Pakistan: Talibans & Geo-politics of Afghanistan

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Background

Pakistan in many senses is an example of how absence of sincere leadership and solid vision results in loss of identity and direction for the nation. Once the direction is lost, outcome is the very purpose for that nation’s existence being lost. Quick glance at the history of Indo-Pak shows how Muslims of South-East-Asia are reduced to Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh etc from a position they collectively once enjoyed as rulers.

 

Whether Muslims acted at times as conquerors or governors when they made entry to the region from Sindh or from Khyber, with time the loss of direction open the way for the colonialism by Britain and other European powers, who divided the world into their sphere of influence, the continuation of their legacy meant creation of new nation-states out of Ottoman Caliphate, using vicious divide and rule.

 

The intensified movement for Pakistan by ‘Muslim’ League post-Khilafat movement was another attempt by the Muslims to make sense of their politics in the region and find that direction. The mixture of nationalism with Islam, demand of Kashmir as integral part of Pakistan but forsaking Delhi who until middle of eighteenth century was their capital and the division of India around artificial borders drawn in Whitehall in the form of Durand Line or Red-Cliff award made sure that the region will remain unstable strategically and politically artificial.

 

Hence Pakistan came into being in the name of Islam, struggling to identify as a nation, a country which had Muslims in Pakistan but also in India-Afghanistan-Iran-China, Baluchis in Baluchistan but also in Iran, Pushtuns in NWFP but also in Afghanistan, Punjabis in Punjab but in India too, and a powerful Army emerged as the sole guarantor for the unity of Pakistan using force as a only mean to unite the country. Instead of uniting the country over ideas and shared values the sheer use of force by the military junta to keep the country intact and use of un-Islamic concepts such as nationalism i.e. Pakistan first, resulted in Baluchis, Pashtuns, Kashmiris, Bengalis and other ethnicities demanding separation on the backdrop of their race first too.

 

Reality

Today Pakistan faces a national security threat, which is bigger than any of the debates occupying our policy makers in Pakistan at the moment. The presence of NATO in Afghanistan along with increasing presence of India is going to choke Pakistan when US will leave the region.

 

In April Afghanistan Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak made a one-day visit to Indian-occupied Kashmir to see counter-freedom operations.

 

Wardak also visited the 15th Corps of the Indian army headquartered in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, and the Indian air force’s training command and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore in southern India. These visits are coming amid reports that Afghanistan might be considering sending its air force pilots for training to India. Moreover, Wardak said his country would seek New Delhi’s help in maintaining Soviet-era helicopter gun ships and medium helicopters to provide logistical support to its armed forces. India also plans to help Afghanistan set up local government institutions through a system called the India-Afghanistan Joint Working Group on Local Governance. A memorandum of understanding was signed May 17 during a four-day visit to Afghanistan by government official Mani Shankar Aiyar, a Panchayati Raj minister. Under the collaboration, Indian experts and local Indian governance bodies will be attached to local Afghan representatives.

 

India and Afghanistan are pushing the idea that the faster India trains the Afghan army, the quicker NATO can withdraw troops from Afghanistan. India’s goal is to gain a toehold in the Afghan military establishment, creating goodwill that it can cash in when the time comes. Antony assured Wardak that India would remain “actively engaged” in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of war-wrecked Afghanistan.

 

Past

To understand these developments, one must understand Pakistan’s recent history of backing Islamic groups and how Pakistan has tried to use Afghanistan to gain strategic advantage against India. Long before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Islamabad viewed Kabul as aligned with New Delhi. Pakistan felt sandwiched between its archrival to the east and a hostile regime to the west. Another issue was secular left-leaning Pakistani Pashtun forces were pushing for a separate homeland for their ethnic group — a demand backed by Afghanistan in those days.

 

In 1996, the Pakistani military realized its objective of installing a pro-Islamabad regime in Kabul when it supported the Taliban, that controlled Afghanistan until the U.S.-backed coalition drove them from power after Sept. 11, 2001. Pakistan had hoped that with its rear flank secure it could then deal with India, especially in the context of Kashmir, which it unsuccessfully tried to do in the Kargil mini-war in 1999.

