Fahim would play an important role in the transition government that would emerge after the Taliban was ousted. However, since Fahim lacked Massoud's magnetism, his role as opposition leader was generally seen as temporary. When in the first weeks of US bombardments Fahim's forces did not make any large breakthroughs, it was speculated that he was struggling with his role and he appeared wooden and awkward in front of his troops. But although Fahim was described as colorless, it was clear that as the leader of the main military forces that were fighting the Taliban, Fahim had to play a central role in any possible government that would succeed the Taliban. In the talks in Bonn Fahim took a leading role, together with two other young and moderate Tajik leaders from the United Islamic Front (UIF), Yunus Qanuni and dr. Abdullah. After the death of Massoud, this trio had de facto been leading the United Islamic Front. Fahim was reportedly advocating a broad based government headed by someone outside the leadership of the United Islamic Front. According to sources Fahim lobbied for Hamid Karzai as the next Afghan president instead for his formal leader Rabbani. The Bonn conference bypassed President Rabbani and appointed Hamid Karzai as Interim President. Qanuni, Abdullah and Fahim all got crucial posts in the new government. Initially there was some fear that the trivium of former Massoud aides could overshadow Karzai, but at the same time, they were praised for giving away the chairmanship while they controlled Afghanistan militarily. As commander of Afghans largest military force, Fahim was appointed Defence minister of Afghanistan. At the same time, he was one of the five vice chairs of the Interim Administration. Together with Abdullah and Qanuni, one of the most dominant figures in the interim administration.

In the interim administration, Karzai much needed the support of Fahim. Karzai was the official chairman of the executive committee of the government, but as commander of the most effective military force commanding the capital, Fahim had the real power. Since Fahim was afraid a large international peace keeping force would take away his power base, he argued for a limited number of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Karzai, however, was less afraid of international involvement, and might even fear a Tajik hegemony of Afghanistan without them. After the inauguration ceremony on 22 December 2001, where Fahim was installed as minister of Defence and vice chair of the interim government, he requested that international forces leave the capital. He "would no longer accept foreign troops in Afghanistan operating without a UN mandate," Fahim said. Later he demanded that 100 British servicemen who just had entered the country leave Bagram Air Base. "The British forces perhaps have an agreement with the UN but not with us," said Fahim. He also stated that a UN force should not exceed 1,000 men and should play a very limited role in Afghan politics and that his own forces could eradicate sources of instability. His own Northern Alliance forces should police Kabul, said Fahim, because he said that his troops in Kabul were security troops, not military. Fahim discussed the deployment of foreign troops with US Generals and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who demanded the presence of a large international force. Fahim was in charge of the meetings with the British General John McColl to establish the exact task, length of stay and size of international forces. Reportedly, Fahim refused to meet McColl until Rumsfeld pressured him and told him to meet the British general. In the end, it was decided that an international security force of a few thousand troops would be deployed, but that they would agree to Fahim's demands to not take control of Kabul and not start immediately disarming Afghan militias. Of the approximately 3,000 men that would be deployed, 2,000–3,000 men would be deployed in a garrison in the center of Kabul. Of the 30,000 men, only a third would be deployed for security reasons, the others would receive logistical and humanitarian tasks. Another important task for the British and Americans would be the training of the Afghan troops. Fahim expressed the wish to build an Afghan army of around 250,000 men. After the negotiations, The Telegraph described Fahim as someone who is popularly known as "the village and Pansher valley idiot," but who actually very shrewd. When the first foreign troops of the peacekeeping mission arrived on 20 December 2001, Fahim said "They won't be needed for security." "They are here because they want to be," and because the United Nations Security Council sent them to Afghanistan to prevent another civil war, Fahim said, but insisted that their presence was merely symbolic and that the foreign troops were not supposed to use force. "Some ministers in the new government who have always lived outside the country are worried about security and they feel they need the peacekeepers for protection, but when they arrive here they will see that the situation is OK and that it is not necessary" Fahim added, possibly hinting at Chairman Karzai who lived for years in Pakistan. The heavily armed units of northern alliance soldiers who swept into Kabul will be withdrawn from the streets, Fahim added, but they will not leave the capital. There was not only a disagreement between Fahim and Karzai about the size of the peacekeeping force, but also about the duration they were supposed to stay in Afghanistan. Fahim indicated that the international forces should leave after six years, but Karzai said that they would stay "as long as we need them, six years as a minimum". As Defense Minister, Fahim had the task to unite the country's disparate armed groups. A daunting task, since Fahim's own troops had so far shied away from vast stretches of southern and eastern lawless lands under the sway of armed former Taliban warriors, most of them members of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Still, although a sometimes bumbling and awkward figure in public, and especially unpopular with the Uzbek minority, Fahim quietly had gained control of the Northern Alliance's fractious military commanders. He continued to hold this control, even when Abdul Rashid Dostum, the most powerful Uzbek warlord who had taken control of the city of Mazar e Sharif and who was very critical of the Bonn Agreement, was appointed his deputy. But the cooperation between the two strongmen didn't start easy, already after a month forces of Dostum were clashing with forces of Fahim over control of a district in Kunduz Province. The dispute erupted after his forces tried to disarm soldiers from a rival military unit. When those troops resisted, a firefight broke out, killing three soldiers. On 29 December, Fahim urged the Americans to stop their bombing campaign on Afghanistan, because bin Laden had probably fled Afghanistan and moved to Peshawar in Pakistan. "Osama is out of our control," Fahim said. A day later, however, foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah stated that they did not know where bin Laden was and that air raids will continue "for as long as it takes to finish off the terrorists."

