An uneven road to Chicago

Pakistan’s diplomacy would be tested in the coming months as the West regards it as a reluctant and unreliable partner

The best of strategic plans depend, for their success, on the outcome of tactical manoeuvres made to launch them in full force. The decade-old conflict that began with the American intervention in Afghanistan has entered a phase where the US-led international community, the immediate neighbours — Pakistan, Iran, the states of Central Asia — and the secondary neighbours —like India, Russia and China — are positioning themselves to ensure that the Afghan denouement remains compatible with their respective national interest. The matrix that no stakeholder can ignore is provided by western ambition to ensure a permanent strategic gain — and military presence — in a vast energy-rich and geopolitically vital swath of Asian landmass. If Afghanistan is the hub of ‘The New Great Game’, the West should be in the driving seat by virtue of its physical possession but, in reality, the last decade has witnessed dispersal of power not seen since the end of World War II.

China, an economic superpower; Russia, resurgent under Vladimir Putin; and India, basking alike in economic success and American support, are writing themselves into the script for a future regional order. Despite groaning under the crippling cost of the global war on terror, as well as its own colossal misrule, Pakistan, a nuclear weapon state with more than half a million men under arms, would not give up its core interests.

Washington and its Nato allies have so far pursued a policy of militarily degrading the Taliban while carrying out limited probes to identify interlocutors from their ranks for a peace process, the outcome of which is predetermined. The central motive is the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2014 and establishment of military bases in Afghanistan. The plan is being refined and made globally acceptable through a carefully choreographed sequence of conferences that began with Nato’s Lisbon Conference and would end with the Nato summit in Chicago (Spring of 2012) with the essential building blocks provided by the Istanbul Conference that has recently taken place and the second Bonn Conference scheduled for early December. The uncertainty about the Taliban response to the core western objectives and the inflexibility of western aims clearly entail the risk that the plan may not make linear progress. The Istanbul Conference revealed differences on the modalities of Afghan reconciliation as well as on the proposed regional architecture of peace and security — the western-backed Istanbul ‘mechanism’. Washington’s strong support for a New Silk Route connecting Central and South Asia under that security mechanism was seen by many states, including China, Russia and Iran as a thinly disguised project of American dominance and Nato’s perennial presence in a contested area. The Istanbul meeting has not offered a template for reconciling the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of regional states. The difference in the perspectives on the future of the region may lead to greater divergence in the current policies of concerned states. The region may face a long period of instability if the much larger Bonn Conference (90 states plus 15 international organisations) does not come up with a fair solution to ethnic and ideological divisions in Afghanistan as well as the strategic rivalries of major powers and if the Chicago Nato Summit remains entrenched in a hegemonic posture.

The western plan considers Afghanistan and Pakistan as the ‘co-hub’ of the great design. Pakistan’s diplomacy would be sorely tested in the coming months as the West regards it as a reluctant and unreliable partner. Pakistan is suspected of working for a larger share of power for an ethno-religious group (Taliban-Pashtun) than the West would like. It is also perceived as the only obstacle in linking the American-backed New Silk Route and the India-backed South Silk Route. This is an oversimplification, a kind of typecasting. At the end of the day, Pakistan would accept any government freely chosen by the Afghans and the Pakistani hiatus in the merger of the silk routes is not a theological dogma. The heart of the matter is the deployment of foreign military and economic power in the region, an issue on which Pakistan should hold urgent consultations with all the major stakeholders, including India.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th,  2011.