Afghanistan News and Discussions

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Pakistan's Gambit in Afghanistan​

Interviewee:
Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org
June 30, 2010
The recent replacement of General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has led to increased criticism of the war in Afghanistan and concerns about whether the White House is looking for an exit strategy. There's also a sense that Afghans are losing confidence in the allied operations, and Pakistan is looking to "exploit that advantage," says CFR South Asia expert Daniel Markey. Pakistan would like an Afghan government that's sympathetic to Pakistan and committed to not allowing much Indian influence in Afghanistan, says Markey. He says that President Barack Obama's stated July 2011 starting point for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has posed problems for U.S. policies in the region. "That date remained fixed in peoples' minds," says Markey. "Afghans are concerned that that date means that that will be the end of U.S. commitment. Pakistanis see an opportunity in that. Indians have been very worried."
General McChrystal's replacement and recent efforts by the Pakistani leadership to enter into serious discussions with Afghan leaders have led to speculation that the United States is on its way out of Afghanistan next year, and the Pakistanis and Afghans are looking to secure their future. How do you see the situation?
The Pakistanis have for a long time anticipated the United States would eventually be looking for an exit strategy from Afghanistan. If the Pakistanis could provide that strategy and provide the opportunity to bring back Pakistani proxies, including the Haqqani network, the head of the Quetta Shura Taliban [headed by Mullah Omar], and others, then Pakistan would come out ahead. They've been looking for a way to deploy that strategy ever since 2002, and now that they've sensed there's a question in American minds about whether we will stay the course--and certainly a sense in Kabul of deteriorating confidence in U.S. and NATO operations there--the Pakistanis are looking to exploit that advantage.
What would the Pakistanis like to see, ideally?
The Pakistanis would want to see an Afghanistan run by a collection of individuals who are at least sympathetic to Pakistan and who are committed to not seeing much in the way of Indian influence in Afghanistan. You really do have to trace this back to Pakistani concerns about being confronted on both eastern and western borders by India. Some of that is a bit obsessive, but that's certainly the way the Pakistanis have perceived developments in Afghanistan. They have seen a rising amount of Indian influence and a potential that they would be squeezed by both sides. So they want to make sure that they have preponderant and certainly dominant interests and influence in Kabul into the future. They will probably not be satisfied with anything short of that. The challenge, from the U.S. side, is to find a strategy or an outcome that would suit Pakistan's political interests without rewarding militant groups like the Haqqani network with clearly established ties and close relationships with international terrorists like al-Qaeda.
The Haqqani network is giving sanctuary to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden?
That's exactly right. And of the various groups based inside of Pakistan, that network is seen as one of the most dangerous and one of the ones that has done the most to increase violence inside of Afghanistan, targeting especially Indian interests there, in particular the Indian Embassy.
President Obama has seemed annoyed at people asking him about the July 2011 withdrawal date. But it was he who first mentioned this date in his West Point speech last December. Are the Afghans wary of what the United States is going to do?
Everybody in the region has keyed on that date since Obama's West Point speech. There's no question that that was the headline--for Afghans, for Pakistanis, for Indians, really for everyone. The rest of that speech got washed away, and that date remained fixed in people's minds. Afghans are concerned that that date means that will be the end of U.S. commitment. Pakistanis see an opportunity in that. Indians have been very worried. I'm told that the Indian government has been reassured that July 2011 doesn't have a fixed and firm quality to it, and the United States will remain engaged in Afghanistan well after that date. But they still are very concerned, because all of them would much prefer to see the United States depart Afghanistan, but on a more gradual path, except for perhaps the Pakistanis. But even they would rather not see a precipitous withdrawal of the United States, even though they see themselves, maybe wrongly, as being able to pick up the pieces better than some of the other regional players.
The Pakistani military chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and the intelligence chief were in Kabul this week. What were they trying to persuade Afghan President Hamid Karzai to do?
It's not entirely clear what either the Pakistani army chief or the head of the Inter Services Intelligence [ISI], Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, are trying to do. There are stories in al-Jazeera that they're directly brokering talks between the Haqqani network and Karzai; that they can bring these folks to the table. Some of this is probably an overstatement, but they're trying to square Pakistan's interests in having influence in Afghanistan with Karzai's interests in reaching out to members of the Taliban. It wasn't so long ago that Karzai had his jirga in Kabul and brought together all sorts of representatives from Afghan society who essentially endorsed the idea of outreach to members of the former Taliban. So in some ways, Karzai is simply following up on that, and the real question is just how much further he's going, and what exactly the Pakistanis can put on the table.
