Bonn II: Is Pakistan a spoiler or peace maker?—By Jan Assakzai
Bonn II: Is Pakistan a spoiler or peace maker?—By Jan Assakzai
As Bonn Conference gets underway on Monday, 5th Dec., the boycott of Pakistan has simply dealt a blow to any prospect of regional consensus on Afghanistan. The conference is billed to hammer a strategy to stabilise Afghanistan as coalition forces withdraw in the coming years. Many analysts agree that peace in Afghanistan hinges on whether Pakistan plays a constructive role in the process. Is Pakistan ready to play that constructive role? The answer so far is, unfortunately, a resounding NO.
Why Pakistan is critical to peace in Afghanistan, because it wields powerful levers that potentially give Pakistan all the fire power absolutely essential to be either a spoiler or a peace-maker in Afghanistan.
The first and perhaps, the most important lever is its ability to project its influence through proxies in Afghanistan. It can create elements of the Taliban or other proxies because of its linguistic and intelligence assets, hence it (Pakistan) holds a permanent leverage over any prospective Afghan government. Pakistan’s past nearly 40 years of experience employing proxies in pursuance of its foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and India, has given its intelligence establishment a unique position to veto any settlement that it deems against its foreign policy objectives.
NATO, the US and Afghan Government made several attempts in most of 2011 to reach out to reconcilable Taliban and accommodate their grievances. But all their efforts came to a naught due to Pakistan's pulling the rug under these talks. Pakistan’s establishment, till recently, was calculating that the US and NATO forces will simply cut and run Afghanistan while leaving the field open for them to fish once again. However, the recent tentative signs of strategic agreement between the Karzai government and the US to leave behind some force after 2014, simply rattled Islamabad, forcing it to change its calculus viz-a-viz its cooperation on Afghanistan.
The second lever it got was and is Pakistan’s ability to serve as the main transit route to goods bound for the NATO and US forces in Afghanistan. Over the past three years, Islamabad used this leverage on several occasions by disrupting the supply chain. Recently, it has cut off supply again in the wake of the NATO’s recent attack on Pakistan’s border post near Momand. Islamabad feels it is the time to use this lever to its advantage over the US and NATO before it loses the leverage.
The third lever is “unsecured” tribal areas which Islamabad has used successfully as a frontline post against any government in Afghanistan that has fallen short of meeting Pakistan’s expectations. In other words, out of this area, Pakistan has always operated proxy wars in Afghanistan and the situation still persists even today. The recent incident of the NATO attack on the border post of Pakistan is in the areas where militants often camp and mount attacks inside Afghanistan. Over the last ten years, Pakistan’s friendly assets have been based there and been allowed to mount attacks against the NATO and Afghan forces. Afghanistan’s future governments will remain hostage to this strategic space as was Viet Cong’s era Vietnam to Cambodia.
Owing to these levers, Pakistan started to position itself in Afghanistan to ensure the dominance of Pakistan's proxies - the elements of the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan’s ultimate self-interest in Afghanistan is to keep Kabul under its sway wrapped under the “strategic depth” policy.
Islamabad was able to realign with the US over Afghanistan and maneuvered to convince the US policy makers that any settlement in Afghanistan goes through Rawalpindi/Islamabad. As a result, it managed to secure over 20 billion US dollars over the last decade and earned Non-NATO member status. The Obama administration under the AF-PaK strategy also realigned with Islamabad to lean on the Taliban to co-opt them in any political accommodation. Ambassador Richard Holbrook was believed to be very sympathetic of Pakistan’s establishment’s interests in Afghanistan, and hence had always been at odds with President Karzai’s vision of Pakistan’s role. However, a series of events in the recent past simply undermined the realignment between the US and Islamabad, possibly beyond repair.
First, Pakistan’s establishment started to put a big price tag for its cooperation for bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. According to Ahmed Rashid, a renowned Pakistani journalist, it even raised the demand of resolving Kashmir issue with some diplomats. Second, Islamabad helped intensify the insurgency in Afghanistan over the last four/five years to extract maximum concessions for their proxy elements in the negotiations. The successful tactical achievements of the Haqqani network caught the US by surprise.
