Repairing frayed ties By Michael O’Hanlon

AFTER a year of calamitous turns in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad, many Americans are wondering how this troubled alliance can possibly be repaired. Even more may be wondering how we can simply extricate ourselves from it, finding other partners and other strategic options in South Asia.

Alas, Pakistanis have had similar doubts about America even longer, a fact that goes far towards explaining their hedging behaviour, as many in the nation’s military and intelligence services tolerate or even support the Haqqani network and Quetta Shura Taliban in ways that destabilise Afghanistan and lead to the deaths of Afghans as well as Nato troops.

Certainly it seems safe to conclude that Pakistan is America’s most complex ally since Stalin’s Soviet Union, a poster child for what a foreign ‘frenemy’ looks like for the United States.

To be sure, we need to arrest this downturn in US-Pakistan relations to the extent we can. But it is at least as important that we Americans help our Afghan partners rework their relationship with Pakistan. In fact, that may be the core essence of the problem we face, and progress on this front may prove the most plausible path to improved US-Pakistan relations as well.

This will not be easy. Ten years into this war, I must say that for many Americans, it is hard to believe any longer Pakistan’s explanation for its hedging behaviour — that it simply does not have enough troops to fully pacify its tribal areas, and that it also needs to keep some friendly proxies in place should Nato’s effort to stabilise Afghanistan fail.

As for the first excuse, while partly valid, it does not explain the active collaboration between some elements of the ISI and the Afghan insurgents. And the second is not justifiable when the United States and other foreign countries have proven their mettle with a 10-year effort in this conflict to date, as well as a promise to take three more years to leave Afghanistan gradually and responsibly.

Indeed, as we have repeatedly stated at various levels of government (with only Joe Biden going off message for a moment in recent months, but later correcting himself), the United States in particular does not intend to leave Afghanistan even after 2014. Americans need to keep driving home this message to Pakistanis until it sinks in. Indeed, in my judgment, the only likely way the Afghanistan effort could fail is if Pakistani actions lead it to fail.

But it may be even more productive to directly confront, and attempt to address where possible, Pakistani concerns about certain aspects of the relationship between Islamabad and Kabul. To the extent that Pakistan’s government worries about an India-friendly Afghan government that would create security concerns on its western borders, leading to a form of strategic encirclement of Pakistan by India as well as Indian allies, there are steps that Afghanistan supported by Washington can take.
They will not suffice to eliminate all such Pakistani paranoias, but they can make a difference — and even incremental steps can help in this situation.

Consider the following possible moves. They need not be made unilaterally, but can be offered by Afghanistan as quid pro quos for Pakistan agreeing to rein in the Haqqani network and the Quetta Shura:

— Building on the results of President Karzai’s recent trip to India, where New Delhi and Kabul agreed that India would help train Afghan security forces, promise Pakistan that such training will occur only under the auspices of Nato’s training mission in Afghanistan.

This will reduce Pakistani fears that India will develop close rapport with certain units of the Afghan army that might work in cahoots with traditionally pro-India Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance elements and leave Islamabad out in the cold.

— Ask India to kindly close its consulates in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

Pakistan sees these Indian outposts in Jalalabad and Kandahar as intelligence collection sites and covert action staging bases in disguise. I doubt very much that is the case. No matter; the consulates are not important enough to warrant the reaction they cause, and Afghanistan should be willing to ask India to shut them down.

— Promise to respect the Durand Line between the two nations as the effective border indefinitely, or at least for an extended period, say until 2050.

Afghans continue to resist simply accepting this admittedly arbitrary British-drawn line from more than a century ago as their formal boundary with Pakistan. But even if the Durand Line is arbitrary, it makes little sense for small, weak Afghanistan to pick a fight with its big neighbour over where the border should be, especially since what is at stake are remote mountain regions that are hardly the heartland of either country. Even if Afghans cannot bring themselves to concede the border permanently, it should be possible to take the issue off the table for the foreseeable future

— Establish an Afghan-Pakistan border management body with high-level government participation on both sides.

This body could address various means of enhancing economic cooperation. It could allow for intelligence-sharing and tactical military communication and cooperation near the border, where insurgents cross in both directions and threaten both countries. Importantly, it could also allow Pakistan a chance to convey its preferences about who among the Haqqanis or other major tribes might be accorded government jobs in Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.

Of course, Islamabad should not get to choose Afghanistan’s local leaders, but there is no reason to deprive it of a chance to advocate for certain interests. In fact, Afghanistan might do the same in reverse, pointing out its concerns and sharing its preferences for what Pakistan does in some of the tribal areas and other border regions of its own country.

It will not be easy to make progress across all these issues. But for those looking for a fruitful way to have peace talks in regard to Afghanistan, this sort of conversation between the two legitimate governments of the key countries at issue is a much more promising arena for diplomacy than are high-level peace talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/12/repairing-frayed-ties.html

China factor in Afghanistan

THE signing of the India-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership last week reaffirmed the establishment’s narratives about Pakistan’s real concerns across its western border: it’s not about militancy or instability, but about Indian hegemony.