Talk about the connection between al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and the Taliban.
The Haqqani network is loosely affiliated with the Afghan Taliban leadership, which was formerly under Mullah Omar, and is often referred to as the Quetta Shura Taliban. So that would be the core of what used to run Afghanistan before 9/11 and before the United States and NATO came into Afghanistan. Haqqani shares their interests in large part of seeing international forces out of Afghanistan, and yet doesn't really come under them in a formal sense.
The Haqqani network, though based primarily in North Waziristan inside of Pakistan, has by most accounts forged ever-closer ties with international terrorists, both the Central Asian terrorists as well as the al-Qaeda core. It has also reportedly had ties, whether passive or active, with the Pakistani Intelligence Services. Like the rest of the Afghan Taliban, it appears to have been given a freer hand inside of Pakistan as long as they directed their violence into Afghanistan and against international forces and Indian forces or Indian facilities there.
But the Pakistani Taliban are those Pakistanis who have taken up a sworn allegiance to the broader Taliban and have directed their violence primarily toward the Pakistani state. They are who the Pakistani military has primarily targeted for violence in South Waziristan.
There are divisions between these groups, but there are also linkages, and the linkages are perhaps more troubling. One other troubling link is to groups that are now commonly called the Punjabi Taliban, distinct from the Pakistani Taliban. These are groups who are not primarily ethnically Pashtun and have bases of support in the rest of Pakistan, in Punjab, the most dominant and populous of the provinces of Pakistan. They include groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, that was responsible for the attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, and which of all the groups in Pakistan is believed to have the closest connections historically to the Pakistani state and intelligence services. It is widely believed by many Pakistanis, as well as others, [that the group continues] to enjoy at least passive support and a great deal of influence that allows it to operate in the tribal areas alongside some of the other groups. This is of great concern to the United States, as you see these groups targeting U.S. interests in India, and potentially in Western Europe, and eventually possibly in the United States as well.
If President Obama asked you for advice, what would you give him?
Among other things, that Lashkar-e-Taiba in particular is of enormous concern. We haven't seen concrete, firm action by the Pakistanis. That's an area which some people say is a ticking time bomb in South Asia. That needs to be a focus even more than, for instance, the Pakistani Taliban, who are more of a local, inwardly directed group despite the fact that Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad claims to have been affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban. We shouldn't lose sight of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its links to all of these other groups. One other thing I'd say, as the Pakistanis look to give us what they would suggest are easy and honorable ways out of Afghanistan, is that we shouldn't see these as actually quite so easy. None of these groups that the Pakistanis are talking about making a deal with are the kinds of groups that we could easily find our interests protected by. The Haqqanis are the first example. Our primary concern is to avoid seeing another safe haven in Afghanistan, one that would serve as a base for al-Qaeda operations and similar types of groups. The Haqqanis have very clearly demonstrated that they're willing to facilitate that. The idea that we would make a deal with them that would serve our basic interests, I find highly questionable.
I assume you think it's important for General Petraeus to continue the planned offensive in Kandahar, to crack down on the Afghan Taliban?
Petraeus has said several times that we're just beginning to get the inputs right in Afghanistan--meaning resources, troops, strategy, and leadership. The question is whether Washington and the American people more broadly will have the patience to see this through and to see through what's already been the bloodiest time that we've been in Afghanistan and that's something where in some ways Petraeus will be in a better position than McChrystal was to make that case. It's the right case to make now. This was the right strategy when it was decided last fall, after a very exhaustive review, but we actually have to see it through to judge whether it's working.
By the end of the summer we'll finally have the resources in place, and it will take at least six months to really make a serious assessment whether it's starting to work. You've seen these stories about Special Forces operations that are beginning to really get plugged in and take down the number of mid-to-senior level Taliban operatives inside of southern Afghanistan and put some pressure on them. That's one side of things. The other side is the political side, and that's less encouraging, trying to bring some sort of adequate governance to parts of the country where they perceive the Afghan government as being more predatory than helpful.

