Wars in and around Afghanistan

Columnist M B NAQVI describes conflicts in the immediate neighbourhood.

From Pakistan’s viewpoint two separate wars, or rather struggles, are relevant. Both affect Afghanistan’s and Pakistan’s future. One is the renewed campaign of the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is now confined to merely harass and destabilise the Karzai regime behind which looms the figure of the hyper-power of the day, the US. What chances this has is not easy to say. But there is a certain ease with which the Taliban can mount isolated guerilla attacks on the security forces of the Karzai government, wherever they might be able to reach along with other international security personnel including Americans. There is no harm in accepting the American prognostication of what is happening. What they see is that the fugitive Taliban and even al-Qaeda elements, after their defeat in Afghanistan, ran away to Pakistan —- the only place where they could have possibly ran to —- they have now regrouped themselves. They are now mounting ambitious attacks on isolated targets on Afghanistan. Occasionally a skirmish takes place in which both sides often suffer casualties, perhaps more on the side of Karzai security men than on the Taliban side. This is, however, not the only war or struggle that is taking shape in Afghanistan.

There is another war of a different kind. No guns are fired and no one falls with bullet wounds. It is a political and diplomatic war. Insofar as can be judged India is on an offensive. It is optional to regard that the initiative belongs not so much to India as to either Russia or Iran. It is hard to determine who initiated the move. It was, however, a longish time ago. But most Pakistanis think it is the brainchild of the Indians to which the Iranians and the Russians —- and behind them the various Central Asian Republics —- have lined up. The fact of the matter is that this line up is a reality. It does not really matter who thought of it first.

The basic fact on the ground is that Afghanistan is under full control of the Americans who have at least two big military bases in Afghanistan and have made it a sort of staging post for their political advance into Central Asia. Control over Afghanistan is integral to their larger aims in Asia just as control over Iraq is. This control amounts to occupation and no limits can be seen in Americans ability to do in and about Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed Iraq and Afghanistan are directly related to each other and provide a rear base for American advance into Central Asia.

It would be odd if the Indians were seen, as most Pakistanis do, as the initiators of the moves to strengthen Northern Alliance and to prevent Pakistanis from having any powerful friend in Afghanistan. They think Indians could not have undertaken a large political initiative without first sounding the Americans, whose interests and presence in Afghanistan is a primary reality. That is a subject on which nothing can be said for sure. Only time will tell whether the inspiration came from South Block only or it was in cahoots with also Pentagon and State Department, not to mention CIA. Since we do not know for sure, there is no point in wasting time over who precisely set the ball rolling in Afghanistan. What is important is the fact that a whole new alignment has taken shape. This alignment favours the current dispensation in Afghanistan and apparently Iran, Russia and India are quite at ease with it. Therefore, the Americans cannot possibly be uneasy about it, much less inimical to it.

From the purely Pakistani point of view the prospect looks different. Time was when Pakistan manufactured a government in Peshawar and Islamabad, took it on a PAF C-130 and installed it in Kabul. The Prime Minister of the day, Nawaz Sharif, offered special prayers of thanks in the grand Mosque of Kabul. But the course of love and war never run smoothly. The governments that Pakistan manipulated in the earlier years proved ultimately to be unreliable and often unfriendly. At any rate, they disliked and soon began to resist Pakistan’s hegemonistic attitude and behaviour. Pakistan fell foul of both the governments of President Mujaddadi and of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani. Both virtually revolted against Pakistan and there were demonstrations against Pakistan in Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar during that period. During this period Pakistanis were preparing to spring a surprise on the Afghans. After 1994 they got out of Pakistani Madressas a stream of Taliban who gradually, with the help of Pakistan Army, took over most of the Afghanistan. By 1996 they had taken over nearly two-third of the country. But the Rabbani regime remained enconsced in the northern areas.

Here a word about northern areas. While much of the eastern and southern part of Afghanistan is ethnic Pushtoon while the northern areas are peopled by Tajik, Uzbek and Turkmens. The government of Professor Rabbani largely comprised non-Pushtoon  Tajik and Uzbek elements. The makeshift armies led by Rabbani government and men like Rashid Dostum, Ahmad Shah Masood and others. The fact that the best that the Taliban could do could not dislodge the Rabbani government and their supporters from their redoubt in the north, should be pondered over even now. As noted here, ethnicity provided one answer. The Rabbani government was mainly non-Pushtoon and the area was non-Pushtoon; and the ethnic affinity between the government and supporting armies was perhaps one of this government’s strengths. That is one of the reasons but was the only one. A major reason for Rabbani regime’s survival was the constant supply of armaments and ammunition and humanitarian requirements. These came through from various sources via Tajikistan. It would be fascinating to see what the various sources were.

India, obviously with the help and consent of Russia, was able to obtain permission to set up its first foreign military base in Tajikistan. It was used to supply armaments, ammunition and civil supplies by difficult land route to the Northern Alliance government. Tajikistan could scarcely have permitted India to set up its base without considerable consultations with, and agreement of, Russia —- and indeed other neighbours of Tajikistan. Apparently, the Iranians were quite happy. They too were supplying the same government by the same and other routes. That was one of the major reasons why northern areas remained outside the control of Taliban despite their heavy fighting from 1996 onward.

