Confusion in Afghanistan

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Confusion in Afghanistan
By NAJMUDDIN A. SHAIKH

AMID all the uncertainties in Afghanistan, one thing remains certain: there has been no resumption of the process of reconciliation that was to have been set in motion with the formal inauguration of the Taliban office in Doha late last month.

The office has not been closed (though US Secretary of State John Kerry had threatened to ask the Qataris to do so) presumably because America believes the Afghan Taliban can still be persuaded to use this office to facilitate reconciliation.

The Taliban so far have not rejected this possibility but those in Qatar maintain that they are awaiting instructions from their leaders.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai objected, justifiably, to the Taliban’s trying to portray this office as the office of the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ and flying their flag. But then he went further and suspended negotiations with the Americans on the bilateral security agreement and said these would not be resumed until the US got the Taliban to start talking to Karzai’s representatives.

According to Afghanistan’s Khaama Press, National Security Adviser Rangin Dafdar Spanta told Afghan parliamentarians at a closed-door hearing recently that the peace process with the Taliban had been stalled. He said there was no process under the name of peace in Afghanistan.

A representative of the High Peace Council is, however, said to have told the same parliamentarians that the High Peace Council members were meeting with the Taliban including Syed Tayab Agha.

Earlier, Karzai’s spokesman had been quoted as saying that there had been contacts with the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan and they had adopted a more positive stance towards talks with Karzai than the Taliban representatives in Doha.

Karzai’s spokesman, Aimal Faizi, was quoted as saying “A number of Taliban leaders contacted the president and showed their dissatisfaction with the Qatar office. They said foreign hands are behind the office and that they do not represent us.” In effect Karzai is saying that he will not talk to the Taliban who are in Doha.

In the meanwhile, Karzai seems intent on antagonising Pakistan. His chief of army staff has said that Pakistan could end the conflict within weeks if it chose to withdraw its support from the Taliban.

One of his generals has said, with apparently an equal disregard for the truth, that Pakistan has shut 3,500 madressahs on its soil and sent the students from these institutions to fight in Afghanistan.

This followed closely on the earlier allegations that Pakistan had built posts on the Afghan side of the Durand Line and by some curious logic that this had been done to force Afghanistan to accept the Durand Line as the international border.

Now Mr Sartaj Aziz has been accused of telling the Afghan ambassador during a courtesy call that some power-sharing agreement needed to be worked out with the Taliban and a federal structure created in Afghanistan. This has been denied in Islamabad.

But the ‘Peace Process Road Map 2015’, reportedly drawn up by the Afghan High Peace Council and presented to Pakistan last year, has this to say with regard to the results expected from talks between the High Peace Council and the authorised representatives of the Taliban and other armed opposition groups: “The negotiating parties to agree on modalities for the inclusion of Taliban and other armed opposition leaders in the power structure of the state, to include non-elected positions at different levels with due consideration of legal and governance principles.”

A Western press agency published this ‘road map’ last year and the Afghan government never denied its authenticity. It was widely interpreted by Afghan analysts as meaning that the Taliban would be made governors in some provinces and given important portfolios in the Kabul government.

So if this was to be the goal of the negotiations and these negotiations were to be facilitated by Pakistan why has this alleged suggestion by Mr Aziz become evidence of Pakistan’s desire to create fiefdoms in Afghanistan?

A recent New York Times article has disclosed that in his June 27 video conference with US President Barack Obama, Karzai accused the Americans of trying to negotiate a separate peace agreement with both the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan while leaving Afghanistan’s government exposed to its enemies.

This sort of allegation has prompted the Obama administration, the report says, to seriously consider abandoning the effort to reach a bilateral security agreement with the Karzai government and to withdraw all its troops by end 2014.

This will mean of course that even those countries such as Germany that have promised to keep troops in Afghanistan after 2014 will not be able to do so and even more importantly will make unlikely the delivery of the $8 billion in annual military and economic assistance pledged at the Chicago and Tokyo conferences.

Many Afghan politicians who have long thrived on holding Pakistan responsible for all Afghanistan’s ills may allow Karzai to get away with abusing Pakistan. Jeopardising ties with the Americans and Nato is, however, another matter.

As the principal beneficiaries of the largess that the foreign presence has brought they know full well that withdrawal of the foreign troops will have serious consequences for the aid-dependent Afghan economy even if the Americans retain a residual presence and continue their assistance. Without this assistance, however, there would be a complete collapse of the economy.

Many thinking people in Kabul, fed up with Karzai’s erratic governance and corruption, may well have started contemplating ways and means to persuade or force him to step down.

Rather than being able to find ways to extend his term bypassing the constitutional restrictions or getting his handpicked successor to win the April 2014 presidential election, Karzai may well find that his unwise policies lead to his leaving office even before completing his present term.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.