 

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Menon Talks To China FM About Afghan Joint Projects​

India and China on Sunday discussed the possibility of working in collaborative projects in third countries, including joint initiatives in Afghanistan to tap large mineral resources, as part of efforts to broadbase their relationship.
National security adviser Shivshankar Menon, who reached Beijing on Saturday on a four-day visit as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy, held talks with Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi on Sunday. After 90-minute talks at the foreign ministry, Mr Yang, accompanied by Mr Menon, said the talks "went off very, very well" and covered "the whole horizon" of issues.
They also discussed economic issues and bilateral trade, which is expected to touch $60 billion this year.
Pakistan-related issues, including President Asif Ali Zardari's visit from July 6 to firm up nuclear cooperation, also figured in the talks. "We went into specifics about certain aspects of our relationship," Mr Yang said, without directly referring to Pakistan. These are also likely to come up at Mr Menon's meetings with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and state councillor Dai Bingguo on Monday.
Recent reports indicate that India, China, the US and the European Union are interested in collaborating on developing Afghanistan's mineral resources.

 

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India alerts Afghanistan about the Haqqani network​

2010-07-02 20:20:00
Amid Pakistan's intensified efforts to influence evolving power-sharing negotiations in Afghanistan, India and Afghanistan Friday held wide-ranging talks, with New Delhi making clear its unease about accommodating hardcore Taliban and militant groups like the Haqqani network.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao held delegation-level talks with visiting Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Eklil Ahmad Hamiki.

'They also reviewed their development partnership and agreed to continue their consultations,' said the external affairs ministry.

The Afghan side briefed on the fragile security situation in Afghanistan and conveyed to India to continue a host of reconstruction activities in the country, said sources.

The meeting, held as part of regular foreign office consultations between the two countries, acquired an added significance as it comes amid reports of a secret meeting between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Al Qaeda-linked militant commander Sirajuddin Haqqani. The meeting was allegedly arranged by Pakistan's Army Chief Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.

According to a report by Al-Jazeera, Karzai met Haqqani along with Kayani and ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in Kabul for 'face-to-face talks'.

Both Kabul and Islamabad have vehemently denied these reports.

Kayani and Pasha, according to some reports, tried to influence Karzai to accommodate the Pakistan-backed Haqqani network which has targeted Indian assets in Afghanistan in the past.

India has conveyed to Afghanistan its concerns about any power-sharing deal with hardcore Taliban and groups like the Haqqani network which have a declared anti-India agenda, said the sources.

 

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Petraeus takes over Afghan fight, vows to win it​

KABUL, Afghanistan – "We are in this to win," Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday as he took the reins of an Afghan war effort troubled by waning support, an emboldened enemy, government corruption and a looming commitment to withdraw troops even with no sign of violence easing.
Petraeus, who pioneered the counterinsurgency strategy he now oversees in Afghanistan, has just months to show progress in turning back insurgents and convince both the Afghan people and neighboring countries that the U.S. is committed to preventing the country from again becoming a haven for al-Qaida and its terrorist allies.
"We are engaged in a contest of wills," Petraeus said as he accepted the command of U.S. and NATO forces before several hundred U.S., coalition and Afghan officials who gathered on a grassy area outside NATO headquarters in Kabul.
Petraeus, widely credited with turning around the U.S. war effort in Iraq, said the Taliban and their allies are killing and maiming civilians — even using "unwitting children to carry out attacks" — in an attempt to undermine public confidence in the Afghan government and the international community's ability to prevail.
"In answer, we must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and international forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people, and that we are in this to win," Petraeus said on the Fourth of July, U.S. Independence Day.
Continual discussion about President Barack Obama's desire to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011 has blurred the definition of what would constitute victory. That coupled with the abrupt firing of Petraeus' predecessor, a move that laid bare a rift between civilian and military efforts in the country, has created at least the perception that the NATO mission needs to be righted.
June was the deadliest month for the allied force since the war began, with 102 U.S. and international troops killed. Progress in stabilizing Taliban strongholds in the south has been slow, support for the war is waning in America and foreign capitals and doubts persist about the Afghan government's willingness and ability to fight corruption.
"After years of war, we have arrived at a critical moment," Petraeus said. "We must demonstrate to the Afghan people — and to the world — that al-Qaida and its network of extremist allies will not be allowed to once again establish sanctuaries in Afghanistan from which they can launch attacks on the Afghan people and on freedom-loving nations around the world."
Petraeus suggested he would refine — or at least review — the implementation of rules under which NATO soldiers fight, including curbs on the use of airpower and heavy weapons if civilians are at risk, "to determine where refinements might be needed."
Some troops have complained that such restraint puts their own lives in danger and hands the battlefield advantage to the Taliban and their allies.
"Protecting those we are here to help nonetheless does require killing, capturing or turning the insurgents. We will not shrink from that," Petraeus wrote Sunday in a memo to his troops. But he added that when they got into tough situations, NATO must "employ all assets to ensure your safety, keeping in mind, again, the importance of avoiding civilian casualties."
The rules aimed at protecting civilians were put in place under Petraeus' predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was dismissed last month for intemperate remarks he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama administration officials — mostly on the civilian side.
Petraeus praised McChrystal early in his 10-minute speech. "The progress made in recent months — in the face of a determined enemy — is in many respects the result of the vision, energy and leadership he provided," he said.
In an effort to move past the rifts between the civilian and military camps, Petraeus reiterated the message he delivered Saturday at the U.S. Embassy: "Cooperation is not optional."
The new commander said everyone had worked hard during McChrystal's tenure in Afghanistan to carry out an effective civilian-military counterinsurgency, one that Petraeus pioneered in Iraq.
Petraeus also sought to counter skepticism, even defeatism, that was on display last month during hearings in Washington when lawmakers challenged Pentagon assertions that progress was being made in the war.
He acknowledged that the fight in Afghanistan has been grueling, but insisted progress had been made: 7 million Afghan children in school compared with fewer than 1 million a decade ago; child immunization rates at 70 percent or higher; new roads; and bustling economies in several cities.
When announcing the 2011 target, Obama was careful to say that any pullout decisions would be based on improved security. Yet that caveat has often been forgotten.
Obama's timetable has provided the Afghan government the impetus to implement reforms and bolster governance deeper into the provinces. But it also fueled fears in Afghanistan that the U.S. commitment was fading in the almost 9-year-old war.