Nothing could dislodge the Rabbani government despite internal fissures in it and the various ups and downs in Rabbani’s friendship of, and support from, Dostum and his associates. The fact of the matter must be noted: All that the Taliban and their protectors and supporters in Pakistan could do was insufficient to dislodge the Rabbani government from its redoubt. In this there was active participation of India, Russia, Iran and other neighbours of Afghanistan in Central Asia. They had all cooperated and gave various forms of aid to Northern Alliance. That was the secret why it could not be overthrown.

The implication of this line up among Russia, India, Iran and various Central Asian Republics —- still going strong —- is that, in the present context, it has become an encirclement of Pakistan. Pakistan’s proxies, the Taliban, have been ejected from Kabul and their power has been smashed. That is the net outcome of America’s War on Terror, especially Taliban. Most of the Taliban disappeared, not necessarily killed though. They simply melted away —- to fight another day. Which is what would seem to be starting to happen. But insofar as Pakistan and these other powers are concerned, their relationship vis-à-vis Afghanistan is adversarial and indeed inimical. Pakistan has been thrown out of Afghanistan, lock, stock and barrel —- mainly by the US actions. Whether the line up continues and has any further items on its agenda other than countering the Pakistan influence in Afghanistan is not known. It has succeeded in its primary aim. And it would either metamorphose and be concerned with other matters or would come to an end. The former seems more likely to have happened rather than the latter. The affinities and commonalties in the foreign policies of India and Russia, given its historical evolution in the Soviet days and later adherence of Islamic Iran to that world view, is a factor that Pakistanis must reckon with. What shape it is going to evolve in future will have to be watched carefully.

As could have been expected, the Taliban took some time to regroup in the fastnesses of Pakistani Madressas and elsewhere (among their friends and supporters). But they are now making hit and run attacks in Afghanistan. The American intelligence agencies hardly ever tell outright lies. They are not accusing al-Qaeda for recent ambushes and attacks in Afghanistan on targets that can be  identified as American or their new Afghan uderlings. They point to Taliban who apparently are resuming the war they had lost. They are using Pakistani areas as their sanctuary —- definitely without official support of Islamabad. It is scarcely possible that anyone in the government or Army of Pakistan can even conceive of aiding and abetting Taliban remnants, though Americans, or rather a few of Neocons, apparently think that some rogue elements of Pakistan Army are helping them. This is highly unlikely and goes against the grain of Pakistan’s military. But the evidence of American Neocons thinking is simple though not necessarily trustworthy. Anyhow Pakistanis must think through the new Afghan war that seems to have been started by the Taliban.

Then one aspect of the matter needs to be remembered. It is that Pakistan had made the same mistake as the Russians had done in 1979 when they sent in their troops into Afghanistan. They were violating an understanding between the Imperial Britain and Imperial Russia vis-à-vis Iran and Afghanistan —- and they were written in treaties in early Twentieth Century that were regarded as more or less acceptable and fair for all in all the chanceries of the world. The rest of the world accepted the notion that Afghanistan, being a buffer state, should be left severely alone by all the major powers and no one should violate its integrity and security. That notion held through two world wars in the Twentieth Century. Indeed the limits of those treaties were informally observed right down to the day when the Soviets breathed their last. It was only well after the death of Soviet Union that the Americans have begun regarding themselves as now free of internationally accepted limits to independent political or military action in central and southern Asia.

Pakistan had done exactly the same as the Russians had done in 1979, viz. violating the nearly 100 years old treaty between Britain and Russia specifically over Afghanistan. Integrity of Iran and Afghanistan and their being left alone was integral to the international system as it has evolved in the period from 1860s on to 1990. Which is one reason why Russia, Central Asian Republics and Iran could easily unite against Pakistan which is seen as still discreetly hankering after running Afghanistan through its proxies. All the local opinion in Central Asia feels outraged. The Afghans did not like it for obvious reasons. This is remarkable that the governments that were manufactured in Islamabad and Peshawar also protested against Pakistanis a number of times. Insofar as the Taliban are concerned, their record shows that while they took the Pakistani support for granted, they seldom obeyed Pakistan’s wishes. A certain independence is always attributed to Afghans. Their spirit is to remain totally free. That should be honoured and respected. Pakistanis made a mistake in trying to run Afghanistan for them according to the Pakistani lights. Which is why Pakistan has now come under a severe pressure.

We can be sure where the American sympathies lie. Apparently they are not on the side of the Pakistanis. The Armitage visit is a proof. The US is far more interested in Pakistan doing this, that and the other thing rather than supporting Pakistan in this or that facets of its foreign policy. The Americans are more interested in ending the drug trade and in countering the regrouping of the Taliban and al-Qaeda and preventing them from going to Afghanistan to destabilise the American-sponsored dispensation. The Americans, it is significant, are not directly worried about the line up against Pakistan that comprises significant powers whose relations with the Americans are generally good and more or less valued by it: Russia, up to a point China and various Central Asian Republics. Iran, of course, a special case whose regime is hated by the friendship of the country is desired. This line up was, and insofar as it remains and is, anti-Pakistan. Where does Pakistan stand today is a question that needs to be answered carefully. It has not been adequately tackled by the intelligentsia of the country.