 

During the five-year-long Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Pakistan had gained several advantages with a friendly neighbor at Kabul. It shifted large elements of its XI and XII Corps close to the Indian border in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), Punjab and Rajasthan. The 9 Infantry Division of XI Corps had been deployed opposite Dras with Headquarters at Gulteri, under X Corps. For six years until November 2001, Pakistan kept the forces next to Indian borders.

 

It must be remembered that the Taliban took control of most of Afghanistan in the first place because they were militarily funded by Pakistan. The Pakistani government, worried about excessive Russian or Iranian/Indian influence in Pakistan and interested in a relatively stable Afghanistan, supported the Taliban. That support proved decisive. Various tribal and factional leaders calculated that given Pakistani support, the Taliban would be the most capable military force — and that therefore resisting the Taliban made no sense.

 

Present

Today like before Pakistan see Taliban as a strategic tool, so even though Pakistan opened a process of normalization with India and established a cooperation of sorts with Washington against al Qaeda, Islamabad continued to maintain an ambiguous stance toward the Taliban. That was because the Pashtun Taliban movement was the only available card Islamabad could play as it pursued its interests in Afghanistan and keep India out.

 

The United States is approaching a paradigm shift regarding its policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan because Washington has reached the conclusion that Pakistan is unable and/or unwilling to control the situation with the Taliban. The Bush administration is thus pressing ahead with a new policy of denying the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan. This new policy is not constrained by concerns regarding Pakistani stability.

 

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said May 5 that Pakistan urgently needs to live up to its commitment to the “war on terror” by establishing its writ in the country’s northwestern Pashtun areas. Speaking at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, Negroponte stressed that the United States “will not be satisfied until all the violent extremism emanating from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is brought under control.” Regarding the new Pakistani government’s approach of negotiating with the militants, Negroponte warned that the United States would have to examine any such agreement or understanding in the light of the U.S. policies he just stated.

 

Three weeks prior to Pakistan’s Feb. 18 general election, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen on Jan. 25 openly spoke of the possibility of U.S. forces operating on Pakistani soil. Negroponte’s May 5 comments are the most direct to this effect. Washington not only has altered its rhetoric, it has matched statements with action given the recent increase in strikes in the tribal region.

 

Last week, US in a bid to sabotage Waziristan Peace accord made a naked aggression by resorting to strike missiles on the Pakistani village of Damadola. As per the media reports more than 14 Muslims died while many were injured. America had committed such blatant aggressions more than three dozens times earlier within Pakistani territory killing hundreds of Muslims. In the last American attack on Damadola 80 students of the madressa died that also severely damaged the earlier Peace Accord. And at a time when again a Peace Accord is on card after the exchange of prisoners, America want to sabotage this agreement. However, after the martyrdom of our citizens, the masses strongly demand that the government immediately respond to this unprovoked American missile attacks in a blow for blow.

 

Now

The only way to stabilise the region in Pakistan favor is to expel NATO from Afghanistan. Islamabad then should work to help create a Pakistan friendly government in Afghanistan but unlike in the past, leaving Taliban government to its own devices, this time Pakistan should work to stabilise the government by taking part in infrastructure rebuilding, schools, training of civilians, bureaucracy and military. This would allow a long term partnership between the two countries. Eventually Pakistan should work to create a union between the two countries as fundamentally people of both lands share a common belief.

 

Islamabad must work to take leadership in the region moving towards Eurasia. A survey supported by the US Department of Homeland Security and conducted by the University of Maryland between December 2006 and February 2007, revealed that the majority of Muslims in Pakistan held a goal “to unify all Islamic countries into a single Islamic state or Caliphate”.

 

Countries bordering Afghanistan i.e. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are ruled over by the brutal dictators. Any sincere move by Pakistan which put forward the case for Islam is going to give Pakistan a leading role in the region. This would mean not only gaining leadership from Indian, Bangladeshi, and Chinese Muslims located in the Xingjian province and liberating the Afghan Muslims from occupation but also long term stability in the region.

 

Pakistan must move away from protecting her interests half heartedly. The policy of training militants in the region, ‘slow bleeding’ of India and supporting US and Talibans side by side is an outdated and dangerous strategy with no use in the present reality. With Khilafah system in place, the systems of Islam, will allow the Muslims of the region to unite politically, gain representative government which is only accountable to its citizens with independent judiciary and the ownership of energy and food resources to its people rather than to few capitalist.

 

Note to the Editors: Tauseef Zahid is a freelance columnist.

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