Afghanistan and us

It was encouraging seeing the newly elected Afghan president’s warm reception in Pakistan during his recent visit, and the accompanying statements by leaders of both our countries to bridge the prevailing trust deficit and opening up a new chapter in bilateral relations.

Despite a shared history, ethnic, linguistic, and religious linkages, as well as the presence of a sizable Afghan diaspora now settled in Pakistan, relations between the two countries have remained troubled since decades. What is described as a narrow security prism is often blamed for the lingering friction between our two neighbouring countries. Pakistan’s interventionist role in Afghanistan was initially prompted by our engagement in the US and the USSR’s proxy war in the region, and was further complicated by Pakistan’s involvement in the ongoing war against terrorism, with mutual accusations of instigating militancy and unrest in each other’s territories.

The Brussels-headquartered International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank has recently issued a new report titled “Resetting Pakistan’s Relations with Afghanistan”, which provides interesting suggestions for putting relations between the two countries onto a more positive trajectory.

The ICG report rightly observes that the opening of spaces for Pakistani extremists, using their ties with their Afghan counterparts, to attack Pakistani targets from safe havens in Afghanistan, underscores the importance of ending all support, direct or covert, to Afghan proxies. The report advises Pakistan to reset its relationship with Afghanistan by expanding economic ties, including by upgrading and expanding infrastructure, including road and rail links connecting the two countries, reducing cumbersome security measures, combating corruption and moving forward on forging a free-trade agreement.

The report also makes note of the significant Afghan population in Pakistan. It points out that repatriation of Afghan refugees and economic migrants will only contribute to enhancing Afghanistan’s stability, if it is voluntary rather than coerced, and if economic migrants are legally allowed to travel freely between the two countries. It is this mobility across the porous borders which allowed Afghan families to not only evade persecution to establish economic networks across the national borders to secure diverse sources of income. Migrant remittances, already important for Afghanistan’s economy, could play a significant role as foreign assistance to the country shrinks over the coming years. Pakistan is thus advised to help contribute to Afghanistan’s stabilisation by facilitating rather than preventing Afghan migrants from availing such economic opportunities.

These above steps are envisioned to also benefit Pakistani markets, particularly in the border areas, in which Afghan refugees already play a developing and sustaining role.

However, the fact remains that Pakistan is a resource constrained and already burgeoning country, which has hosted one of the largest refugee populations in the world for the past three decades, that no other Western country would ever think of doing, given their ever-stringent immigration policies.

The ICG report does not take adequate note of such broader realities. Nowhere in the report is there even mention of the inadequacies of the UNHCR’s effort to work with Afghan refugees, or the inability of the Nato-led intervention in Afghanistan creating conditions conducive to the re-absorption of Afghan refugees. Instead, the ICG exhibits a usual lack of reflexivity by confining the onus of responsibility to Pakistan. It urges the civilian government in Pakistan to wrest control over national security and foreign policy from the military and its “narrow security prism”, without simultaneously pointing to the US intervention in the region which has played an overarching role in exacerbating tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the 1980s as well as over this past decade.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2014.

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