Reality in post-war Afghanistan

A recent study, jointly produced by the Jinnah Institute and the United States Institute of Peace, exploring policy options for Pakistan after the US withdraws from Afghanistan has been unjustly criticised by jettisoning reality for noble rhetoric. As the damning words about the report would have it, the consensus opinion of the 50-plus “foreign policy elite”, who were canvassed for the study, parrots the military’s position by arguing that Pakistan must have a stake in post-war Afghanistan and that the Afghan Taliban will likely have to be brought into the fold. Critics of the report, and by extension establishment opinion, also pounced on the recommendation that we should try to curtail India’s involvement in Afghanistan, saying that asking India to back down while wanting an expanded role for Pakistan is chauvinistic.

One need not be a war-mongering hawk to agree that India will try as hard as Pakistan to be the dominant power in Afghanistan after the US departs. The over one billion dollars India has spent in Afghanistan, is an investment that it expects will pay dividends, whether it be through a gas pipeline, connecting Iran, that meets India’s energy needs or to ensure they have greater influence in Afghanistan. For Pakistan, to try and counter that by increasing its influence at the cost of India is merely prudent and need not be seen as sabre-rattling.

It is also unfair to state that we can only achieve our policy aims by nurturing Afghanistan as a client state that is kept in check by bolstering the Afghan Taliban. This can be better achieved through economic tactics that are mutually beneficial. We have already scored a victory on that front, by agreeing to terms for the Afghanistan Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement. Once this agreement comes into force later this month, it will allow goods to cross through Pakistan while being transported to and from Afghanistan but will also ensure that cheap smuggled goods do not flood our markets by requiring all transporters to purchase insurance and provide bank guarantees for all the dues they are required to pay.

As for the Afghan Taliban, realism requires us to admit that they are the third biggest militant threat to Pakistan after the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan and al Qaeda; so any military action that is taken against them, must not compromise the fight against the two greater foes. And with all the Nato countries agreed on the need to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban and include them as stakeholders in Afghanistan, after their troops withdraw, this increases our incentive to leave them be at the moment, even if the military has the resources to soundly rout them.

The opposition to Pakistan having a significant role in Afghanistan’s future is based on a misreading of our actions in the past. The dominant narrative is that our support for the mujahideen was an unmitigated disaster, since it led to a refugee problem, the rise of the gun culture and drug smuggling in Pakistan and the taking over of Afghanistan by the Taliban. These points are valid but now that that the Soviet threat has been erased from our memories, we ignore just how potent that threat really was. Given the Communists rapacious appetite for territory and the historical Russian desire for a warm-water port, Pakistan’s only course of action was to stop the Soviets in their tracks in Afghanistan. No amount of negative spillover, even if it could have been anticipated at the time, should have changed that, just as the consequence of having to abide the Afghan Taliban should not lead us to adopt an isolationist posture in regional politics.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 16^th,  2011.