Pakistan’s Afghan dilemma

S P SETH

Pakistan’s relations with the US and its allies seem to be on the mend with reports that the suspended NATO supply route to Afghanistan might be reopened. The route was closed by Pakistan after 24 of its soldiers were killed last November by the US forces on the Pakistan-Afghan border. Whether it will mean any real improvement in their relationship remains problematic because both remain hostage to the developments in Afghanistan. While the Hamid Karzai government might feel reassured about the US commitment to a post-2014 Afghanistan after the US military withdrawal, following the strategic partnership between the two countries for ten years; Pakistan might not be all that happy.  With the US involvement, of sorts, likely to continue, Pakistan’s capacity to shape developments to its strategic advantage will be severely constrained. Therefore, Afghanistan will remain a difficult issue affecting US-Pakistan relations for quite some time even after 2014.

It would appear that there is considerable confusion in the higher echelons of the Pakistan military about how best to achieve their strategic objectives in Afghanistan. There is, of course, the clearly understood goal of creating strategic depth in Afghanistan under Pakistani influence. But to imagine that an independent Afghan regime, presumably run by the Taliban, will follow Pakistan’s strategic dictates is a wild assumption. According to some reports, even at this point of time when the Taliban leadership is said to be sheltering in Pakistan, the relationship between some of Pakistan’s top generals and the Taliban leaders in residence is quite testy, bordering on deep distrust. It, therefore, doesn’t bode well for Pakistan’s presumed confidence that the Taliban leadership, if and when in power again, will play Pakistan’s cards.

In a recent review article in the New York Review of Books on a bunch of books on Afghanistan, Anatol Lieven has written that, “… sensible Pakistani [military officers] do not want the Taliban to conquer the whole of Afghanistan, because they would then be free to turn on Pakistan by giving their support to their Pashtun brothers who are in revolt against Pakistan as part of the Pakistani Taliban…”

Since Professor Lieven is considered an expert on Pakistan, and Afghanistan (his latest book, Pakistan: A Hard Country) it is worth quoting him at some length. He writes: “Just what the Pakistani security establishment is really aiming at [in Afghanistan] is extremely difficult to work out. Quite apart from the levels of opacity and deceit in which Pakistani policy is wrapped, the Pakistani state is weak and soft. Even in the military, the lines of command have become blurred.”

Highlighting the role of the ISI in Afghan affairs, he comments that, “Indeed, so close is the identification of some ISI officers with the Taliban that there is some doubt whether the Taliban is acting as Pakistan’s proxy or the ISI is acting as the Taliban’s proxy.”

Such confusion of policy and implementation, when the state is soft and weak, portends danger for Pakistan. And the danger clearly is that Pakistan is becoming hostage to a set of assumptions that do not hang together. They need a policy where the Taliban ceases to be its centerpiece, because it is actually weakening the foundations of the Pakistani state. The meteoric rise of the Pakistani Taliban (an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban), and the deadly violence it is inflicting on the Pakistani society (with their fraternal linkages with other extremist and terrorist groups), is an existential threat for Pakistan.

Unless and until this realization dawns on the Pakistani state, particularly its military, Pakistan is likely to lurch from one tragedy to another. In this context whether its relations with the US are on the mend or not is immaterial. Pakistan’s own contradictions and conflicts are so overwhelming that the State has no time to work out an alternative strategy to save Pakistan. Let us face it, Pakistan is in danger of imploding from inside.

In the midst of all this, some of the Afghans living in Australia were mulling over their country’s fate after the US withdrawal in 2014 at a national TV forum here. Most of them were against the US withdrawal in 2014 for fear that it would put in jeopardy the limited gains in education facilities for girls in the cities, and other benefits of relative openness of Afghan society, at least in the cities.

There was also concern about Pakistan’s role as a safe haven for terrorists and extremists to destabilize Afghanistan. And it was feared that the return of the Taliban, if it were to eventuate, would be disastrous for the minorities, like the Hazaras.

The Afghan diaspora generally shares these fears, many of whom fled Afghanistan to escape the country’s mayhem, and they fear the worst in terms of a possible civil war in the country and/or the return of the Taliban into power in parts of the country. The Taliban are unlikely to be the sole political actor in the country, because they will be resisted by the warlords in the north and by other ethnic groups like the Tajik. The Afghan diaspora,  therefore, by and large, favor US troop presence beyond 2014, believing that this would somehow be tantamount to stability of sorts. In some way, though, foreign troops in Afghanistan are part of the problem, and not its solution.

However, there is one issue that is somehow skirted in all this talk of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. Which is: what sort of political order is envisaged in the post-2014 period when the withdrawal of foreign troops would coincide with the end of Karzai’s constitutional term as Afghanistan’s president.

Karzai probably would like to continue. But that would be unconstitutional. This might be fixed, though, with a managed constitutional amendment, followed by a managed/manipulated election. If that happens, it would further delegitimize the system and the regime. And how would the US and its NATO allies respond to it? As it is, Karzai might appear to be the only dependable ally for the US, notwithstanding his quirkiness and tendency to play all the cards at the same time.

In other words, apart from the Taliban danger, there are other imponderables in the Afghan situation as well. Therefore, the post-2014 situation, following NATO withdrawal, could turn out to be even more messy and lethal than what has happened so far.

And Pakistan will be in the middle of it all. It is imperative that it should work out a strategic vision and not go for tactical gains that have a habit of turning into greater disasters.

 Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times