 

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Beyond McChrystal Lies a Bigger Tug of War​

WHILE the uproar set off by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's imprudent comments in Rolling Stone magazine has focused on the larger-than-life personalities involved, there is an important subtext: What does all this drama suggest about how the Pentagon and the State Department are sharing responsibility for the war in Afghanistan?

Perhaps a clue came during a secure video conference call between Washington and Kabul last Saturday. General McChrystal's replacement, Gen. David H. Petraeus, called up the two top American civilian officials in the war — Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy; and Karl W. Eikenberry, the ambassador in Kabul.

The general raised a touchy issue: whether to buy generators to supply electricity to Kandahar. For months, the ambassador and many civilian development experts had opposed doing so now, because it didn't fit long-term national plans for power generation. But Kandahar is the Taliban stronghold that is the American military's next target. And General Petraeus, according to an official familiar with the conference call, said the basic services were so badly needed there that it justified going ahead.

The ambassador fell into line, the official said. In the perennial tug-of-war between civilian aspirations and military imperatives, score one for the Pentagon.

That, at least, is one way to read the conversation, especially in light of the harsh comments about civilian officials that General McChrystal had allowed members of his staff to make in front of a reporter. But another is that the McChrystal episode — and rumors that Ambassador Eikenberry might be replaced — have chastened officials on both sides, and that both now want to avoid a zero-sum game between State and Defense in Afghanistan. There, more even than in Iraq, the military and civilian sides need each other.

The State Department grew used to a bitter separation in the early years of the Iraq war. Back then, civilian-military collaboration meant sidelining the diplomats, starving the State Department of funds, and marginalizing the secretary of state, Colin Powell, in White House debates.

But by 2007, when the American troop surge was in full swing, the State Department — then under Condoleezza Rice — had managed to achieve a respectable supporting role on the ground, deploying some 700 civilians in provincial reconstruction teams that helped fix sewage systems and train Iraqi judges.

No one was more responsible for that change than General Petraeus. As overseer of the team that wrote the Army's field manual on counterinsurgency strategy, he stressed the necessity of civilian participation. And as the commander in Iraq, he made the American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, his Sancho Panza, bringing him along on tours of Iraq and testifying with him on Capitol Hill.

With the change in administrations in 2009, the State Department's role seemed destined to expand further. President Obama chose a political star, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates called on Congress to increase her department's funding, so it could do more to help the Pentagon. During the White House policy debate on Afghanistan, Mrs. Clinton went toe-to-toe with the Defense Department, producing color-coded maps that showed how a "civilian surge" would unfurl across Afghanistan.

Mr. Holbrooke built a high-powered shop inside the State Department, drawing experts from nine other agencies, from the Agriculture Department to the Central Intelligence Agency. As a young diplomat, Mr. Holbrooke had seen firsthand a failed strategy, dominated by the military, in Vietnam. Still, the interwoven nature of military and civilian goals in Afghanistan was plain. Ambassador Eikenberry was given oversight of more than 1,000 civilians on the ground, triple the number in January 2009. But he came to the job as a retired lieutenant general, who himself was once the commander in Afghanistan.

Yet critical problems remained: Military officials expressed frustration at how long it was taking civilians to move aid into the field, and some critics blamed the civilian leadership for mishandling Afghanistan's elections last year, which President Hamid Karzai is widely believed to have rigged.

"It's very ironic that two military commanders have already been fired when the military has performed relatively well, while no one has been fired on the civilian side, when its major achievement so far has been the fiasco of the Afghan election," said Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence official who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and who helped the administration devise its initial war strategy.

It is tempting to conclude that the arrival of General Petraeus will consolidate the supremacy of the Pentagon in the war effort. He certainly starts out with great prestige in Washington, drawn from his performance in Iraq, and his status as the intellectual father of the strategy.

