Part I

In a recent meeting with visiting US Senator Carl Levin, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani reportedly said, as he has done in the past, that Pakistan supported an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process of reconciliation and that Pakistan was a part of the solution and not part of the problem. Pakistan, he said, desired a sovereign, independent, peaceful, stable and prosperous Afghanistan.
Without going into the long and sorry history of our past involvement in Afghanistan and assuming that having realised the costs such an involvement has imposed, we are now really serious about wanting to see a sovereign independent Afghanistan. Thus, our military and civilian leaders have to get together and determine the changes in policy that will be needed on our part to bring about this independence, while reducing the costs that Afghanistan continues to inflict on our economy and our body politic.
What are the factors, independent of our policy that will need to be borne in mind?
First it is apparent that even if a recent World Bank report, which maintains that 97 per cent of the Afghan economy is tied to international military and donor spending, there can be no doubt that the withdrawal of foreign troops by 2014 will considerably reduce the size of Afghanistan’s GDP, currently estimated to be $16 billion considerably. The current unemployment rate, estimated to be 40 per cent, will climb and bring more families under the poverty level. Unless there is a considerable injection of foreign assistance and this assistance is better spent than has been the case in the past, more Afghans particularly from the south and east will become economic refugees in Pakistan adding to the strains that the large refugee presence has already placed on a beleaguered Pakistani economy and compound the difficult demographic situation in Balochistan. It would be in Pakistan’s interest to canvass vigorously for the maintenance of foreign assistance to Afghanistan and for directing more of it to the southern and eastern provinces.
Second, President Karzai’s hold on power has been seriously weakened by the loss of his half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and other trusted aides, including the mayor of Kandahar and the police chief of Kandahar province — his major power base. His quarrel with the Afghan parliament remains unresolved even though he climbed down from the position of requiring, in line with the decision of a special tribunal the Afghan Supreme Court had set up at his behest, the unseating of 62 parliamentarians to accepting an Independent Election Commission (IEC) ruling that only nine will be unseated. It is significant that not one of these nine is from Ghazni province, where despite the Pashtun majority all the seats went to the Hazaras and which provided a large part of the rationale for seeking a re-evaluation of the election results. Politically, this was a serious defeat for Karzai. It is probable that since the UN and by extension the US has endorsed the IEC the furore in parliament will die down but this does not mean that parliament will be more inclined to cooperate with Karzai or to endorse his choice of ministers and any legislation that he may propose. Karzai has also let it be known that, in accordance with the constitution, he will not seek a third term when his present term expires in 2014. Ordinarily this is what was to be expected but prior to his quarrel with parliament and the tragedies in Kandahar it was the assumption that Karzai would propose a constitutional amendment to permit him a third term. His announcement may reflect a pragmatic recognition that his legendary political skill would not suffice to secure the constitutional amendment, but to my mind it reflects a certain depressed frame of mind.
His successor — the US and Nato, and most Afghans would agree — must be a Pashtun since even in the distorted estimates of the Nato, the Pashtuns represent the plurality among the ethnic groups in Afghanistan. Karzai is said to favour Mr Farouq Wardak, the education minister and the lead Karzai representative in the High Peace Council. From the perspective of Karzai and his probable successor, it is important that Pakistan be seen as being supportive of a moderate Pashtun president being elected in 2014 and being supportive in the meanwhile of efforts at reconciliation in which the moderate Pashtun rather than the Taliban remain or become the flag bearers of Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan.

