Afghanistan and Pakistan

The post-2014 civil strife in Afghanistan can be stopped from spilling into Pakistan if the right measures are taken.

The deadline for the drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan is little over one year away. It is quite possible that this process is completed before the deadline. This is not going to amount to a total American exit from the region; the US will maintain some military presence in Afghanistan on training and advisory assignments and will provide air support to the Afghan National Army. It will continue to extend diplomatic and financial support to Afghanistan, although its overall expenditure on the country will be reduced. Similarly, the US will not return to its October 1990 policy of abandoning Pakistan. It will reduce its current engagement with Pakistan by downsizing socioeconomic cooperation and maintaining a moderated military to military interaction.

Most observers of the Afghanistan situation are haunted by the spectre of political and security uncertainties in the post-drawdown Afghanistan. The Kabul government is endeavouring to increase its capacity to cope with the challenges of the future. It is making sure that the US trained Afghan National Army and the police have sufficient training, commitment and professionalism to cope with the security challenges. It is seeking Pakistan’s cooperation for initiating a dialogue with the Afghan Taliban for political accommodation. Pakistan cannot be helpful beyond encouraging the Afghan Taliban to start a dialogue.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan may be further strained in the post-2014 period because the Kabul government is expected to hold Pakistan completely responsible for its inability to cope effectively with the Afghan Taliban. Unwilling to recognise that the main sources of the trouble are located inside Afghanistan, the Kabul government will talk of the militant hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas as the sole cause of security threats inside Afghanistan. It will also reject the Pakistani complaint that some Pakistani militants, especially those from Swat, are using Afghan territory as a hideout for attacks inside Pakistan. Nor will it agree to a strict joint electronic and human monitoring of the Pakistan-Afghan border.

Afghanistan’s internal situation will also be adversely affected if the presidential election in Afghanistan, to be held in April 2014, is bitterly contested between the Karzai loyalists and the opposition parties. As Hamid Karzai cannot seek another term due to constitutional restrictions, the diversified opposition would like to seize the opportunity for an electoral victory. If the bitterness of the electoral competition spills over to the post-election period, the Kabul government will face additional domestic problems.

Pakistan should keep away from the post-2014 internal strife in Afghanistan. It needs to focus on four issues. First, it should be prepared to deal with whosoever comes to power in Kabul. Past experience suggests that over-indulgence in Afghanistan incurred high diplomatic and material costs for Pakistan. There are strong family, linguistic, economic and trade (bilateral and transit) ties between the two countries, which should be relied on for promoting friendly interaction.

Second, the government of Pakistan has cultivated relationships with the entire spectrum of political and societal leadership in Afghanistan, especially the smaller ethnic groups, over the last couple of years. This is a sensible shift in Pakistan’s policy and it must continue.

Third, Pakistan must establish a firm control over the tribal areas before the US withdraws from Afghanistan. If Pakistan cannot do this, the expected surge of the Afghan Taliban after 2014 will embolden the Pakistani Taliban. As the Pakistani Taliban become strong in the tribal areas, their linkage with militant and sectarian groups based in mainland Pakistan will also be emboldened. This will intensify internal security challenges for Pakistan. Therefore, Pakistan’s security establishment must assign the highest priority to enforcing its writ in the tribal areas before American troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

Fourth, Pakistan must make sure that the religious groups and madrassas with activist Deoband and Wahabbi/Salalfi traditions do not function as a linkage group for the Afghan Taliban. If internal strife escalates in Afghanistan, these groups and institutions should not be allowed to send their manpower to Afghanistan for fighting on the side of the Afghan Taliban. This was done by some Pakistani madrassas and groups during the period 1995-2001.

The origins and dynamics of Pakistan’s Afghanistan related problems have been discussed in detail in a recently published Urdu book Pakistan and Afghanistan, written by a former Pakistani diplomat, Riaz Muhammad Khan. It is an insightful analysis of their bilateral relations in the wake of the rise of jihadi movements in Pakistan, which were initially funded by the US and conservative Arab states in order to expel the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in the 1980s. Khan also provides convincing data and arguments on how the jihad was privatised by the Pakistan Army and the ISI in Afghanistan and Kashmir in the 1990s.There is a fascinating discussion of how an ambiguous, non-scientific, conservative and fundamentalist religious mindset was cultivated that supported religion-based militancy.

Riaz Muhammad Khan elucidates how state policies in the 1980s and the 1990s undermined the Pakistani state and society. These policies strengthened non-state militant groups at the expense of the Pakistani state. The book identifies six major challenges to Pakistan and how Pakistan should address the current and future internal and external security problems, including the rise of a pro-militancy mindset.

Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership can contain the spillover of the post-2014 civil strife in Afghanistan by establishing the state’s writ in the tribal areas and not giving in to the temptation of tampering with internal problems of Afghanistan. Pakistan can no longer use the militancy card to pursue its foreign policy agenda. It should work hard for building peace in and around Pakistan. It needs to adopt short-term and long-range measures inside Pakistan to eradicate religious and cultural extremism, counter terrorism, and check kidnappings for ransom and extortion by armed groups. These measures will strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to function as a coherent and stable political entity.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2013.

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