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Pakistan and the Afghanistan Endgame |
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Written by Ahmed Rashid
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Wednesday, 17 March 2010 |
 Wary neighbors: Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) with Pakistan's Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani, seeking accommodation. Photo credit: European Press Photo Agency.
After the failure of high level talks between India and Pakistan over
their long running disputes, both countries are now locked in an
escalating proxy war in Afghanistan.
If no solution is found
to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests in Afghanistan, the coming
months might see stepped up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul
and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir from Pakistan.
The
fact that in recent weeks a large number of Taliban operatives have
been captured in Pakistan signals an intensified struggle over the fate
of Afghanistan rather than a winding down of the conflict.
With
Afghan President Hamid Karzai seeking negotiations with the Taliban,
some of whom Pakistan distrusts, along with India increasingly
concerned about the Pakistan-backed Taliban coming to power in Kabul,
the conflict is reaching a new stage of intensity. Even as an intensive
US and NATO military offensive against the Taliban is underway in
southern Afghanistan, neighboring states are already considering the
Americans as good as gone and preparing for an end game scenario with
old rivalries renewed.
While Pakistan charges India with
undermining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, India fears that
Pakistan is preparing the ground for pro-Pakistan elements from the
Taliban to negotiate with Kabul, in an attempt to force India out of
Afghanistan after US forces start a slow withdrawal in July 2011.
Meanwhile, a year after Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba
carried out Mumbai attack they are yet to be brought to justice.
Against
this backdrop, Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries met in New
Delhi at the end of February but failed to make any progress. Just a
day later a suicide squad in Kabul hit two hotels, killing 16 people
including 7 Indian civilians and two Indian army majors. Three days
later the Afghan government accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of being
responsible for the Kabul attack.
In a series of briefings to
the Pakistani and foreign media, Pakistani generals have portrayed
India as seriously threatening Pakistan, using its embassy and
consulates in Afghanistan to harbor, train and fund Baloch separatists
who are waging an insurgency in Balochistan province, trying to
undermine Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan and even for backing
elements of the Pakistani Taliban. Tensions heightened after four
Pakistani workers were gunned down in Kandahar in early March by
unknown assailants. The Pakistani media has accused the Indian
consulate in Kandahar of organizing the attack.
Pro-military
commentators have risen to the occasion demanding that as Pakistan now
faces a two-front situation, India should be pushed out of Afghanistan
by the Taliban or as a pre-condition which the US must accept, if and
when peace talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government are held.
India
was seriously rattled when the US and NATO agreed at the January 28
London conference on Afghanistan to begin "re-integrating" Taliban
fighters and field commanders and lavishly funding a peace package for
them. President Karzai went much further by demanding ‘reconciliation'
with the mainstream Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar. India was
aghast at the unanimity of the international community which is tiring
of the war in Afghanistan, as India has vociferously opposed any
dialogue with the Taliban.
India sees the Afghan and Pakistani
Taliban and Al Qaeda working closely with anti-Indian groups based in
Pakistani Punjab, such as Lashkar, who have begun to re-infiltrate into
Indian Kashmir to restart the guerrilla war which has been dormant
since 2004. Even US officials say that Punjabi militants are
increasingly fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Although
Karzai has declared that "Afghanistan does not want proxy war between
India and Pakistan," India's real concern is that Pakistan appears
determined to position itself center stage of any dialogue between the
Taliban and Kabul. Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Bureau recently
arrested key Afghan Taliban leaders who have been engaged in talks with
representatives of the Karzai administration without Pakistan's ISI
being involved.
Senior US officials in Washington say the
initial arrest of the powerful second in command Taliban leader, Mullah
Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi in early February was accidental – after
the CIA discovered the location of a meeting of Taliban commanders
where Barader was found. The ISI arrested him and then decided to bring
in all his supporters, resulting in more arrests. Kabul's request that
Barader be extradited was refused. Despite repeated requests, US
officials have been given only limited access to question Barader and
even less access to question other arrested Taliban.
However,
despite his significant sanctuary in Pakistan, Barader was at odds with
the ISI talking independently to Karzai's representatives without
taking the ISI into confidence and instead enlisting the help of Saudi
Arabia. Over the past 12 months Saudi Arabia has been intermittently
involved in helping the two sides hold informal talks that so far have
not led to real negotiations, although they have the potential to do
so. The Saudis, although close allies of Pakistan, had also appeared
willing to keep the ISI out of the dialogue.
The Obama
administration is still far from accepting the idea of negotiating with
the Taliban leadership and US officials were annoyed with Karzai after
the London conference for raising the issue, but the ISI and the
military are now forcing the pace to have a three way dialogue between
Kabul, Islamabad and the Taliban, while also pushing the US
administration to accept such a dialogue and agree to a major role for
the ISI.
India has now embarked on a diplomatic offensive to
counter Pakistan's growing role, sending National Security Adviser
Shivsankar Menon to Kabul in early March and the Foreign Minister S M
Krishna to Iran in coming weeks. Iranian president Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad's hastily arranged trip to Afghanistan this week underlined
Tehran's keen interest in the Afghanistan endgame. India has asked
Karzai about his secret negotiations with the Taliban and how India can
play a role. At the same time India appears to be wanting to rebuild
the alliance with Iran, Russia and the Central Asian Republics that
opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and supported the non-Pashtun Northern
Alliance.
Missing as yet from this complicated maneuvering is
the US administration, which will have to decide soon on supporting
Kabul-Taliban talks if it is not to see its military and economic
development offensives in Afghanistan undermined by growing regional
rivalries. Also missing from the equation is Pakistan's civilian
government, which has been bypassed in the foreign policy decision
making by the military and the ISI. It is well known that the much
weakened President Asif Zardari would like to improve relations with
India and Afghanistan and encourage trade and investment, rather than
foment a new set of regional tensions.
However a too overt
Pakistani role is likely to be rejected by Karzai, by Afghanistan's
non-Pashtuns and civil society and even by many Taliban who are tired
of fighting and would like to end their dependence on Pakistan.
Any
sign of excessive Pakistani influence in Afghanistan would immediately
prompt a reaction from India, Iran, China and the Arab Gulf states,
which could include backing anti-Pakistan proxies in Afghanistan and
making it even more difficult for Afghanistan to achieve peace and
stability.
Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and author,
most recently of "Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia." Reprinted with permission from
YaleGlobal Online, the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the
Study of Globalization
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India on the other hand is at the behest of the US in terms of power (nuclear power station being built by the US), economics (India depends on US markets for its finance, products and its talents in the fields of IT), politics (the US is giving face to India in allowing India to flex its muscles a little bit whereby in actual fact India is a weak nation).
The three stooges are just wasting their time and the US is just laughing at them knowing that they are just trying to maneuvre something that they will never be able to. It is like some idiots trying to operate an air-craft carrier.