Part II

Continuing from my previous piece, third, it seems that before the Bonn Conference in December and, perhaps, even before the meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours in Istanbul, in November, the Karzai administration will conclude a strategic partnership. According to Marc Grossman, 85 per cent of the work on the document has been completed. Dafdar Rangin Spanta, Afghanistan’s national security adviser has, in an interview with the Telegraph, said that Afghanistan had proposed an agreement for 10 years and that the Americans would not have independent bases but would be guests at Afghan-manned bases. He also said that for the training mission, thousands would be needed and that the Americans would also provide air support for Afghan operations. Based on earlier press reports, my own estimate is that there will be about 25,000 Americans at bases in Bagram, Shindad, Kandahar, Mazar and Jalalabad. It is my further conjecture that while the Americans may withdraw earlier than the 10 years, from these bases — in the event of a reconciliation — they will try very hard to retain a presence at Bagram, the listening post for Central Asia.
The Telegraph report says that Iran will publicly and Pakistan will privately object to this extended American stay. Whether this reflected Spanta’s view or the correspondent’s own assessment is not known. Speculation about Pakistan’s reservations may flow from reports appearing earlier that in top-level Pakistan-Afghan meetings, Pakistan had proposed to Afghanistan that it should abandon the alliance with the United States and look to China and Pakistan instead for assistance. This report had been unconvincingly denied in Pakistan and, as far as I know, it had elicited no comment from China but received a great deal of play in Afghanistan.
According to the report, the Russian ambassador in Kabul has already made his country’s objections known, arguing that Afghanistan needs development assistance not military bases. It is apparent that while the insurgency continues, the Karzai administration will feel, despite the reservations of its immediate or far neighbours, that it has no choice but to enter into some such agreement with the Americans. They will argue that by limiting the term to 10 years and by not giving the Americans independent bases, they have done as much as they could to satisfy the nationalist fervour of their own people and to allay the apprehensions of their neighbours. Were they to turn down the agreement, the Americans and Nato would still withdraw by 2014, leading to the collapse of the present regime, a drastic cut in foreign aid, a Taliban offensive to take over and then the onset of civil war as the ethnic minorities resisted Talibanisation. Pakistan has to understand that Afghanistan will enter into this agreement. Opposing it will only add another layer of distrust to Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, particularly when there is no viable alternative on offer. It cannot afford the collapse of the Karzai administration. Pakistan, of course, will recognise that in seeking a prolonged military presence in Afghanistan, the American objective is not only to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for al Qaeda or al Qaeda-minded groups, but also to “disrupt and dismantle al Qaeda and its support networks that it believes exist in Pakistan”.
Pakistan can be sure therefore that, failing successful reconciliation or action on Pakistan’s own part, the bases in Jalalabad and other Afghan cities will be used to maintain the ongoing barrage of drone attacks on the hideouts in Pakistan of al Qaeda or groups such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and the Haqqani network, which they believe support and provide safe havens to these militants and to attack the routes by which they enter into the famous P2K (Paktia, Paktika and Khost, the Afghan provinces which in addition to North Waziristan in Pakistan are regarded as the stronghold of the Haqqani network). But Pakistan should also calculate that while it will be more difficult, the Americans, in the absence of Afghan bases, will negotiate new usage rights at the base they currently operate in Kyrgyzstan and perhaps gain access to the base in Tajikistan (where the Indians had stationed aircraft) to continue these attacks. They may become somewhat less effective since the longer flying time may make it difficult for the drones to hover over the targets for long enough and targeting may therefore become less accurate but it should be regarded as certain that the American campaign against al Qaeda safe havens will not stop.

