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Afghanistan’s Number One Threat
Sreeram Chaulia
The
conventional troika being blamed as preponderant threats to
Afghanistan’s stability, unity and existence are Osama bin Laden’s Al
Qaeda, Mullah Omar’s Taliban and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami.
It is sheer naivete to account these fundamentalist forces and ignore
the number one wrecker-in-chief of Afghanistan in recent history-
Pakistan (incidentally the creator of the second and third outfits named
above and the playground of the first).
There
is an aphorism in world politics that geography cannot be chosen but
simply accepted as given and lived with. Afghanistan, deriving its name
from the Urdu word fughaan (lament), has had no recourse in the
last 55 years except to lament about being situated on the map beside a
covetous, destabilising and interventionist eastern neighbour. If they
had a choice, Afghans would have aeons ago preferred relocation to
another part of the globe where words like ‘ISI’, ‘Benazir’ and
‘Musharraf’ go unrecognised. Grounded by fate and increasingly
frustrated by Islamabad’s relentless cross-border aggression and
subversion, is it any surprise that Afghans demonstrated in thousands on
two consecutive days and ransacked the Pakistani embassy in Kabul on
July 8th?
For
understanding the background to these violent expressions of public
disgust in Kabul, readers should flashback to November 13th
2001 when the Northern Alliance marched into Afghanistan’s war-scarred
capital. The tyranny of beards enforced by the Taliban had ended and
citizens were queuing up before barber saloons, spontaneously raising
anti-Pakistan slogans. The roar of ‘Pakistan hai hai…death to
Musharraf’ and dramatic snapshots of mobs running after Pakistani and
Arab Taliban were captured distinctly on camera. The memory of three
Pakistani regimes training and backing the barbaric ultra-conservative
Taliban for more than five years was fresh in Afghan minds.
And
mind you, popular protests against Pakistan were not the “staged”
handiwork of particular ethnic groups. They were an outpouring of
anguish and anger among all Afghans who had suffered under the Taliban,
including Pushtuns who were ill-treated and exploited very harshly in
Pakistan’s refugee camps. One big divisive tactic that Pakistan has
always used with effect in Afghanistan is to claim that the majority
Pushtuns love and look up to Islamabad, while only the Tajiks, Uzbeks
and Hazara minorities, which dominate the new dispensation, are incited
by political authorities to foul-mouth and abuse Pakistan. The finger is
often pointed at followers of Ahmad Shah Masood, the slain guerrilla
warlord. In other words, rallies and embassy attacks are purportedly
being organised by only one section of Afghan society that is jealous of
Pakistan’s pro-Pushtun exertions.
The
ethnic card and so-called concern for democracy have time and again been
utilised by Pakistan to push its agenda down Afghanistan’s gullet.
General Musharraf was exhorted by US President George W. Bush on his
last Washington jaunt to desist from this sinuous device to infiltrate
Afghanistan. Yet, the level of dependence America has allowed itself on
Pakistan means that Musharraf cannot genuinely be stopped from repeating
his “lack of truly representative / multiethnic / broad-based
government” accusation against Afghanistan. So peeved was Afghan
President Hamid Karzai at Musharraf’s verbal assaults questioning his
legitimacy that he overrode diplomatic niceties to declare in public,
“Mr Musharraf has made some comments regarding Afghanistan which have
become a matter of sadness and regret for me.”
Now,
everybody knows that Hamid Karzai is not an elected leader of
Afghanistan and is indeed not widely accepted as legitimate President.
But then, is Musharraf an elected leader? Is he a legitimate President?
Were the Taliban a legitimate government? What happened to Musharraf’s
worries about “truly representative government” when he wholeheartedly
endorsed Pakistan’s alliance with Mullah Omar as the latter was
beheading civilians of all ethnic hues in football stadiums? Why can’t
the Generals in Rawalpindi let bygones be bygones, learn lessons from
past mistakes and allow Afghanistan to transit towards peace?
