Hezbe Wahdat
The Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan, shortened to Hizb-i Wahdat, "the Unity Party", is an Afghan political party founded in 1989. Like most contemporary major political parties in Afghanistan, Hezb-e Wahdat is rooted in the turbulent period of the anti-Soviet resistance movements in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It was formed to bring together nine separate and mostly inimical military and ideological groups into a single entity.
During the Second Afghan Civil War, it emerged as one of the major actors in Kabul and some other parts of the country with support from Iran. Political Shia Islamism was the ideology of most of its key leaders, but the party gradually tilted towards its Hazara ethnic support base and became the key vehicle of the community's political demands and aspirations. Its ideological background and ethnic support base has continuously shaped its character and political agenda. Through the anti-Soviet jihad and the civil war, Hezb-e Wahdat accumulated significant political capital among Afghanistan's Hazaras.
By 2009, however, Hezb-e Wahdat was so fragmented and divided that the political weight it carried in the country bore little resemblance to what it had once been. It had fragmented into at least four competing organizations, each claiming ownership of the name and legacy of Hezb-e Wahdat.
Background
Following the collapse of the pro-Soviet Kabul government in the Hazarajat in 1979, the region fell under the control of Shura-ye Inqilab, a hastily assembled region-wide organization Soon it was challenged and overthrown by several new radical Islamist groups that engaged in endless power and ideological struggles, however, these were nonviolent and the various groups were still targeting the USSR forces in unity. The wars and conflicts were launched and fought against the USSR forces with strong ideological fervor. However, none of the organizations were able to determine the outcome of the political control of Hazarajat in their favor. Towards the second half of the 1980s a complete stalemate was emerging in the region, with each organization confined to specific pockets of territory. As a result, there was an overwhelming desire for change felt both by the villagers and senior leaders of the organizations to unite.Several attempts to make peace and ensure stability failed. Alliances and coalitions were crafted and dismantled. The most important and effective of them were the Shura-ye Etelaf, an alliance of eight major armed Shia Afghan organizations formed in Tehran, Iran in 1985. It was the most effective attempt to achieve unity of action by the leaderships of the organizations and was to become an important precedent for the formation of Hizb-e Wahdat. However, while the alliance provided the Hazara Mujahedin with a common political voice in negotiations and bargaining with the Sunni organizations based in Peshawar, Pakistan, it failed to tackle the incessant ideological friction within the party. To stabilize the region a more radical move was required.
With the announcement of the Soviet withdrawal in January 1988, the collapse of the Kabul government was believed to be imminent and a dramatic reconfiguration of political alignments was in the making. This was happening at a time when the Kabul government and the ruling Hezb-e Demokratik-e Khalq were experiencing intensive factional and ethnic rivalries. Declining faith in the future of the government facilitated the emergence of new political alignments largely between members of the same ethnic groups, cutting across the ideological divide between the mujahedin and the PDPA officials. In the meantime, negotiations on the formation of an interim government led by the Sunni organizations based in Peshawar excluded the Hazara alliance based in Tehran. The combined effect of these developments among the Hazara organizations was greater awareness of the need for more collective and assertive bargaining with their Sunni counterparts if they were to be taken seriously. It was against this background that a more radical demand for unification and merger of all existing political-military organizations into a single party dominated the politics of the region. Several meetings were held throughout the region in which the nature and composition of the new party and the role of existing organizations in it were debated extensively. In August 1988, the provincial center of Bamyan fell into the hand of Hazara mujahideen. This further facilitated and encouraged the formation of a regional organization. The operation that resulted in the collapse of the government in the town was coordinated jointly by different mujahidin forces in the region. Sazman-e Nasr played a central and coordinating role in the attack. This development marked complete the elimination of any presence of the Kabul government within the entire Hazarajat region.
Henceforth Bamyan was the center of important political developments. It injected a new stimulus into the ongoing unification process among the mujahedin organizations in the region. The town hosted the final meeting that resulted in the declaration of the Misaq-e Wahdat or the unity treaty in July 1989 less than a year after its liberation. It became a center of political leadership and power for the new party beyond and away from the local factional and personal rivalries of local commanders. What contrasted the negotiation process for the formation of Wahdat with similar previous efforts was that it was essentially a process initiated from within the Hazarajat region. The process was informed and shaped by the realities of war, factionalism, and loss of control of the political leadership over military commanders within the region. Conversely, the previous coalition-building efforts were centered in Iran and were often under the direct influence of the Iranian authorities. Once it was formed, its leaders faced the challenge of convincing their representatives at the Shuray-e Eatelaf and officials of the Iranian government, who were more at ease with dealing with a coalition of separate parties in Tehran. The fragmentation of the Hazara mujahedin had given the Iranians effective leverage to control small organizations, often tied to various religious authorities and government agencies in Iran. The Iranians feared that a single party based inside Afghanistan could mean they would lose control over the movement. Furthermore, the increasingly evident ethnic discourse within the party was seen unfavorably by the Iranian authorities who had for years tried to promote a more pan-Shiite political Islamism during the period of jihad. Husain Ibrahimi, the representative of the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in Afghan affairs at that time, is alleged to have tried to prevent the formation of Hizb-e Wahdat in order to maintain his influence. Eventually, once the party was formed, the Iranians decided to work with it and supported it in the early days of its existence. But, as the subsequent course of political developments shows, the party was to pursue a rather independent political strategy, often in conflict with Iranian policies and interests in the country.