Part-III


Continuing from my previous piece, fourth, the total Afghan security forces will, by 2014, amount to 352,000 personnel with minimal recruitment from the south and east (Pashtuns from these areas comprise three per cent of the army and may have no higher representation in the Afghan National Police, which will number 157,000. Over the next eight months, the Americans will supply some $2.7 billion worth of military equipment including aircraft and armoured vehicles. This will not, however, include any fighter jets or tanks, both of which the Afghan defence minister has said Afghanistan needs to deter external aggression but which the Americans believe are beyond Afghan capacity to handle and presumably beyond Afghanistan’s needs. The Americans now calculate that they will need to provide $3 billion a year to sustain this force as against earlier estimates of $8 billion. Karzai himself has indicated that he wants a smaller force that Afghan resources can sustain. Presumably, he is also prepared to dismiss as unwarranted the fear of his defence minister that Afghanistan will be subject to external aggression. This Karzai inclination needs to be reinforced by reassurances that Afghanistan will face no external military threat and by expert advice on how Afghan forces can be trimmed or their costs brought down while canvassing for the maintenance of external assistance needed to sustain these forces until Afghanistan can assume the burden.
Fifth, the present prism of security first and security last through which our military and, by necessary extension, our civilian leadership has viewed Afghanistan needs to be critically re-examined. It is certainly right for us to want in Afghanistan a friendly government that will not allow the use of its territory for activities aimed at destabilising Pakistan. This is an issue that can and should figure at the November meeting in Istanbul where apparently Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours will offer pledges to help stabilisation in Afghanistan and not to seek to use Afghanistan for any purpose detrimental to Afghanistan or any of its neighbours.
Let us also acknowledge that a measure of hostility will be on display from whatever government is in power in Kabul because domestic political compulsions will require them to raise the question of the Durand Line. This is a situation that prevailed even when the Taliban regime, theoretically totally beholden to us, was in power in Kabul. The best safeguard against a hostile Afghanistan is, however, to create a measure of economic interdependence. Today, Afghanistan as a landlocked country conducts its foreign trade largely through Pakistan. Pakistan in turn can use Afghanistan for its trade with Central Asia and, more importantly, for bringing fossil fuel from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and electricity from Tajikistan into South Asia. For Pakistan, this is an urgent need since this would be the most economical route for the import of the energy Pakistan needs. It will also be a source of revenue, as Pakistan itself becomes a transit country for the export of this energy to India. Sixth, we must recognise that even while Pakistan ceases to interfere in Afghanistan — currently it is the country most often accused of doing so — there has been a long history of Afghanistan’s other neighbours and near neighbours also doing so perhaps without attracting the same measure of opprobrium. It is also a fact that Afghans have for the last many decades become rather expert at inviting such interference to strengthen their own position in internal power struggles. At this point of time there will be an even greater urge on the part of some of these countries because of the presence of American bases.
Clearly it is Afghanistan’s hope that at the Istanbul meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbours pledges of non-interference will be made with serious intent. This hope may not be realised even if Afghanistan is able to state that the American military presence will be wound up as soon as reconciliation has been worked out and a durable peace is established. The only safeguard would be that the reconciliation that the Afghans work out among themselves with our assistance is such that no Afghan faction feels it necessary to invite or permit foreign interference. Seventh, Pakistan has suffered the fallout of the situation in Afghanistan to a much greater extent than any other neighbour or near neighbour. For no other country is the restoration of stability in Afghanistan more important than it is for Pakistan. Success in efforts to expel or eliminate the foreign militants who have found shelter on our soil and have, because of the connections they have established with domestic extremists, made difficult if not impossible the task of de-radicalising our social polity depends on stability in Afghanistan and that in turn depends on an acceptable reconciliation.

Part IV

The attacks on border security checkposts in Chitral, on August 27, 2011, by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Swat renegades from their sanctuaries in Nuristan and Kunar was the latest of six attacks that have been launched by these groups from Afghan soil. Our ISPR statement on the incident said that the raid had been organised with assistance from local Afghan authorities. Other reports suggest that assistance came from local Afghan Taliban. In either case, this is a sinister development. In one case it suggests that the Afghans are retaliating for Pakistan’s failure to curb insurgent movement from Pakistan into Afghanistan. In the other case it suggests that the Afghan Taliban are working in tandem with the Pakistani insurgents to destabilise Pakistan. Neither is a welcome development. Only peace in Afghanistan can prevent this sort of escalation. So Pakistan, despite the formidable obstacles, must support reconciliation as the first step towards making Afghanistan a stable country. What form should such Pakistani support take? The Afghans have made it clear that they expect Pakistan to help the Afghan administration in establishing contact with the insurgents and to persuade them to adopt a stance that would enable a successful conclusion of these negotiations. Should we assume that it is for us then to determine who the insurgent representatives should be or should this be for the Karzai administration and its backers — the Americans — to decide? President Karzai and his people and the American intelligence operatives know whom they are fighting, but do they know who can speak for the movement? The successful impersonation of a Taliban leader by a Quetta shopkeeper suggests that neither is well acquainted with the Taliban hierarchy. Even The Tayyab Agha episode suggests that there are gaps in the American knowledge of the Taliban leadership. We may be better informed with regard to Mullah Omar and the Kandahar-origin Taliban movement and I think that Karzai would appreciate advise on who we think he should be talking to.
But does the necessary trust exist? Much was made-up in the western media about Pakistan’s refusal to hand over Mr Ghani Baradar, Mullah Omar’s second-in- command, to Afghanistan after he had been arrested in Pakistan because it was alleged that Pakistan did not want him to enter into negotiations with the Karzai administration on behalf of the Taliban. There is a great deal of murkiness surrounding Baradar. He was arrested by Pakistan but only after the CIA had established his whereabouts. Neither the CIA nor the ISI seemed aware of his identity or his importance when he was arrested. Certainly neither seemed to know that he wanted to negotiate with Karzai or his people. The true position is difficult to establish but there is no doubt that the Afghans have asked us to hand him over and we have not done so. Why? Similarly, in the Tayyab Agha episode the Pakistani intelligence officials made it known to the western press through informal briefings that they were unhappy at “being kept out of the loop”. Why?
Do we want to dictate who should represent the Taliban? If so, two questions arise. What is the end we have in mind and second, would the Taliban or the other side accept this? The answer to the first should be that we want reconciliation on terms that both sides find acceptable and that brings stability to Afghanistan and relieve us of the many burdens that we have borne for so long. The answer to the second would appear to be to let the decision lie with the Taliban leaders
Today, there is much talk of the fact that the Taliban in various informal contacts, thorough intermediaries, have told the Karzai administration that they would like to set up a Taliban office in a neutral country where they can, without Pakistan’s heavy hand bearing down on them, negotiate with the government. Whether this charge against Pakistan is true or not, we should let it be known that we would have no objection to such a process and that it would be for the Taliban to decide who will represent them.

