A pivotal moment for AfPak

The safe journey of Mullah Omar, leader of a rag tag militia, to the graveyard by evading a plethora of Predators, Reapers and Neptune Spears, is an achievement by itself. However, the posthumous command of two summer offensives in Afghanistan, Khyber (2014) and Azm (2015) by the dead Taliban leader raises a question mark on the intelligence capability of the international community and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) in Afghanistan. His death, rumoured for quite some time and now confirmed by the Afghan Taliban themselves, will have strategic, tactical and operational implications for all stakeholders of the struggle in Afghanistan, i.e., the Afghan National Unity Government, the regional caucus including Pakistan, international players, the Afghan Taliban and the Islamic State (IS).

The recent peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government were held amid guarded optimism in Murree. However, the leakage of the news regarding Mullah Omar’s death at this crucial juncture is a boon for the ‘anti-talks’ lobby in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This event will provide an opportunity for the hawks on both side of the divide to delay, avoid or sabotage peace talks. Afghan political leaders opposed to President Ashraf Ghani may press for offensive postures with the plea of further weakening the divided Taliban. Likewise, the rivals of the new Taliban chief, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, may push for military solutions in the field instead of talks on the table. Even Mullah Mansoor may turbo-charge the summer offensive to establish his credentials, similar to the spike in violence seen when Hakimullah Mehsud took over the charge of the TTP on Baitullah Mehsud’s death. Intensification of internal rifts among the Peshawar and Quetta shuras may be another drag on the future of talks. Presently, the kith and kin of Mullah Omar are also throwing a spanner in the succession race. His son Mullah Yakub and his brother Mullah Abdul Manan are not on the same page with the Taliban leaders who selected the new Amir of the Taliban.

The vacuum created by the death of Mullah Omar will provide the IS with an excellent opportunity to spread its tentacles. The Islamic Emirate headed by the new Amir will face a tough contest from the IS. The field commanders and foot soldiers who are disgruntled with the new leadership of the Taliban may be skimmed by the IS. Afghan warlords like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who were lying low, may become more active in the Taliban-IS power struggles. Hekmatyar, who is a former premier of Afghanistan, has already ordered his fighters to support the IS in its fight against the Afghan Taliban. Not surprisingly, in Hekmatyar’s stronghold Nangarhar province, the IS is flexing its muscles and has engaged in several bloody fights with the Taliban. The foreign fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and Arab fighters are reinforcing the IS in the north. Recently, the commander of the elite force of Tajikistan has defected to the IS in Afghanistan. Colonel Gulmurod Khalimov was the commander of the special services group, OMON, of Tajikistan and was trained by both the elite Russian Spetsnaz and US Special Forces. The joining of Uzbek, Tajik, Uighur and Chechen fighters the IS will be a force multiplier for the latter. This will not only threaten peace in Afghanistan, but will also endanger the Gwadar-Kashgar corridor in the future, especially in the northern areas of Pakistan. Induction of ETIM fighters into the Khurasan franchise of the IS will threaten Chinese Turkestan. Pakistan cannot afford such instability in its north or in the southwest of China.

The death of Mullah Omar has reconfirmed the weak intelligence in Afghanistan’s war theatre. Recently, the Afghan intelligence announced the death of Hafiz Saeed, the chief of IS in Afghanistan, but there were reports later that he was still alive. Similarly, Afghan intelligence also announced the death of Amin Jan Kochi, the Taliban shadow governor of Laghman, but the militants later claimed that Kochi is alive.

Since Pakistan spearheaded the recent Murree peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban, the death of the ‘undisputed’ leader of Taliban may at least delay the talks or, at worst, even derail them. If history is an index, the prevailing conditions can be considered ideal for Pakistan to exert influence as the Afghan government is weak, militant groups are fragmenting and international presence is diluting. However, in the current scenario when Pakistan’s economy is finally stabilising as reported by Forbes, Moody’s and the IMF, and Operation Zarb-e-Azb has dismantled the militant infrastructure as well as its command and control in the tribal belt, a weak Afghanistan driven into civil war will tax our men, money and material. Such a civil war in Afghanistan may bring us more refugees, stress the already stressed tribal belt, disturb the Baloch-Pakhtun equilibrium in Balochistan and attract fighters from Pakistan to side with different warlords. Moreover, foreign fighters who are mainly shunted out of Pakistani territories will again metastasise in our social fabric once instability spreads in Afghanistan.

Internationally, the extension of the IS’s caliphate into the non-Arab Khurasan belt will provide ‘laboratory’ status to Afghanistan, where the terrorists will test their destructive skills, similar to Syria and Iraq, and then export their destructive innovations to other war theatres and peaceful geographies. The IS is already occupying an area equivalent to the UK and has a multinational force from 100 countries, just like the UN. The rise of the IS in the non-Arab areas will further polarise the region through sectarian violence, encourage free movements of globe-trotting terrorists and enable the speedy sharing of destructive skills. Pakistan needs to closely collaborate with all stakeholders to arrest the free fall of Afghanistan towards anarchy and civil war.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 21^st,  2015.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.