While a number of Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours have the capacity to indicate in concrete terms and through concrete actions their reservations regarding the continued presence in Afghanistan of American troops and American air power after the scheduled withdrawal of all foreign forces in 2014, there is no doubt that the most important reactions would be those of Pakistan and to a somewhat lesser extent that of Iran. These are the two counties that share the longest borders with Afghanistan and the countries that have provided refuge to the Afghan refugees during the 33 years of foreign occupation and civil war.
Pakistan has, of course always been concerned about two factors in Afghanistan. First that it must not come unduly under the influence of India since one of the enduring nightmares of Pakistan’s security establishment has been the fear of an Indo-Afghan alliance that would mean the encirclement of Pakistan. Second that in any power sharing arrangement in Afghanistan the Pushtun who are the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan (currently this is not acknowledged and the Pushtuns are spoken of as being 40-42% of the population rather than the 52-55% majority which I believe to be the case) have their due share of power not necessarily because the Pushtuns are more likely to be friendly towards Pakistan but because the Pushtuns in Pakistan who are twice the number of Pushtuns in Afghanistan and have strong ties of kinship would react badly to any attempt to deprive the Pushtuns of their share of power.
Pakistan also recognises however that there cannot now be a return to the situation where the Pushtuns dominated the political scene to the exclusion of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and other minorities. Just as the resurrection of the Taliban after the American invasion was owed to the exclusion of the Pushtuns from the political settlement reached at Bonn (the Taliban became the representative of Pushtun nationalism even though most Pushtuns in Afghanistan rejected their ultra extremist religious views) so too would there be a resumption of civil war in Afghanistan if the Taliban Pushtuns were not prepared to grant the other ethnic groups in Afghanistan their due share of power. The experiences of the early 90s when Afghanistan descended into civil war after the Mujahidin could not agree among themselves on an equitable division of power and the subsequent failure of the Taliban to establish durable control in the later part of the 90s bear testimony to this fact.
Moreover there has grown in Afghanistan a whole class of criminals and warlords who need turbulence and strife to maintain their fiefdoms and the absence of effective state authority to allow their criminal enterprises and their opium based empires to flourish. They would seek to create or exacerbate ethnic discord to prevent the return of peace and stability in Afghanistan. There is no doubt that among the current power brokers in Kabul there are many who belong to this category. That these came into being largely because of the flawed policies of the Americans in the first few years of occupation is clear but now they are a force to be reckoned with and could only be eliminated by a concerted effort on the part of all the Afghan people.
Within Pakistan, the continuing strife in Afghanistan has made Pakistan as a whole and not just its tribal agencies the secondary battlefield, has facilitated the smuggling of goods, narcotics, weapons and extremists across the border and saddled it with a large number of Afghan refugees.
More recently Pakistani militants from the Tehrik-e-Taliban of Pakistan and the militants who escaped from SWAT have found shelter in the Nuristan and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan and have used these bases with the help of local Afghans to launch attacks on Pakistan territory. To date according to the Pakistan authorities some six such attacks have been launched since April and have killed some 75 military and civil personnel.
The Pakistanis believe that the local Afghan authorities have facilitated these attacks. The local “Authority”, the governor of Nuristan, however told a Pakistani newspaper that “These are Pakistani Taliban who have been mounting cross-border attacks in Pakistani border villages,” and recalled that a month earlier the Pakistani Taliban had combined with Afghan Taliban to attack the Afghan Police. Whether the Pakistani or the Afghan contention is correct it is clear that when Prime Minister Gilani said on the 28th July that the Afghan war was responsible for the wave of terrorism in Pakistan he was stating what has been obvious for many years.
There is no question that for Pakistan a carefully constructed reconciliation in Afghanistan, which can bring peace, is an imperative need. For Pakistan, therefore, the question is how to bring about a power sharing reconciliation between the Taliban and the Karzai administration from which a government could emerge that would bring internal stability and would bear Pakistan’s concerns in mind while determining its relations with India and other regional countries? If it accepts that such a careful reconciliation will take time then it must also accept that the Karzai administration will need American support beyond 2014 and this support would include the presence of American troops. The other ethnic groups in Afghanistan will insist upon this when they reluctantly support the reconciliation process.
On the other hand, Pakistan knows that unless the Pakistan army is able to take action in North Waziristan to eliminate what the Americans believe to be Al-Qaeda safe havens, the air bases in Afghanistan will be used to continue drone attacks on Pakistan’s territory. There has been some debate in the US about the need for such drone attacks when it inflames public opinion in Pakistan but the recent news that the Al-Qaeda No. 2 has been eliminated by a drone attack will mute American critics and give the CIA the political space to continue the relentless campaign that has been intensified in recent weeks following the Bin Laden episode.
The Americans have apparently built their own intelligence network in the Tribal areas but it seems evident that, despite public protests, Pakistani intelligence, which has far more extensive sources, also continues to provide the information needed for the attacks on high value targets. Even if this were not so however the Pakistanis will probably recognise that if bases in Afghanistan are not available the CIA would find alternative ways to target Al-Qaeda safe havens perhaps through securing additional facilities at the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan and getting the use of a base in Tajikistan. It is likely that the Pakistani authorities recognise that the American obsession with the elimination of the Al-Al-Qaeda will remain even if they do not have bases in Afghanistan
In my view, and this may prove to be wrong, the Pakistanis will accept that Karzai has no alternative but to conclude the base agreement with the Americans and the only way for reducing the 10 year period for which the agreement is envisaged is to use all the means at their disposal to persuade such of the Taliban as they can influence to enter into reconciliation talks and to negotiate in these talks an early winding up of the bases.
The Pakistani influence over the Taliban is probably much more limited than the world assumes and in the deteriorating security situation their ability to pressure the Taliban may have been attenuated but some results can be expected if all power centres in Pakistan are agreed on this course of action particularly when for the reasons outlined in my earlier article the Taliban may also realise that they have no better alternative available if Afghanistan is to be preserved and not divided among the fiefdoms created by criminal elements and war lords.
In my next article, an analysis will be attempted of the probable reactions of Iran and other neighbours and near neighbours.