Part V

If we support an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned process of reconciliation and if we are part of the solution and not part of the problem, then it is logical for the Afghans to expect us to use our influence with the Taliban to persuade them not only to negotiate, but also to adopt a stance in the negotiations that would lead to peace and stability in Afghanistan.
Who should we talk to? To date we have denied, or at least been ambivalent about, the existence of a Taliban shura on our soil but the fact remains that the Taliban presence in Balochistan — be it in the refugee camps along the border, in Chaman or the Kharotabad and Pashtunabad areas of Quetta — is well-established. (That this presence has contributed to the sectarian and ethnic strife and to upsetting the demographic balance in Balochistan is also indubitable). These are the people we have to address.
I think we should be clear in our own mind about the degree of influence we do have. I recall that a Taliban movement in power in Kandahar and Kabul, but largely beholden to us, refused to listen to our advice on the Bamiyan status and refused point-blank to hand over the Pakistani sectarian extremists — like Riaz Basra — who had taken or been given shelter in Afghanistan. There are allegations that this happened because the Taliban felt that those who made the demand were not those who determined Pakistan’s policy on Afghanistan or on relations with the Taliban.
Whatever be the truth, now we must be clear about what levers we have and what levers all centres of power in Pakistan are agreed should be used. Bearing these caveats in mind, what should we tell such of the Taliban as we are able to influence?
First, we should be clear that we cannot and must not maintain that we have a right to determine the nature or composition of the government or administrative structure that emerges from the reconciliation process. We may suggest an interest in seeing an ethnically balanced structure, not because we believe this is owed to the much larger number of Pushtuns living on the Pakistan side of the border but because all parties are aware that it was the exclusion of the Pashtuns from the Bonn Conference that fuelled the insurgency and the resurrection of the Taliban.
By the same token, we must counsel the Taliban that demanding more than this would be detrimental to the goal we support — a stable and united Afghanistan at peace with itself and its neighbours. This is so not only because it is just but also because bitter experience has taught us that if the ethnic balance is not maintained, other ethnic groups will look for and find support from Afghanistan’s other neighbours and near neighbours. The result then would be continuing strife, the fallout of which Pakistan can no longer sustain.
Second, we are sympathetic to the insurgent demand for the withdrawal of all foreign troops and for renouncing any agreements on granting bases. For the moment, however, it appears that the Karzai administration is intent on concluding such an agreement to prolong the stay of the Americans after 2014 when all other Nato forces will withdraw. It would seem that such demands would be more easily met in the present condition when reconciliation has been achieved. The insurgents can make it a condition for reconciliation that withdrawal will be completed and bases vacated within a specified period after reconciliation.
Third, we must convince the Taliban that while renouncing al Qaeda may serve as a negotiating point, they should know that this is what Pakistan, in the interest of its own security, also desires. Pakistan, as it fights extremism within its own borders, would not want al Qaeda to have a safe haven in a reconciled Afghanistan.
We must make it clear that willingly, or unwillingly, Pakistan has been the external sanctuary and conduit of support without which no insurgency has survived in recent times. Pakistan has paid a heavy price. Day after day, suicide bomber attacks on civilian and military targets continue at a rate which rivals and many times exceeds the number of such attacks in Afghanistan. These are attributable to the Afghan situation as Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said on July 28. The realisation has now grown that the consequences for Pakistan’s internal security have been extremely adverse and can no longer be sustained. While it is for the insurgents to work out solutions with their Afghan partners, they cannot expect indefinite sanctuary.

Pakistan and Afghanistan reconciliation