By Qamar Syed.
Pakistan is Afghanistan‟s most important neighbour, since it shares with Afghanistan history, ethnicity, religion and geography in ways none of its other neighbour does. We can, therefore, reasonably expect Pakistan to be more proactively concerned with the Afghan situation at this critical stage and reshape its own Afghan outlook accordingly. And it seems reasonably logical to conclude that the search for a lasting peace solution in Afghanistan has been lost because of the ongoing conflict of interests among regional actors.
Pakistan’s Afghan policy
Generally, discussions on Pakistan focus on its role in the ‘War on Terror,‟ whereby its support to Afghan Taliban is presumed as a given reality. In the process, any possibility of change in state approach to regional conflicts such as Afghanistan according to new circumstantial realities is often overlooked.
Pakistan did pursue a policy of „strategic depth‟ in the 1990s and faced international criticism for supporting Taliban during the current Afghan war. While such aspects of Pakistan‟s past Afghan policy deserve critical review, a question more relevant to the current context, and therefore worth examining, is how it is responding to the certainty of Western military exit from Afghanistan and corresponding uncertainties associated with the state of war and the prospect of peace in Afghanistan.
The evidence in the last few years, in the form of policy pronouncements by Pakistan‟s civil-military leadership and meaningful governmental initiatives, suggests the country has, indeed, taken a visible shift in its Afghan policy. What are its underlying motivations? Is this shift part of a broader transformation currently under way in Pakistan‟s regional priorities? And how far can it help in achieving sustainable Afghan peace and viable regional stability? Realism constitutes a more appropriate framework to answer these questions, since pragmatic considerations seem to underpin the evolving transformation in Pakistan‟s Afghan policy and regional outlook. However, its manifestations and motivations cannot be understood without a brief reference to Pakistan‟s past relationship with Afghanistan.
Despite those efforts by the new administration, there were credible suspicions that the Taliban continued to receive support from their foreign benefactors to wage war against the people and government of Afghanistan. Moreover, the misgiving between the two neighbors culminated in the brief fall in October of Kunduz , a strategic province in northern Afghanistan that connects the country to Central Asia.
On the other hand, the rising insecurity in different provinces initiated from the Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan further damaged ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The acrimony and mistrust peaked to the point that President Ashraf Ghani in August publicly announced the withdrawal of political support to Pakistan for the reconciliation process and said that he would work with other stakeholders in the region in order to bring peace and stability to his country.
Firstly, it appears that Pakistan is losing its enduring influence over the fracturing Taliban movement. From Pakistan’s perspective, the Taliban, which has split into two major groups, are unable to turn the tide militarily. For this reason, there has to be a political solution to the Afghan crisis so that it can focus on its own domestic security problems.
To this end, a settlement could be achieved with the faction of Mullah Mansour, successor to Omar, who has close ties with Pakistani establishment. Secondly, given the split among Taliban ranks, any resolution that could maintain a modicum of Pakistani influence over the group is in the best interest of the country towards normalization of relations and reaching a favorable political solution with Kabul. Finally, with perpetual instability in Afghanistan, the security situation in Pakistan will also remain fragile because of the intertwined connection among various militant groups active in both countries.
Sure enough, with the announcement of Mullah Omar’s death, momentum toward peace came to a halt. The meeting set for July 31(2015) was postponed indefinitely. Then Omar’s successor, Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, rejected negotiations altogether and reissued the call for jihad against the United States and the Afghan government. Nearly a week after that, over the course of four days, three bombings wrecked Kabul, killing and injuring nearly 400 Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility. The question now is whether the window for peace talks is closed.
Talking to Taliban
The Taliban are immersed in a power struggle. Mansour is trying to secure his position against defiant rivals such as Abdul Qayum Zakir and Omar’s son Yakub, who question his right to rule. There are two possible outcomes to these struggles, each with its own implications for negotiations. One outcome is that the Taliban movement stays united. A single leader—Mansour
Afghanistan’s peaceful future depends to a great extent on an auspicious regional environment, with Pakistan at its core. Vice versa, an unstable Afghanistan will complicate Pakistan’s ability to refurbish its weak state and economy and suppress dangerous internal militancy. Assassinations and military coups have plagued Pakistan since the early years of independence, leaving behind a weak political system unable to effectively deliver elementary public goods, including safety, and respond to the fundamental needs of the struggling Pakistani people.
Rather than being a convenient tool for regional security schemes as Pakistani generals have often imagined, an Afghanistan plagued by intense militancy, with Kabul unable to control its territory and effectively exercise power, will distract Pakistan’s leaders from addressing internal challenges. Such a violently contested, unsettled Afghanistan will only further augment and complicate Pakistan’s own deep-seated and growing security and governance problems.
