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Karzai and Pakistan
- Afghanistan president, Hamid Karzai, declared once again that there was no point in talking to the Taliban any more.
- His point is that the peace process in Afghanistan is not about internal reconciliation, but of external interference from across the Durand Line.
- loya jirga, or the grand assembly of tribal leaders
- the loya jirga is unlikely to solve Karzai’s real problem: to develop leverage against the Pakistan army, which is trying to control the terms for ending the three-decades-old conflict in Afghanistan.
- It is the United States that had all the levers to compel the Pakistan army to stop double dealing in Afghanistan. But as Karzai pointed out, the US and its allies are fighting the “wrong war” in the “wrong country”.
- This comes after failing to win Pakistan army’s support in the war on terror, despite shelling nearly $20 billion since 9/11.
- O’Hanlon says the following favours to the Pakistan army might do the trick: get Kabul to accept the Durand Line as the border with Pakistan; ask Afghanistan to nudge India to give up its consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad; give Pakistan a say in Kabul’s appointment of governors to the eastern provinces.
- “Pakistan seeks to have some influence in Afghanistan” and uses militant groups like the Haqqani network towards that political end.
- US “should open up a way for [Pakistanis] to project their influence [in Afghanistan] without using these groups.”
- Washington might want to put its final card on the table: a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for Pakistan, if General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani agrees to gently rap the Haqqani network on the knuckles!
Kabul gameplan
- the consolidation of the India-Afghanistan strategic partnership is bound to add a new layer of complexity to the triangular relationship between New Delhi, Rawalpindi and Kabul.
- With the United States set to end its combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 and the international forces beginning to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan national forces, Kabul is negotiating long-term strategic partnership agreements with a number of nations, including the US, Europe and India.
- During the visit of Dr Singh to Kabul in May, the two sides had declared their intent to elevate their multifaceted ties to the level of a strategic partnership.
- The execution of Osama bin Laden by the US Special Forces seemed to mark a definitive turn to the decade-long American war on terror against al-Qaeda.
- the raid was conducted without the permission of the Pakistan army, underlined the US conviction that Rawalpindi was complicit in hiding bin Laden for so long.
- Obama administration laid down a series of benchmarks for Rawalpindi to demonstrate a change of course from its double-dealing on terror.
- Instead, Rawalpindi appears to have encouraged the Haqqani network to raise the pressure on the US by attacking its embassy in Kabul last month.
- The Pakistan army is not only nudging the US to the exits in Afghanistan but also opposing the establishment of any residual American military presence next door.
- If the impending US retreat from Afghanistan has emboldened Rawalpindi, the rise of China and Beijing’s growing interests in Southwest Asia appear to have boosted the Pakistan army’s belief that it can dominate the emerging scenario in Afghanistan.
- Frowning at Karzai’s independent engagement with the Taliban, the ISI has helped eliminate Kabul’s main interlocutor for peace, Burhanuddin Rabbani.
- Even if Karzai were prepared to go along with Rawalpindi, the large non-Pashtun minorities as well as important sections of the Pashtuns are bound to reject the notion that surrender is the only basis for negotiations with the Taliban and Pakistan.
- To cope with the prospect of American retreat and Pakistani advance in Afghanistan, Kabul needs solid, wide-ranging international support, including from India.
- Delhi, in turn, has high stakes in preserving the sovereignty and political autonomy of Kabul and preventing the Afghan state from becoming a vassal of Rawalpindi
- Nearly 2,500 km of open border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the large Pashtun population, numbering more than 40 million and straddling the Durand Line, are geographic facts that can’t ever be forgotten by Delhi and Kabul.
- Nevertheless, it is only by offering to accommodate the legitimate interests of Islamabad that Delhi and Kabul can counter Rawalpindi’s unreasonable behaviour towards Afghanistan and India.