The timing of the pact, and its focus on security cooperation, intimates Pakistan’s nightmare scenario of encirclement by India. Former military ruler Pervez Musharraf pointed to the pact as proof that India is seeking to create “an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan”. And so we’re back to binaries: India versus Pakistan in a potential proxy war in Afghanistan.

But things are never as straightforward as they seem. Most political dynamics in South Asia are seen through the bilateral lens of tense India-Pakistan relations. However, in most cases, those tensions are actually trilateral, with Sino-Indian tensions playing out in the background. Afghanistan is no exception.

In recent days, Pakistan has dwelled on the Strategic Partnership between New Delhi and Kabul because of the security implications of India playing a bigger role in training Afghan security forces. This narrow focus has prevented Islamabad from emphasising the significance of two other pacts signed by India and Afghanistan last week. One MoU calls for enhanced cooperation in the exploration and production of hydrocarbons, primarily oil and gas. A second MoU, signed between the Indian and Afghan ministries of mines, calls for promoting mineral exploration and investment in Afghanistan’s mines.

These MoUs were signed in the same week that it was revealed that the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) — the largest state-owned Chinese company — has won the rights to explore and develop oil fields in Afghanistan’s Amu Darya basin.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Alexander Benard and Eli Sugarman explain that Amu Darya contains five known fields containing 80 million barrels of crude oil, which amounts to 11,000 barrels per day for 20 years.

It is no secret that the Chinese government covets Afghanistan’s natural resources. In 2007, China won another major tender for the Aynak copper deposit, estimated to be worth $80bn. Indeed, China has recently invested in various Central Asian natural resources to supply energy and raw materials for its booming industries.

Rather than obsess purely about India’s security designs in Afghanistan vis-à-vis Pakistan, Islamabad should also plan for the China factor. It is clear that India and China are competing for access to Afghanistan’s rich mineral and energy resources. It is also clear that this competition fuels some of New Delhi’s strategic thinking regarding its presence in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s repeated failure to account for India’s concerns about China in a security and nuclear context has driven the country into an endless arms race.

Billions have been spent on conventional and nuclear weapons as Pakistan tries to compete with the testy economic powerhouses on its periphery. Before it makes the same mistake in Afghanistan, Pakistan should account for the fact that there are more than two players interested in present-day Afghanistan. Leaving India aside, Pakistan should also consider the medium- and long-term ramifications of Chinese investment in Afghanistan.

On the positive side, Pakistan could find ways to collaborate with China on its extractive and energy-related initiatives in Afghanistan. Such an involvement would expand Pakistan’s interface with Afghanistan beyond political interference to substantial investment and infrastructure development work. Given Pakistan’s worsening energy crisis, any additional options for access to energy must be pursued.

The political benefits of Chinese presence in Afghanistan are also worth noting: as a major investor in Afghanistan’s natural resource industries, China will also enjoy a fair amount of political influence in Kabul. The durability of the Sino-Pak relationship suggests that Beijing would intervene with Kabul in the future if Afghanistan chose to pursue policies hostile to Pakistan. Knowing that China would defend Pakistani interests should give Islamabad the confidence not to pursue paranoid or self-destructive policies in the name of ‘strategic depth’.

Of course, an expanded Chinese presence in Afghanistan could work against Pakistan, but only if Islamabad continues to pursue its current tack of backing militant groups as proxies. Beijing will have little patience for militants receiving Pakistani support if they in any way detract from China’s ability to reap the benefits of its investments (for example, if poor security prevents CNPC from exploring the oil fields at Amu Darya). Right now, China is letting the US do the dirty work of slapping Pakistan on the wrist for backing militant groups. Once US troops withdraw from the region in 2014, we can expect China to take a harder line: remember, it was on Beijing’s insistence that the Pakistan Army conducted Operation Silence at Lal Masjid in 2007.

China will also not tolerate any activities that could lead to a full-blown confrontation between Pakistan and India. While Beijing and New Delhi are engaged in fierce competition on the global stage, they also enjoy a significant trading relationship.
China does seven times more trade with India than it does with Pakistan, and is India’s largest trading partner, even over the US. China is aware that its long-standing strategic partnership with Pakistan would disrupt these strong economic ties in the event of a crisis. For that reason, it will pressurise Pakistan in the medium term to abandon the use of proxies against Indian interests in Afghanistan.

Finally, Beijing will probably bring in low-cost labour from China to work on extractive and explorative projects in Afghanistan. The last thing China needs is for these workers to become radicalised as a result of exposure to Pakistan-backed militant groups before returning to the mainland.

In sum, Pakistan’s adherence to the proxy war narrative is likely to prove misguided and counterproductive in years to come.
In the context of Chinese interests in Afghanistan, it also threatens to leave Pakistan isolated, even from its closest allies.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/10/china-factor-in-afghanistan.html