Afghan Plan C: divide up the country

The plan, which has been proposed by British Conservative MP and Foreign Office Aide Tobias Ellwood and is under discussion in London and Washington, would divide Afghanistan into eight separate “kingdoms” that will be overseen by a foreign government, British media reported.

Based on the new “regionalized” Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai will hold on as a ceremonial official, while a prime minister will take his responsibilities.

Plan C wants the eight “kingdoms” to form around “economic hubs” of Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Kunduz, Khost, Jalalabad, Bamyan and Mazar-i-Sharif.

While foreign governments led by the US claimed back in 2001 when they invaded Afghanistan that they want to see an end to Taliban insurgence, the new plan proposes that some of the eight regions should be ruled by Taliban.

The Afghan invasion has been long feared to be a war of occupation in a veil rather than a push for democracy.

The blatant new plan to rob the country of its independence from foreign governments and “impose” a political structure from outside confirms analysts’ worst fears.

Frightened analysts are now attacking the new proposals as obvious meddling in another country’s internal affairs.

“Who is the British MP sitting in London and deciding for Afghanistan? It should be us, the people of this country, deciding if we want to divide into states or collapse as a nation,” said Wazhma Frogh, executive director of Afghanistan’s Research Institute for Women, Peace and Security.

Others are warning that taking such a step will help push insurgents back into power rather than helping Afghans achieve democracy.

“Splitting the country into such regions will result in the empowerment of what we have started calling ‘local (or regional) power brokers’ and what was known as ‘warlords’ before, whose misrule between 1992 and 1996 caused the rise of the Taliban in the first place,” said Thomas Rutting, the co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network.

The Plan A was turning Afghanistan into a smoothly functioning democracy and Plan B was handing the war over to the Afghan army overseen by American military advisors.