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How Pakistan can facilitate Afghan peace

“The foreign office has no respect for the heroes who had defeated the Soviet occupation forces and thinks I want to hijack the Afghan policy. They should know that I can hijack much more than that,” yelled Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, then chief of the army staff. His outburst during a high-level meeting chaired by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was prompted by a sentence in a working paper I had prepared which said that the Pakistan-sponsored Afghan Interim Government in exile was inflexible and “as rigid as a corpse.”
Benazir Bhutto, who had started her first prime ministerial term, retorted that she disagreed with the army chief because the foreign office assessment was spot-on. In his inimitable style, the president defused the tension by saying that the only inaccuracy in the paper was that a corpse was always flaccid and “rigidity only occurred during rigor mortis.” Suddenly there were smiles all around and a potential standoff between the prime minister and the army chief was averted. Nothing has changed since then and policy formulation in pivotal areas of external affairs is still largely determined by the army.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there have been fundamental transformations in global geopolitics. Communist regimes fell like ninepins, new countries emerged in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, others, such as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), disappeared. For the first time after the 45 years that the Cold War lasted, the US, which became the sole superpower, found itself having to conduct foreign policy without an ideological adversary. It went briefly into a period of “splendid isolation,” much like imperial Britain in the 19th century. External affairs were relegated to the backseat in Washington’s priorities till the fateful events of 9/11.
Terrorism thus emerged as the overarching threat to global peace and security. The immediate consequence of 9/11 was the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The dreaded Taliban regime that had ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001 may have been destroyed, but it also ignited a 10-year-long insurgency whose intensity has still not abated.
Despite this, President Barack Obama went ahead with the anticipated announcement on June 22 that 33,000 US troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by next summer. Two reasons for this are immediately obvious. The first is the 2012 presidential election and the drawdown is accordingly scheduled in two phases, with an initial 10,000 soldiers returning home in December ahead of the Iowa Democratic Caucus in February 2012 and the remaining 23,000 around the time of the Democratic National Convention on Sept 3. Obama also said that by 2014 “the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.”
The second is the ongoing peace efforts, and this was confirmed as early as Feb 18 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she said “we are launching a diplomatic surge to move this conflict towards a political outcome...” President Hamid Karzai was far more specific four months later when, on June 18, he disclosed that “peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military, and especially the United States itself, is going ahead with these negotiations...The talks are going well.”
The following day, Defence Secretary Robert Gates conceded that there had been an outreach on the part of a number of countries, including the US, but “these contacts are very preliminary at this point.” His own assessment was that the talks were unlikely to make much headway till the coming winter because “the Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure, and begin to believe that they can’t win...” This presages an intensification of the conflict in the coming months. Other countries may have four seasons, but Afghanistan has only two—one in which there is fighting and the other in which the bitter cold of winter imposes an armistice.
The silver lining is that credible reports have emerged indicating that till now three rounds of talks have been held between the Taliban and US officials and these could tone down the level of fighting. The first was in Munich on Nov 28, 2011, the second in Doha on Feb 15, and this was probably what Hillary Clinton meant when she said three days later that the US was “launching a diplomatic surge,” the third round was again in Munich on May 7-8. This was followed by the UN Security Council decision on June 17 not to bracket the Taliban with Al-Qaeda in the comprehensive list of terrorists maintained by the UN since 1998. This delinking should serve as an inducement to the Taliban to sever all ties with Al-Qaeda and provides an opportunity to Pakistan to facilitate such an outcome.
But the Afghanistan problem is far more complex than is imagined. The restoration of durable peace and stability is easier said than done because the country, which was established as the Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1747 by Ahmed Shah Abdali, has been incessantly ravaged by ethnic violence caused by the Pukhtun subjugation of the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens and the Hazaras. The most comprehensive accounts of this are to be found in the writings of Soviet historians. These show that the process of Pukhtun domination, which involved conquest followed by persecution and ethnic-cleansing, reached its peak under Amir Abdur Rahman, who is often described as the Bismarck of Afghanistan.
The enormity of the ethnic problem cannot be overstated. Even if Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are routed, sustainable peace and stability in the country is unlikely to emerge unless the composition of the future dispensation reflects the ethnic mosaic which defines Afghan society. This can only be achieved through an intra-Afghan dialogue without outside interference. Pakistan, as Afghanistan’s immediate and most important neighbour, can facilitate this. Any other policy will be self-defeating.
Pakistan has enough problems of its own and its focus should be within its own borders. While announcing the troop drawdown plan, Obama bluntly added: “Our efforts must also address terrorist safe havens in Pakistan... The United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us.” A week later, on June 29, the White House announced its revised National Strategy for Counterterrorism which envisages surgical strikes against individuals and groups involved in terrorism. Increased drone attacks and even operations by US Special Forces are likely.
Furthermore, The Washington Post of July 2 carried a report sourced to Pentagon officials that the US is drastically reducing its reliance on Pakistan as a supply route for its forces in Afghanistan. In 2009, approximately 90 percent of the shipments were through Pakistan but currently 40 percent of the military surface cargo is being transported via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and this is slated to increase to 75 percent in the next six months. The implication is that Pakistan’s leverage with Washington as a supply corridor will no longer be available.
Despite these grim realities, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg is still as much a prisoner of his Afghan illusions as he was in 1988. In a recent television talk show he predicted that after the withdrawal of foreign forces Afghanistan will again be controlled by the Taliban and Pakistan’s objectives will have been achieved. Intrusions of any kind in Afghanistan have always met with fierce resistance. Even Alexander the Great realised this when he wrote to his mother in 330 BC: “I am involved in a land of a lion-like and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel confronting my soldiers. You have brought only one son into this world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.”

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