But there are reasons to believe that the State Department will continue to play a substantial role, if only because that is what General Petraeus wants. He has pledged a "unity of effort" between the civilian and military operations, and he met with Ambassador Eikenberry at a NATO meeting in Brussels so the two of them could fly into Kabul together on Friday.

For all the parallels between Afghanistan and Iraq, there are key differences that will require robust diplomacy. In Iraq, General Petraeus was able to turn the tide by peeling away Sunni leaders who were willing to work with American forces against jihadi extremists. But in Afghanistan, any similar process requires Pakistan's cooperation. Afghanistan's neighbor has influence over powerful players like the Haqqani network, which is closely allied with the Taliban, and it is a sanctuary for leaders of the Afghan Taliban.

Officials say that General Petraeus plans to shuttle between Kabul and Islamabad, conferring on issues like reintegrating Taliban fighters into Afghan society. But it easy to imagine that in the negotiations for a broader political settlement between Mr. Karzai and the Taliban, the general could turn to Mr. Holbrooke, whom he described last week as his "wingman." Mr. Holbrooke, after all, played a central role in the Dayton peace accords, which ended the war in Bosnia.

"One of the reasons the selection of General Petraeus was such a masterstroke was that he understands the importance of a civilian-military effort," said John A. Nagl, a retired Army officer who is now president of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington research group, and who helped write the counterinsurgency handbook under General Petraeus. "He'll bend over backwards to make it work."

 

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Critics press Obama on Afghanistan withdrawal deadline​

(CNN) -- The July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan is unrealistic and unhelpful, Afghan Ambassador Said Tayeb Jawad told CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.
"First, if you over-emphasize a deadline that is not realistic, you are making the enemy a lot more bold," Jawad said. "You are prolonging the war. That deadline should be realistic. The line should be based on the reality on the ground and we should give a clear message to the enemy, to the terrorists who are a threat to everyone, that the United States, NATO, Afghans are there to finish this job."
He continued, "If that's not the feeling, we lost the support of the Afghan people, and also make the neighboring countries of interest a lot more bolder to interfere in Afghanistan."
President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus, who has replaced Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, have said they would begin withdrawal in July 2011 depending on conditions on the ground.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, questioned the wisdom of a firm deadline to start withdrawing forces.
"I'm all for dates for withdrawal, but that's after the strategy succeeds, not before," said McCain, the Republican presidential candidate in 2008 who was in Afghanistan for the Fourth of July weekend.
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For now, McCain described the strategy as one that hasn't gone as well as hoped.
"The president should state unequivocally that we will leave when we have succeeded," he said. "If you tell the enemy that you're leaving on a date certain, unequivocally, then that enemy will wait until you leave."
McCain's GOP colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, echoed those thoughts in a separate interview from Afghanistan broadcast on the CBS program "Face the Nation."
"If you send a signal to your enemy you're going to leave at a certain date, they'll wait you out," Graham said. However, he expressed optimism that the counterinsurgency strategy now being led by Petraeus can show progress in turning over security to Afghan forces in some areas by July 2011.
"I do believe next summer we can have transition in certain parts of Afghanistan," Graham said. "Other parts will still need fighting and a firm commitment."
Overall, Graham said, he found morale on the ground "pretty good" as Petraeus assumed command of the mission.
His trip coincides with the visit to Afghanistan by Vice President Joe Biden, and Graham said Biden had assured him that any withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country would be "conditions-based" instead of launched purely for the sake of getting out without consideration for the status of the mission.
Graham joined McCain in urging Obama to clarify the conditions-based approach so that the nation's allies and enemies understand the U.S. commitment to the war.
Last week, some Democrats in Congress supported an amendment to a military spending bill that would have required Obama to give Congress a new intelligence report on Afghanistan by January and a plan for withdrawing troops by April.
If Obama fails to carry out his pledge to start bringing troops home by July 2011, Congress would need to approve additional funding for the war, the amendment said. The measure failed in a late-night vote after the White House threatened to veto the bill if it contained the amendment, but the language showed some restlessness among Democrats about the war strategy.

 

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Pakistan has not been a faithful ally​

Dismissing American objections, Pakistan has signed an agreement to run a natural-gas pipeline from Iran, spreading glee among the mullahs in Tehran. Pakistani officials, including Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, offered low-key objections to the American complaints, but other Pakistanis loudly broadcast their disdain for the United States.

Former Punjab Governor Shahid Hamid called the American concern "an insult to our independence and sovereignty," while former Foreign Minister Mian Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri said "we should not compromise at all as far as our basic interests are concerned."

