Saturday, Dec 23, 2006
Opinion
New lows in Pakistan-Afghanistan ties http://www.hindu.com/2006/12/23/stories/2006122305171200.htm
Nirupama Subramanian
In such bad shape are relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan that their exchanges now have the same flavour as India-Pakistan conversations of not so long ago.
ASKED TO respond to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's outbursts against Pakistan at a press stake-out last week, Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri made a comment that spoke volumes of the state of relations between the two countries: "As Foreign Minister, one learns to control one's temper."
But no amount of control over tempers or attempts at official gloss have been able to conceal the new lows in relations between the two "brotherly" neighbours. From April, when the Taliban insurgency gained new strength, the Afghan leadership has been dropping big hints that Pakistan is backing the militants. Now the allegations are out in the open. When Mr. Kasuri returned from a two-day visit to Kabul, the Foreign Ministry said he had "candid and open" discussions with the Afghan leadership on "every aspect of our relationship."
But barely had Mr. Kasuri boarded the plane, when President Karzai made some of his strongest comments yet against Pakistan. Teary-eyed, he held it responsible for supporting "terrorists" from across the border who were killing Afghan children. He lashed out again two days later at Pakistan for wanting to keep Afghans in "perpetual slavery."
Pakistan is finding itself in an increasingly tight corner in its relations with Afghanistan. Almost on a daily basis, it has to defend itself against allegations that it retains links with the Taliban, actively assists the insurgency, and that it has not yet let go of its obsession of building a "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.
Islamabad points to its 80,000 troops on its side of the Durand Line, and the 700 or so casualties it has suffered in the "war on terror," and in a wounded tone asks: has any country done more? According to Pakistan, the Taliban insurgency lies, as does a solution, "deep" within Afghan borders. It says the reason for the Taliban resurgence is that the Kabul Government is weak and it has marginalised Pashtuns, and has not been able to address reconstruction, poverty alleviation and economic development, especially in southern Afghanistan where the insurgency is strongest.
A piqued Pakistan has made other suggestions, difficult for Afghanistan to accept: the repatriation of the two million-plus Afghan refugees who have lived in Pakistan since the days of the Afghan-Soviet war, fencing the border - unacceptable to Afghanistan which does not recognise the Durand Line as the international border - and even selective mining along the border.
With visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair by his side, President Pervez Musharraf said in November that what Afghanistan needed was a Marshall Plan-type reconstruction effort by the international community. A purely military effort would fail to end the insurgency, he said. At present, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan number around 32,000. Of these, British, U.S. and Canadian troops face the worst fighting while the rest are reluctant to deploy their soldiers in trouble spots. At NATO's Riga summit in late November, France, Germany, Spain and Italy agreed to redeploy their troops in the Taliban heartland only "in extremis." Given that the NATO nations failed to agree on removing all the curbs that can make their troops in Afghanistan effective, Pakistan says winning the war is not possible by military means alone.
As a model solution to the turmoil in Afghanistan, Pakistan is offering its own peace agreements with militants - it says they are "tribal elders" - in North and South Waziristan, two of the seven districts in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the borders of Afghanistan.
While the South Waziristan agreement was signed in April 2004, the North Waziristan deal was signed in September this year. Both deals were brokered through the Jamaat-e-ulema Islami (JuI), a pro-Taliban religious political party led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman that rules the North-West Frontier Province. The Government has projected the deals as an example of its "holistic" approach that combines military action with a political settlement and economic development.
But the deals have been criticised by many as virtual surrender to the militants and evidence of Pakistan's ambivalence towards the Taliban. Earlier this month, the Gareth Evans-led International Crisis Group, a non-government conflict resolution organisation, came out with a report frying the agreements. The report says the deals "facilitate the growth of militancy and attacks in Afghanistan by giving pro-Taliban elements a free hand to recruit, train and arm" with negative consequences for Pakistan too. It says militants are running a parallel administration in both Waziristans. It also talks about Talibanisation "spreading like wildfire" in Pakistan's northwest, aided by the ruling coalition of religious parties in the NWFP. According to the ICG, the situation cannot improve unless a representative government is allowed in FATA, and Pakistan itself returns to democratic rule.
Dismissing the report as typical of the ICG's "one way of looking at things," Pakistan has pointed instead to an anodyne report of the United Nations Security Council mission to Afghanistan. The report takes note of the "cross-border dimension to the insurgency," but stresses corruption, the culture of impunity and the bumper poppy crop this year as more imminent threats to peace and stability. It says the mission, which had one meeting with Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammed Khan in Islamabad, was "encouraged" by Pakistan's efforts to tackle terrorism and prevent Talibanisation. Pakistan also reminds doubters of the praise the Bush Administration, the Blair Government and others have often publicly showered on President Musharraf for his role in the "war on terror."
But for months now, the Western media have been stressing that what the international community needs is not an Afghanistan policy but a Pakistan policy. Most recently, a hard-hitting editorial in the Washington Post demanded that in order to prevent a repeat of history, "action" must be taken against the "Al Qaeda sanctuary" in Pakistan before spring, when the next wave of Taliban attacks is expected. It says U.S officials are being far too indulgent with President Musharraf, and that in return for the "strategic cover and billions of dollars in military and economic aid," the U.S has the right to demand "that he abandon his separate peace."
Even at home, Pakistan is finding it difficult to convince Afghanistan observers of its intentions. At a meeting called by Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and secretary-general of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid), Afghan watchers in the Pakistani media roasted the Government for not severing links with the Taliban completely and for holding on to the notion of strategic depth. According to an insider account of the meeting in The News by Imtiaz Alam, all participants said Pakistan based its policy on the wrong assumption that Pashtuns were a majority in Afghanistan, whereas they were only the largest ethnic group. They pointed out that in any case, the Karzai Government is dominated by Pashtuns.
Need for welfare programme
Yes, the participants agreed, the Karzai Government is corrupt and inept, its writ does not extend beyond Kabul, and there cannot be a military solution. But they recommended that Pakistan, instead of being seen as fishing in the Afghan power-struggle, take up a visible, people-oriented programme of welfare and development in Afghanistan reaching out to all ethnic groups. They wanted the Government to ensure that no section of the establishment supported the Taliban.
In such bad shape are relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan that their exchanges now have the same flavour as India-Pakistan conversations of not so long ago. While phrases such as "paradigm shift," "honourable settlement" and a "realistic" solution are being exchanged over the Line of Control, that clunky phrase "cross-border militancy" - once unique to India-Pakistan relations - is now used more with reference to the Durand Line. In another recall of India-Pakistan rows, Afghanistan has arrested one of its generals on the charge of spying for Pakistan, and a Pakistani "agent" of the ISI.
When Pakistan projects its Waziristan deals as a model for replication in Afghanistan, it is suspected of pushing for political accommodation of the Taliban. The two countries have not yet been able to agree on the modalities of holding a cross-border peace jirga, proposed by Mr. Karzai when he met U.S President George Bush and President Musharraf at the White House in September, because Kabul suspects that Pakistan will pack its side with pro-Taliban Pashtuns.
As Pakistan-Afghanistan relations tumble, Pakistani commentators such as Hussain Haqqani are calling on the Government to "befriend" Afghanistan instead of getting embroiled in "yet another risky adventure involving militancy and terrorism," asking it to abandon the "folly of seeking a `strategic depth' through dangerous proxies such as the Taliban." But then for those who continue to believe in "strategic depth," peace in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to peace between India and Pakistan, and for that, the two countries must first settle Kashmir.
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