As Minister of Defence in his first months, Fahim traveled extensively to neighbouring countries to build relations between the new government and Afghanistan's most influential neighbours. When US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said in January 2002 that Iran might be backing Afghan fighters in an attempt to unsettle the Karzai government, Fahim, who visited the Iranian minister of Defense half January, stated that there was no sign of Iran "creating insecurity". At the end of January 2002, Fahim set in on a meeting of Karzai met with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and spoke with the two of them about security issues.

During the 2002 loya jirga, where a new transitional government was formed, Fahim supported the candidacy for president of Karzai. In turn he retained as vice president and defense minister. In the summer of 2002, American officials are said to have picked up intelligence that Fahim was considering an attempt to assassinate Karzai, as a result of which, in July 2002, US Special Forces wrested presidential bodyguard duties away from soldiers loyal to Fahim. The move followed the assassination earlier in the month of one of Karzai's vice presidents, Abdul Qadir, a powerful Pashtun warlord and Karzai ally. He was dismissed in August 2004. Fahim also had no higher education, and article 72 of Afghanistan's constitution states that an appointed Minister to the President's cabinet should have a higher education. Although Fahim lost his formal role in the government, he remained a powerful and influential figure in Afghanistan. In 2006, Karzai, faced with a resurgent Taliban, returned Marshal Fahim to Government as an advisor. Fahim was a member of the (now defunct) political party United National Front, a broad coalition of former and current strongmen, mainly with a basis in the United Islamic Front.

In 2009, Fahim was chosen by incumbent President Karzai as candidate for first Vice President in the 2009 presidential election. Fahim by then had a reputation as one of Afghanistan's most powerful, brutal and corrupt warlords. Karzai's decision to include him on his ticket therefore dismayed international observers. But for Karzai such considerations were trumped by Fahim's status as a leading member of Afghanistan's Tajik minority (the second largest ethnic grouping after Karzai's Pashtun community), which helped to split the Tajik vote which might otherwise have gone to Karzai's Tajik rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

On the celebrations of Nowruz, New Year's Day, of 1389 (21 March 2010) in Mazar i Sharif in Northern Afghanistan, Fahim reached out to militants. He declared that, with their input, a coming national conference would lay the foundations for a peace that would end the Taliban insurgency. He called on resistance forces to participate in a jirga, or assembly, planned for late April or early May. He pledged that the Afghan government "will try to find a peaceful life for those Afghans who are unhappy," a euphemism for militants, though he didn't mention the Taliban by name. Afghans had travelled from across the country to Mazar i Sharif united behind the wish that the advent of a new year would bring them peace. According to the police, up to half a million people are in the city to mark the spring equinox and the first day of the traditional Afghan new year and celebrated across Central Asia and Iran. Mazar is at the heart of one of the most peaceful regions of the country. City police chief Abdul Rauf Taj said that 4,000 security personnel had been deployed against insurgent attacks and that all visitors were being screened at seven check points around the city perimeter. The Peace Jirga took place in Kabul on 2–4 June 2010.

He was a member of the leadership council of the United Islamic Front, a coalition of top national and regional leaders. Other members included former President Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, House Speaker Yunus Qanuni, Vice president Ahmad Zia Massoud. In June 2007, Fahim stated that his advisory role was merely symbolic and that he never had the chance to advise the President. He further said that after the 2004 elections President Karzai formed a "one sided" cabinet and began to employ unilateralism as his main policy driver. Fahim argued that without the backing of foreign forces, President Karzai's regime would not last longer than a week. In 2009, he was one of Karzai's running mates in the presidential election, bringing a lot of Tajik votes to the ticket. The selection was condemned by Human Rights Watch. In September 2010, an Afghan news agency reported that Fahim had died of cancer in Paris, France. An official statement was later released by Fahim, who said: "I am completely healthy. I request the Afghan people not to trust news published by irresponsible websites".

Fahim's last years were beset by health problems which required hospital treatment in Germany. He died of a heart attack on 9 March 2014. Karzai called Fahim's death "a huge loss for Afghanistan" and the government of Afghanistan called for a three day national mourning period. The UN called him in a statement "a good and trusted partner of the UN." Ambassador James Cunningham of the United States called him "a leader during the Jihad, and that he played a major role in moving Afghanistan toward moderation." After his death, the Afghan National Defense University was renamed Marshal Fahim National Defense University (MFNDU). His death came only a few weeks before Karzai was due to step down from the presidency, and as NATO forces pull out of Afghanistan, added to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and uncertainty.