Pakistan fears both a strong Afghan government closely aligned with India, potentially helping encircle Pakistan, and an unstable Afghanistan that becomes—as has already happened—a safe haven for anti-Pakistan militant groups and a dangerous playground for outside powers. Whether the recent warming of relations between the two countries, following a change in government in Kabul in September 2014 when Ashraf Ghani became president, translates into lasting and substantial changes in Pakistan’s policy remains very much yet to be seen.
The Indian role
Now a word about India’s role in Afghanistan. It has invested more than 2 billion dollars in that country. It patronizes a number of top leaders of Northern Areas including Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Dostum and has made big strides in cementing relations between the two countries. As for back as 2011 we witnessed Mr. Karzai entering into a strategic partnership agreement with India which included training of senior military Afghan officers in India. India is also deeply involved in exploiting Pakistan’s problems in various parts of the country.
For evidence please read the following excerpts from speeches by what ex-US Defence Secretary Chuck Hegel and General Stanley McChrystal had said in their talks on Afghanistan: that India had been using Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan and over the years financed problems for Pakistan. General Stanley McChrystal, former Commander of ISAF, had said, “Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures. The recent worsening of relations between India and Pakistan is bound to encourage New Delhi to step up its unwholesome anti Pakistan activities. How weighty is the Pakistan evidence about details of India’s subversive activities in Balochistan and FATA, is yet to be known.
The tug of interests
While closely intertwined, the intra-Afghan and regional dimensions are often addressed separately or in the wrong order, starting with the regional angle and reducing the intra-Afghan settlement to a function of the interests of regional powers. With such an approach, one easily falls into the trap of conflicting national interests (between, for example, Pakistan and India, Iran and Pakistan, and the Gulf States and Iran). Such controversies do not prevent multilateral dialogue on Afghanistan, but they easily surpass the impact of any regional framework.
Ultimately, even a degree of balance among the interests of regional powers does not substitute for a genuine political settlement in Afghanistan. The right order, hence, is the reverse: a solution must begin with an adequate intra-Afghan settlement, formulated in a way that accommodates the main legitimate concerns of key regional stakeholders (first and foremost, Pakistan and Iran).The approach via Brahimi-Pickering plan seems pragmatic.
The intra-Afghan regionalization arrangement outlined in the previous section stands a chance of striking a balance between the domestic dimensions of settlement and the interests of key regional stakeholders. While the proposed decentralized framework for Afghanistan will not primarily be driven by—or satisfy—the maximum demands of regional powers, it will be in line with their legitimate interests. The Pakistan-supported Pashtuns in Taliban-controlled areas will receive a significant share of formal power at the regional level while remaining a constituent part of the decentralized Afghan state.
Regions with Shia dominance or a mixed population with a significant Shia presence will enjoy the same degree of autonomy. In particular, Hazarajat, as the most vulnerable region with the most victimized population, will likely become a natural center of gravity for any modified international presence. Iran will continue to play its role as the traditional benefactor of Afghanistan’s Shia and Persian-speaking populations and, together with other states like Uzbekistan, Russia, and India, support the northern regions.
The new hopes
The third meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) on Afghanistan at Islamabad on Saturday ended on a positive note. The QCG (comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, US and China) adopted a road map, which was under discussion in the two earlier meetings last month, “stipulating the stages and steps” of the reconciliation process, as the Joint Press Release put it. The road map pertains to the parameters of shared responsibilities of the involved parties in the QCG mechanism. Its formal adoption was no big surprise but is a necessary step forward nonetheless.
Second, the QCG will keep up the momentum by holding its next meeting shortly on February 23 at Kabul. Third, importantly, the QCG expects that direct talks between the Afghan government and Taliban will take place “by the end of February”.
The QCG meeting “stressed that the outcome of the reconciliation process should be a political settlement that results in the cessation of violence, and durable peace in Afghanistan”.
The QCG had earlier reached a consensus that there shall be no ‘pre-conditions’ attached to the peace talks. There is now the added recognition that some ‘confidence-building measures’ are useful to cajole the Taliban to walk toward the negotiating table.
So, how does the balance sheet look? The jettisoning of pre-conditions means that Taliban cannot insist they first want to discuss the withdrawal of foreign troops. On the other hand, Kabul government cannot insist on Taliban bidding farewell to arms before talks begin.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has accepted that reduction in violence should be an important objective of the consultations. But Pakistan has underscored that the objective should be to bring in as many Taliban groups as possible into the peace talks. Presumably, it cannot be a ‘pre-condition’ on anyone’s part that, say, the Haqqani Network cannot participate.
