Bonn conference and after

Pakistan decided to boycott the Bonn conference in a symbolic protest against the Nato attack on November 26 that killed 24 of its army personnel. By doing that, it squandered an opportunity to air its grievances on an international platform. That said, the conference ended up being heavy on symbols but low on actual progress. Held exactly a decade after a similar conference in the same city, it chalked out a post-Taliban future for Afghanistan, this one was meant to plan ahead for the country, in light of the American/Isaf withdrawal. Beyond assurances of support, which may ring hollow to those Afghans who remember the US and how quickly it forgot the country once the Soviet threat was eliminated, the 100-plus delegations that congregated in the German city were unable to articulate anything particularly meaningful. The lack of progress in Bonn may end up being blamed on Pakistan’s absence, though that is a bit unfair. Talks on the future of Afghanistan cannot be conducted without bringing up the elephant in the room: the Taliban and their role in a post-US Afghanistan. The international community believes that Pakistan is the only country which has the leverage to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. But reconciliation with the Taliban, which the Karzai government has been trying to achieve for the last seven years, will not to be found at grand conferences like the one at Bonn. Whatever Pakistan’s contribution in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table may be, it will take place in the shadows, away from the glare of the international media. Reconciliation, whatever form it may take, will be found in Afghanistan, not Germany.

Ultimately, the Bonn conference ended up being about empty platitudes, not serious policy decisions. The US and its allies pledged to support the civilian set-up in Afghanistan while Karzai in return said that his country would need at least $10 billion a year in aid for the next decade. But events have a way of overtaking talks at a summit. Nato states will find that once they no longer have boots on the ground in Afghanistan, their ability to influence events there will be greatly diminished. After international forces withdraw, the Karzai government’s survival will be even more precarious and the Taliban will be strengthened. Conferences can try to hide that reality but there is nothing they can do to change it.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2011.