So much for cooperation from our "ally," recipient of billions of dollars in American aid every year. How many ways can the Pakistanis stab us in the back? As an example, for many months now they have blithely refused to grant visas to several hundred American diplomatic and military officials assigned to work there. Richard Holbrooke, Washington's special envoy to the region, warned Pakistan in June that the pipeline from Iran might conflict with American law. Congress was working on new American sanctions against Iran to complement United Nations sanctions just passed and additional European Union rules under discussion at the same time.

"We cautioned the Pakistanis to try to see what the legislation is before deciding how to proceed because it would be a disaster" if "we had a situation develop where an agreement was reached, which then triggered something under the law." In other words, Holbrooke was trying to avoid the nightmare that would ensue if the new sanctions law snared Pakistan because of its choice to buy gas from Iran. David Lipton, special assistant to President Obama, told Pakistan's leaders last month that the United States would find other sources of natural gas if the nation canceled its Iran deal. Tehran is promising to supply 742 million cubic feet of natural gas every day. What's more, during a recent visit to Islamabad, Holbrooke promised $11.1 million in additional humanitarian aid on top of $174 million in humanitarian assistance already supplied since Jan. 1. But that was to no avail. On June 23, Foreign Minister Qureshi said simply: Pakistan is "not bound to follow these sanctions."

Pakistan seems to believe it is "not bound" to do anything it finds inconvenient or uncomfortable. As witness, consider how Syed Kamal, who recently completed his term as mayor of Karachi, described the behavior of Sen. Israr Ullah Zehri. He "buries five women alive, and has got the cheek to come on TV and tell the world, 'Look, you don't have to worry about it because this is our custom,' " Kamal told me. After that, "not surprisingly, he was appointed as federal minister of postal services."

At the same time, the Pakistani government is back-dealing with the Taliban and al Qaeda, taking billions from the United States to fight the extremists while working with the Afghan government to make a deal with some of the most radical branches of both sects, bringing pointed complaints from President Obama and other senior American officials this week.

In recent days, the heads of Pakistan's army and intelligence service have been making secret trips to Kabul to meet with Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's corrupt and inept president. These Pakistani officers have been coddling him, telling Karzai the Americans cannot win in Afghanistan, so he should consider Pakistan his true ally. Karzai's reaction to that is not known, but his aides have been saying for weeks that the president has "lost faith" in the United States. Still, Karzai must be smart enough to realize that listening to Pakistan's smarmy approach is like letting the fox into the hen house. Wasn't it Pakistan that happily supported the Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001? Don't Pakistanis openly believe that the Taliban remain reliable allies in their unending fight with India? And what use would Pakistan have for Karzai once the Americans are gone? Right now, Pakistan is sidling up to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban leader who runs a militant network, partners of al Qaeda, that is responsible for a significant part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. The generals in Islamabad are Haqqani's ally, even as his men kill Americans. So, while we pay Pakistan to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban, behind our backs the generals are cutting deals with both groups undermining the American war effort in Afghanistan.

How Byzantine. But what else should we expect from the Pakistanis? After all, the city of Byzantium, capital of the ancient empire famous for complex, underhanded perfidy, was renamed in 1930. After several incarnations, it was named Islamabad.

 

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Pakistan weighs up chances in post-McChrystal era

Reliable witnesses in Waziristan say in recent months they have seen truckloads of armed Punjabi Taliban - known for their spectacular attacks on Pakistani military targets - pass through dozens of security checkpoints every day to reach the border towns.

They claim having seen both Punjabi and local militants using military transport to move in the border areas.

 

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Dalrymple again:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/01/afghanistan-pakistan-proxy-war-with-india

It is a measure of how little the west still understands the conflict in Afghanistan that news of Saleh's sacking last month merited so much less attention than last week's sacking of General Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal's departure reflects no important alteration in strategy, but the sacking of Saleh gave notice of a major and ominous change of direction by Karzai. As Bruce Riedel, Obama's Afpak adviser, said when the news broke: "Karzai's decision to sack Saleh and [Hanif] Atmar [the head of the interior ministry] has worried me more than any other development, because it means that Karzai is already planning for a post-American Afghanistan."

 

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US Army study :

L-e-T

pdf ~ 117 pages

A discussion of the foundation of Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT), the development of its modus operandi, and engages in an investigation of LeT's activities in India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir region are discussed. Further, LeT's fundraising methods are touched upon, and LeT's relationships with regional state and nonstate actors such as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company are analyzed. Also, the impact that these developments have on domestic Islamist terrorism in India are addressed. The author argues that although LeT has been a vital component of Islamabad's regional strategy in the past, the organization has grown beyond the control of its former patron, is largely self-sufficient and operates independently of the political process, and has expanded its agenda well beyond Kashmir. These developments challenge the long-held notion that irregulars can be sustainably used to achieve limited objectives in an asymmetric conflict and should serve as a clear warning to other state sponsors of terrorism. However, contrary to many analyses, LeT is not likely to sacrifice its independence and come under Al-Qaeda's umbrella. Rather, LeT will continue to evolve into a distinctive, South Asia-centric terrorist actor in its own right while still receiving aid from fringe elements in Pakistan's security and intelligence apparatus and elsewhere. This will not only allow LeT to continue to plan future Mumbai-style terrorist attacks in India from safe havens in Pakistan, but will also allow LeT to guide and assist the predominantly indigenous Indian Mujahideen (IM).

