IMP: Crisis in ties with Afghanistan By Khalid Aziz

RECENTLY, President Hamid Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with India in New Delhi. Among other things, it provides for the training of Afghan army officers in India.

Before departing for India, President Karzai had accused Pakistan of some involvement in the murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of the Afghan High Peace Council. Irrespective of the merits of such a claim, merely the charge may have serious consequences and isolate Pakistan further during the forthcoming regional conferences in Istanbul, Bonn and later in Chicago that have been called to work out the Afghan transition.

Investigations into the death of Mr Rabbani may solve the mystery of his assassination. However, the party most threatened by peace in Afghanistan may be Al Qaeda as it would come under extensive pressure to move out of the region.

Secondly, the haste of the Indian government in pleasing Mr Karzai at the risk of harming its relationship with Pakistan may mean that another zero-sum game is in the offing. Normally, India makes decisions with prudence and after doing its homework. Can it be assumed that the agreement was actually negotiated some time ago and signed now to suit the circumstances?

The Indo-Afghan agreement gives a clear indication that it is aimed at Pakistan`s purported sphere of influence in Afghanistan. Does that mean that the US, India and Afghanistan have decided to jointly mount pressure on Pakistan? If so, this portends yet another conundrum for Pakistan.

The Indian military recently began manoeuvres near the Pakistan border in Sindh and Punjab. The simultaneous move of sophisticated Su-30 fighter jets to the region lends credence to Pakistani worries that India may be on the threshold of executing another `Cold Start` exercise to place Pakistan under pressure.

Why India would generate pressure in the region now when it is at the threshold of huge economic growth is inexplicable. One possible explanation may be Indian suspicions of a jihadi attack inside India. The exercise may be a pre-emptive message to force Pakistan to act more responsibly.

If such an event should occur, it would prove disastrous for the whole region; thus, extra care and vigilance is required of Pakistan. India`s moves and the strategic agreement are clearly meant to put Pakistan on notice regarding acting against jihadi networks in the country.

In June 2009, the US secretary of defence directed Centcom to prepare a report advising the US government on how the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) could achieve its objectives in Afghanistan. The report was prepared by Gen McChrystal, the Isaf commander in August 2009.

It highlighted many issues related to the challenges facing the international coalition in Afghanistan. Although it was not followed in letter or spirit, the report was honest and realistic and drew some forthright conclusions that are worth revisiting.

Amongst other conclusions drawn by Gen McChrystal, an important one was that “The Afghan government has not integrated or supported traditional community governance structures — historically an important component of Afghan civil society — leaving communities vulnerable to being undermined by insurgent groups and power brokers”.

The breakdown of social cohesion at the community level has increased instability, made Afghans feel unsafe, and fuelled the insurgency. He further added: “The insurgency … is predominantly Afghan.”

If the Afghan government has been unable to increase its capacity due to various reasons, is it not possible that the death of Mr Rabbani may have been the result of ethnic rivalries or the dynamics of Afghan politics?

Then, Gen McChrystal had said that “Stability in Pakistan is essential, not only in its own right, but also to enable progress in Afghanistan. While the existence of safe havens in Pakistan does not guarantee Isaf failure, Afghanistan does require Pakistani cooperation and action against violent militancy, particularly against those groups active in Afghanistan”.

He cautioned about expanding India`s role in Afghanistan: “Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India.”

International politics are based on realism: relations are based on competition and conflict rather than cooperation. Realists consider states to be concerned with their own security and act in pursuit of their own national interests in their struggle for power. International politics are characterised by active or potential conflict among states.

In the current situation, the US, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan are obviously following the realism route. Pakistan, however, must calculate the cost of confronting a mounting coalition against it for its alleged support to the jihadis, including the Haqqani group.

Clearly, the survival of the Pakistani state is more important than tactical preferences. The parallels of the current crisis with the East Pakistan situation in 1971 are too close for comfort.

Pakistan`s geography on the junction of Punjab with Sindh has remained its Achilles heel. To cover this weakness, Pakistan considered Afghanistan as within its legitimate sphere of interest, and resultantly the new strategic agreement between India and Afghanistan is viewed with alarm. However, realism teaches us to watch out, for there is greater danger lurking.

The pieces on the chessboard clearly do not augur well for peace or for an orderly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Common sense would suggest that the best strategy for bringing peace to the region would be to engage both India and Pakistan in a collaborative mode for the endgame in Afghanistan.

Such a result may best be achieved by the appointment of a special representative of the secretary general of the United Nations with a mandate to expeditiously consult the states concerned on how to create a regional consultative mechanism to ensure peace in Afghanistan and an orderly drawdown of forces by 2014 while also assisting in maintaining regional security.

The writer is the chairman of the Regional Institute of Policy Research in Peshawar.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/14/crisis-in-ties-with-afghanistan.html

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