When Karzai comes to Delhi

Karzai, India will sign strategic partnership agreements , far cry from last visit when he desisted due to Pakistan.

The Afghan government has accused Pakistan of being involved in the killing of its former president and peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani, saying the killer was a Pakistani citizen and that the killing was “plotted” in Quetta.

Now Afghan president Hamid Karzai is coming to Delhi tomorrow, but that is not the point of this column. Sunday’s indictment by the Afghans is a grim reminder of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, which were also carried out by Pakistani citizens.

Perhaps the time has come for the elected Pakistani government as well as the Pakistani intelligentsia to look inward and ask itself : Why are ordinary Pakistani citizens so angry with two of their three immediate neighbours that they embark on murder missions to kill innocent people in those countries?

After all, what harm did the people of Mumbai or Kabul — specifically, the victims of the Mumbai attacks and Rabbani and his family — do to Pakistan and Pakistanis, that their lives were so brutally cut short?

Is it because India refuses to talk straight about Kashmir to Pakistan, that innocent Pakistanis are being used pawns in some grand, strategic war to bleed India with a thousand direct and indirect cuts? Is it because the Pakistani intelligentsia has clearly stated that with the withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan, Pakistan as its closest neighbour, must have a direct stake in the endgame?

But how does killing Rabbani or innocent people in Mumbai help achieve those desired outcomes?

The Haqqani attack on the US embassy in Kabul some days ago, which has precipitated such American anger against Pakistan, is an irrevocable turning point in US-Pakistan-Afghan relations. Remember that the Haqqani group — at least in New Delhi’s and Kabul’s eyes —is responsible for attacking not only the Indian embassy in 2009, but also last year was accused of killing several Indian medical doctors and those in the army’s education corps who had been stationed in Kabul to help teach Afghan soldiers English.

Everything Hillary Clinton and Mike Mullen and several other wise Americans are telling the Pakistanis these past few days, the Indians have already said for several years : Which is, that you can’t make a distinction between “good” terrorists and “bad” ones, because sooner than later the good ones will also turn within, and upon you.

The people of Pakistan can certainly not be held responsible for the policies of its government and the military or the ISI. Certainly, too, there was a great deal of anger and commiseration by ordinary Pakistanis when the Mumbai attacks took place, as well as several shows of solidarity.

When Karzai comes to Delhi this week, it is believed that India and Afghanistan will sign a strategic partnership agreement. What a far cry from those early years when Karzai first visited Delhi after the September 2001 attacks and hesitated to forge strategic ties because he said he never wanted to forget the generosity of the Pakistan people when they hosted several million Afghans in the time of the Russians, the ensuing civil war as well as during the Taliban years.

Still, the truth of why nation-states keep “good” terrorists on a leash was brought home to me by Bangladesh home minister Shahara Khatun in Dhaka early last month when I asked her why her government had decided to hand over Indian insurgents based in Bangladesh, back to India.

“Why should we keep them here? They only instigate criminal elements and create more problems,” Khatun said.

Maybe Pakistan should listen to her more closely.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2011.