 

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July 2011 deadline was a mistake: Senator Joe Lieberman

"On balance, I think it was a mistake, because it sent a message to the Afghans, to the Taliban, to people in the neighbourhood that we're going to leave, regardless. And that's not the fact," Lieberman told the Fox News.

 

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PBS Frontline: Behind Taleban Lines

Netflix link

This past fall, veteran Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi negotiated extraordinary access to a militant cell in northern Afghanistan with longtime ties to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. For 10 days, Quraishi would live among the hard-core fighters of Hezb-i-Islami's "Central Group" as they attempt to bomb a highway that has become a vital new coalition supply route.

"I was thinking that I'm going to meet a group of Taliban," Quraishi tells FRONTLINE. "I was thinking, this is the time which I came myself to enemy. I was thinking they might not let me go back."

In Behind Taliban Lines, FRONTLINE provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the growing insurgency in Afghanistan -- a first-ever film among these militants as they travel from village to village, picking up support and weapons, imposing sharia law and collecting taxes as they open up a new battlefront in Afghanistan's northern provinces.

"We have around 3,000 to 4,000 Hezb-i-Islami men in the north," a commander named Kalaqub tells Quraishi."People come to us from all over Afghanistan. "¦ They come from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan. We get special mujahids from abroad, but we're not allowed to talk about them." Quraishi believes that these special mujahids are mainly Arabs from Yemen and Saudi Arabia trained by Al Qaeda.

Indeed, as the men of Central Group proceed toward their target, Quraishi meets a young bomb maker from Uzbekistan who says he was trained by Al Qaeda.

"America started this war in Afghanistan so that European countries like England and America would be safe," he tells Quraishi. "But they should know that once the mujahideen conquer Afghanistan, "¦ we'll aim for the Middle East and Europe."

Quraishi films the men of Central Group building the IEDs, the improvised explosive devices -- stuffing the shells with gunpowder, wiring the blast cap -- and talking about the damage they hope to inflict: "This will pop out the eyes of the Americans," one says. "The fire, smoke and debris will cover 50 to 100 square meters." After a suspenseful night spent waiting in the field, the insurgents' plan is ultimately foiled when the bombs fail to detonate.

Quraishi manages to interview the man in charge of some 4,000 Hezb-i-Islami fighters in the north. His name is Cmdr. Mirwais, a former millionaire businessman who turned to jihad after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. "Jihad has become a duty for all the Afghan nation because the foreign and non-believer countries have attacked us," Mirwais says. "They're getting rid of our religious and cultural values in Afghanistan. They've increased obscenity and want to force Western democracy on our country."

It was Cmdr. Mirwais who first invited Quraishi to live among the insurgents as a guest, following the journalist's contact with a Taliban intermediary late last summer. And, after some 10 days of filming, it was Cmdr. Mirwais who Quraishi says may have helped save his life.

"Mirwais took my hand; he took me aside," Quraishi says."He said: 'Brother, I invited you here as a guest. I know your plan is to be here for 14 days, but I'm really sorry.'" Two men had arrived from Pakistan -- likely from Hezb-i-Islami and Al Qaeda -- and they demanded to know why an outsider had been allowed in to film among the fighters. "'They keep telling me that you are a spy and we have to behead you.'"

Quraishi escapes and decides to revisit the place on the highway where he'd witnessed the insurgents planting their roadside bombs. In a telling scene near the end of the film, the local Afghan police seem not to appreciate -- or even to acknowledge -- the extent of the insurgent threat in the north. "Everything's fine," the police chief says. "There's no problem. They've caused some problems, but everything's fine in this area near the main road. It's not a problem."

 

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Stanley McChrystal goes
After McChrystal​

Barack Obama has sacked his commander in Afghanistan. But the real worry is that the war is being lost

THE national security adviser of the world's greatest superpower is a "clown", its vice-president a nobody and its president "uncomfortable and intimidated". With those words the officers around General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, engulfed America in a storm as damaging to its war effort as any Taliban raid. America rightly sets great store by civilian control of its armed forces and on June 23rd a distinctly unintimidated President Barack Obama made General McChrystal pay for his insubordination with his job. But presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan.

