Sealing the deal in Afghanistan

Groundhog Day — the sequel — appears to be playing it again for Uncle Sam in Afghanistan. The US, in a calculated bid to go back to the future, has reportedly entered into direct, albeit exploratory, talks with the Taliban in a hopeful attempt to bring to a close the final chapter of the Afghan quagmire; an ongoing theater-of-the-very-absurd production that has been playing to dwindling international audiences for nigh on a decade.

According to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, this ‘diplomatic surge’ will supplement ongoing military offensives and civilian efforts to bolster America’s man in Kabul. Pakistan, for its part, has been cast in a pivotal role; while being cautioned to follow the script of an honest broker and not, under any circumstances, let the spotlight go to its head and manoeuvre itself centre stage.

The pursuit of a genuine political solution to the Afghan war will, naturally, benefit all the peoples of the region, their respective leaders’ geo-political strategising aside. Yet, legitimate concerns over Pakistan’s double dealings with the US — including accusations of arming and financing the Taliban insurgency to ensure that a post-conflict Kabul tilts toward Islamabad and not New Delhi — do not register as much with ordinary Pakistanis as what nine years of American military intervention next-door have done to their country.

The flight of the senior al Qaeda leadership and their Taliban hosts into Pakistan has transformed the nation into the epicentre of a global jihad that not only has the West in its sights but which has also proved equally detonation-happy in targeting both, the state apparatus and civilians, as revenge for any thwarting of its terrorist designs. This, in turn, has seen Pakistan become an active American battleground. CIA drones rule the skies. The US elite units in Afghanistan engage in cross-border ‘hot pursuit’ of terrorists.

If the US does not prove serious about negotiating a long-term peace with the Taliban, conditional upon the latter’s laying down of arms and breaking ties with al Qaeda, it will not only have dead-ended any kind of honourable exit from Afghanistan, thus betraying the Afghan people — it will also have sold out ordinary Pakistanis.

The outraged will not care that in the White House sits an administration that inherited the quagmire. Pakistanis will blame American hubris all over again for having turned down the Taliban offer, less than two weeks into the war, to hand over bin Laden to a third country, no evidence of his direct involvement in the 9/11 attacks required. They will wonder why then US Secretary of State Colin L Powell refused to meet the Taliban foreign minister in Islamabad on the same day he told reporters that the US “would have to listen to [moderate Taliban] or at least take them into account” in a new Afghanistan.

They may, then, wonder at the motive behind Operation Enduring Freedom. In his book, Peddling Peril, David Albright reports that the al Qaeda chief had, in 1998, unsuccessfully approached the AQ Khan network, at least three times to jumpstart an Afghanistan-based nuclear programme.

And then, finally, the Pakistani people may wonder if the conspiracy theorists were right all along: That the intervention was aimed at unleashing al Qaeda in Pakistan — the very country whose nuclear secrets bin Laden had been trying to procure — to manufacture a pretext for an American presence, hell-bent on gaining access to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now known to be the fastest growing in the world

Of course, all this is projection and may, in fact, be of no interest to the US. But if nothing else, at least sealing the deal in Afghanistan will vindicate Obama and his Nobel Peace Prize.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 26^th, 2011.