Third, Islamabad wanted not only to have a veto over any peace talks but also the right to monopolies them, mirroring its role in 1990s following the collapse of Dr. Najeebullah government when all political agreements between Afghan warring factions were made in Peshawar and Islamabad . But these demands were simply unacceptable to the US and other stake-holders in Afghanistan.
These developments put dent into the new US-Pakistan understanding of realignment on Afghanistan. As a result, the US for the first time acknowledged a bigger role of India in Central Asia, Afghanistan and beyond by nodding to go ahead with strategic partnership with the Afghan government; top US General Mike Mullen smashed all decorum of diplomacy by openly accusing the ISI of sponsoring the Haqqani network; the US Congress even threatened to cut off aid if there is a political will against Islamabad; the May 2 incident of Osama operation showed how much distrust existed between Pakistan and the US.; high profile documentaries like “Secret Pakistan” by the BBC and other western media outlet highlighted the “hidden” role Pakistan was playing behind the scene in fanning insurgency while pretending to be an ally of the US and NATO shaping perceptions in world capitals against Pakistan’s double game.
From grand standpoint, however, Pakistan has diplomatically never been as isolated as it stands today. Its hope of being a regional player dominating Afghan scene dashed to ground when the talks of permanent US bases in Afghanistan were made public. These bases were premised on the fact the newly-trained Afghan forces, with the backing of residual US troops, would be able to pin down the Taliban insurgents beyond 2014, regardless of whether Pakistan cooperates or hinders.
For the first time, this road map has left Pakistan with a feeling that its proxy lever may not be as effective as it used to be.
As far as the NATO supply route is concerned, the US has already reduced its reliance on Pakistan by almost 65 present, and, by next April, the Pentagon aims to divert the rest of supply through the northern route. This will leave Pakistan with loss of revenue and loss of leverage it once had over the US and NATO forces. By 2014 almost 90 per cent of the US forces would have left Afghanistan. They then may not need this level of goods any way.
The third lever of FATA being a sanctuary may not remain as it is today. Once the US completes its draw down, it will grapple itself with the issue of sanctuaries: Al Qaeda-affiliated militants would still be planning transatlantic attacks beyond 2014. For now, Washington’s Pakistan-relied-Al Qaeda-strategy is looming on the verge of failure because: Osama was killed by the US without intimating Pakistan; the top leadership of the Al Qaeda is still alive and planning plots; FATA is the epic centre of the world Jihadist network hatching conspiracies to target the US and European interests.
The US will be seeking new strategy to effectively eliminate the infrastructure of the global Jihadi network. On the other hand, Islamabad, for strategic reason, does not want to completely break with militants as it needs them to project foreign policy objectives in Afghanistan and balance India’s overwhelming military power: India is planning to spend nearly 100 billion dollars on its forces’ modernisation programme in future. Thus, a contradiction in the US and Pakistan’s preference will not easily be managed and overcome after the new US administration comes into power after 2013, and thereby putting the two partners on the opposite poles.
For now, if Pakistan is to be part of any regional solution on Afghanistan, the international community and Karzai government have to be prepared to pay a heavy price. This, however, is unlikely to be the case after so much sacrifices of the US and NATO in blood and money and the progress of the last ten years. As a result, the Bonn Conference is likely to send out a clear message to Pakistan that the international community, represented by over 90 countries, will adopt a “go-it-alone” policy on Afghanistan if Pakistan continued to show its lack of interest in contributing to peace and stability in Afghanistan.
The belligerence of Pakistan is also likely to force a new realignment between Iran, India, Russia and even China on Afghanistan. (Afghanistan’s other neighbours’ interests and preferences in Afghanistan are out of the scope of this piece and will be addressed in another time).
To wrap up, Pakistan is increasingly losing its levers in Afghanistan; it is desperately trying to hang on to its “existing bargaining position” to veto any possible reconciliation between the Afghan government and the reconcilable elements of the Taliban. It is also trying to make maximum use of its levers over Afghanistan and the US so as to extract maximum concessions at this juncture.
The Bonn-boycott of Islamabad simply re-enforced the suspicion of the international community against Islamabad’s motives in Afghanistan: that Pakistan is prepared to act as a spoiler rather than a peace maker if its maximalist position is not granted.
The choice for Pakistan is clear: contribute to peace and get enormous peace dividends, or stick to much maligned “strategic depth policy” and condemn the country to a “pariah” status.
Comments