Musharraf agrees that the old ‘strategic depth’ reliance on Afghanistan
is no longer valid, now that Pakistan has acquired nuclear weapons
against India. So, why continue to bleed Afghanistan and seek influence
in its internal matters? There are two big-picture explanations I can
offer. One, Pakistan feels ‘surrounded’ by a pro-India regime on the
west and India incarnate on the east. In December 2001, Musharraf told
the Far Eastern Economic Review that India was “using Afghanistan
to damage our interests.” The intensity of this fear, rather hatred, can
be gauged by the fact that Pakistan objected to transit of much-needed
wheat from India to Afghanistan in January 2002 on the fantastic basis
that the grain was “infested with fungus and diseases.” The World Food
Programme was compelled to convert the 50,000 tonnes of edible Indian
wheat into biscuits and ship them to Afghanistan via Iran one month
late. How many lives could have been saved if the wheat had reached on
time is a moot question.
On
August 2nd this year, Pakistan alleged that Indian consulates
in the Afghan cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar are “veritable bases of
RAW and its accessories” from where New Delhi is “organising, financing
and abetting acts of terrorism, sectarianism and violence in Pakistan.”
Clearly, Pakistan is wary of losing the Jihad Route that allows holy
warriors to begin their military-spiritual journey in the Middle East,
course through Afghanistan-Pakistan and end up fighting in Indian
Kashmir. The active anti-transit measures being taken by India and
Afghanistan these days to disrupt the Jihad Route bother Musharraf as a
supply line defect that must be rectified.
The
second general reason for Pakistan meddling in Afghanistan is
paternalism. Army and Intelligence headquarters at Rawalpindi have
simply grown too used to controlling Afghan politics and pocketing
revenues from contraband drugs and arms trade across the Durand Line.
Besides Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, Afghanistan has for long been a
colony of sorts for Musharraf and his predecessors. Paternalism is writ
large in Musharraf’s language for Afghanistan. Just after September 11,
he warned India to “lay off” from “installing an anti-Pakistani
government in Afghanistan.” What is his locus standi to ask one
sovereign country to “lay off” from another sovereign counterpart?
Afghanistan has been and remains in Pakistani eyes a feudal estate from
which others must “lay off.”
Paternalism is also evident in Pakistan’s desperate efforts to ensconce
a pro-Islamabad faction in the current Karzai transition government.
While the long-term strategy of installing a totally ‘friendly
government’ in Kabul remains, Musharraf’s short-term aim is to have some
pro-Pakistan quislings in Kabul. Pakistani strategists are complaining
loudly that the current Afghan government has an avowed pro-US faction
led by Karzai, represented by American troops, and a pro-Iran/Russian
faction led by Defence Minister Qasim Fahim, represented by the Northern
Alliance barracks. Where is the pro-Pakistan faction and where is its
military backup?
This is
the question motivating Pakistan army incursions into Afghan territory
that are whipping up passions (after one incident, Karzai told The
Telegraph that he felt “personally betrayed by President Pervez
Musharraf.”) A land grab here and a base camp there in the guise of
hunting Al Qaeda can only help Pakistan regain a foothold in what used
to be ‘its own’ Afghanistan. The sooner these sorties are conducted, the
better, because Afghanistan's fledgling national army is at present too
weak to resist the organised Pakistani war machine. In June 2003, the
most serious invasion of Afghan soil by regular Pakistan army and
Frontier Corps occurred when 40 kilometres of Nangarhar and Kunar
provinces were occupied. Pakistan expressing helplessness at checking
Islamist fighters from crossing the Durand Line is sophistry that has
outlived credibility vis-à-vis India and the Line of Control in Kashmir.
Denials of control over fundamentalists and of Pakistan army
penetrations are too formulaic and too mendacious to cut any ice.
So,
what can Afghanistan do now in terms of policy to deter the growing
Pakistani threat? It is not just a matter of resolving demarcation of a
loosely defined border or petitioning the US. Violating Vienna
Convention rules on treatment of diplomatic staff and premises is also
not a solution. The root problems lie in the mindset of Pakistan’s
military establishment and it is beyond Afghanistan to single-handedly
change it or restore democracy in Islamabad. A strong alliance of
like-minded states that suffer from the same phenomenon is definitely
the way out. Another strategy could be to warn Pakistan of legal
consequences at the International Court of Justice if future salami
tactic ‘raids’ take place. Last but not least, Musharraf must be hoisted
by his own petard and admonished by the international community to “lay
off” Afghanistan. |
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