Hezbe Wahdat
As the name Wahdat indicates, the main objective of the party was to unify all Shiite mujahedin organizations under a single political leadership. It was created in response to a strong urge for unity among the Hazara leaders as well as commoners.In its organizational hierarchy, the party included the following key structures:
- Shuray-e Aali Nezarat,, was meant to include high-ranking religious figures and experts. In its supervisory role, the council was tasked to monitor all levels of the party and serve as the highest leadership and control mechanism over all activities and policies of the party.
- The next and most important body within the party was its Central Council. This organ was the most powerful deliberative and decision-making authority within the party. Because of the importance attached to it, its membership expanded in a most dramatic manner. Originally, it was planned to include 36 members, but the growing need for expansion and inclusion of other figures and groups into the party resulted in a constant increase in size. The first congress of the party in September 1991 urged the party leadership to facilitate integration of other Shiite groups and figures into the party. As such it was also resolved that the central and supervisory councils could be expanded as needed. At its peak, the Central Council included more than 80 members representing nearly all religious and political groups and influential figures in the region, as well as Hazara figures from the cities. It was through membership and division of power within this council that the party managed to hold the previously fragmented and hostile Hazara political groupings together.
- The Wahdat Manifesto also provided for the formation of provincial- and district-level councils that would report to their relevant committees at the headquarters in Bamyan.
Smaller parties were pressured and even intimidated into joining the process. Many groups had no other choice than joining it: the cost of standing outside would have been unbearable. The following two examples provide insight into the complexity of the process. Harakat Islami, led by Shaikh Asif Mohsini, was the main Shiite party that refused to join Wahdat. The party was dominated by non-Hazara Shiites. Initially, the party was represented in a series of negotiations, but Mohsini later declined to sign, having presented a number of conditions to be met. His conditions were interpreted as an unwillingness to join a party in which historical Hazara grievances and political aspirations predominated. Nonetheless, sections of his party joined Hezb-e Wahdat either because the new party was more promising for the political future of the Hazaras or because the pressure to join was so strong that it could not be resisted. The party's core could resist the pressure to join mainly because it was located outside the region. However, it did lose a substantial section of its Hazara following to Hezb-e Wahdat, a fact underlining the growing importance of ethnic identities in the aftermath of jihad in the country.
The military class that had flourished during the civil war posed one of the main obstacles to unification. Nahzat-e Islami is a good example of military commanders refusing to unite in spite of the agreement of their leaders. Its senior leaders participated in the unification process and hosted one of the meetings in their stronghold in the Jaghori district of Ghazni province. However, Wasiq, Nehzat's main military commander in the district, refused to dismantle his military structure and continued to operate under the name of Nahzat. This resulted in a military confrontation with the formerly Nasr commanders who were fighting on behalf of Hezb-e Wahdat. The conflict resulted in the total defeat of Nahzat and other smaller organisations in this district in 1993. As a result, Wahdat in Jaghori and most other parts of Ghazni established itself through the military victory of the former Nasr forces.
One after the other the smaller parties were pressured or coaxed to join the process. In November 1989, the remnant of Behisthi's Shuray-e Ittefaq also joined. His decision to participate in the unification process was a turning point in the development of clerical leadership in the Hazarajat, as it symbolized the recognition of Khomeinist hegemony by important non-Khomeinist elements of the clergy. Behishthi's Shura was different from other organizations. He represented the conservative and non-revolutionary component of the ulema. He was a follower of the Khoei school of thought, a moderate, non-political and conservative line of thinking opposed to Khomeini's revolutionary Islamism and dominant among Afghanistani Shiites until the early 1980s. By the time Hezb-e Wahdat was in the making, Beheshti was reduced to leading a small fraction of the Shura in Nawur district of Ghazni.
The ambition to integrate previously hostile organizations into a single party had achieved a great degree of success. Officially, all the previous organizations except Harakat were dissolved and their military structures were dismantled. A relatively stable political order was restored in the areas under its control. However, the party suffered from serious structural problems and ideological differences.