Mr Obama had every reason to cashier General McChrystal. Officers, including his predecessor, have gone for less. Not to act could have left the president looking weak. And yet it was a heavy price to pay. Nothing could cheer the Taliban more than seeing General McChrystal out on his ear. He is a master of counterinsurgency (COIN), he was one of the few Americans who could work with President Hamid Karzai and his hand-picked commanding officers are in charge of a forthcoming operation in Kandahar that will probably determine the course of the campaign (see article). To Mr Obama's credit, his place has been filled by General David Petraeus, the star of the war in Iraq and the man who wrote the manual on COIN. Even so, the dismissal leaves America's campaign pitched on the edge of failure.

Mr Obama once described the fighting in Afghanistan as "a war of necessity". The president must now put necessity aside and pose two fundamental questions. Can the American-led coalition still win in Afghanistan? And if so, how?

Kabul fighting

This is a terrible moment for the generals to fall out with the politicians. In June Afghanistan surpassed Vietnam to become, by some measures, the longest campaign in America's history. More than 1,000 of its men and women have been killed and almost 6,000 injured. Yet the Taliban are rampant, assassinating tribal leaders and intimidating their people. A survey in 120 districts racked by insurgency, a third of Afghanistan's total, found little popular support for Mr Karzai. Over a third of their inhabitants backed the insurgents.

Since November, when Mr Obama promised 30,000 more of his country's soldiers to the campaign, little has gone right. General McChrystal's plan was for a "surge" that would seize the initiative from the Taliban and create the scope for Afghanistan's government, backed by its army and police, to take charge. In practice that has not happened. Marja, a farming district in Helmand, was supposed to show how COIN would win over the people and send the Taliban packing. General McChrystal himself now calls Marja a "bleeding ulcer". Mr Karzai's supposedly corrupt half-brother was meant to go, but he remains in charge in Kandahar. Fanciful Pentagon talk of Afghanistan's huge mineral wealth smacks of desperation. America has, perhaps, until the end of the year to show that COIN can work.

The charitable view is that frustration lay behind the reckless insults dished out by General McChrystal and his team in front of a journalist from Rolling Stone. COIN manuals stress the importance of "unity of effort": damning the idiots back in Washington does not help. But if the generals have not always done well by the politicians, the politicians have far more often let down the generals. George Bush and his defence chiefs neglected the war in Afghanistan while they devoted themselves to bungling the war in Iraq. Mr Obama and his advisers, at odds over strategy, dithered over allocating troops and, far worse, set a date for them to start their withdrawal (see Lexington).

This infighting and hesitancy signal a lack of commitment that has drowned out Mr Obama's warlike rhetoric. That has blighted the war's chances of success. Too few Afghans and Pakistanis have thrown in their lot with the West, because too many think America has no stomach for the fight.

Were so much not at stake, it would be tempting to give up and call the troops home. Yet, although Western leaders have done a poor job at explaining the war in Afghanistan to their voters, a defeat there would be a disaster. The narrow aim of denying al-Qaeda a haven, already frustrated by the terrorists' scope to lodge in unruly parts of northern Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, would become impossible to achieve. A Western withdrawal would leave Afghanistan vulnerable to a civil war that might suck in the local powers, including Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia. Sooner or later, the poison would end up harming America too: it always does. Defeat in Afghanistan would mark a humiliation for the West, and for NATO, that would give succour to its foes in the world. And do not forget the Afghan people. Having invaded their country, the West has a duty to return it to them in a half-decent state.

It would be idle to harbour such dreams if they were unattainable. Yet, grim as it is, the violence in Afghanistan even now pales beside Iraq at its worst. In the pit of that conflict tens of thousands of people were dying each year, at least ten times more than in Afghanistan today. The ranks of the Afghan army and police force are slowly filling with recruits. There are reasons to think that many Afghans would like to be rid of the Taliban, if only they could believe in an alternative.


Still the right plan

That is where the appointment of General Petraeus comes in. A losing cause does not automatically have to become a lost one: Iraq showed that. The operation in Marja went badly, but putting down an insurgency needs time and lots of troops, preferably local ones. The real test will come in Kandahar. Worryingly, one of General McChrystal's last acts was to postpone the operation there until the autumn, amid signs that local people were not yet ready to back it. Even so, Mr Obama owes it to the West and to the Afghan people to determine whether COIN can in fact succeed under his best general. The Afghan war may yet end in an ignominious retreat. But nobody should welcome such an outcome.

 

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Afghanistan urges Pakistan to act against terror groups​

KABUL: Afghanistan's national security adviser has called on the Pakistani government to "take serious measures" against militant groups launching attacks on Afghan targets from secure havens inside Pakistan.
Rangin Dadfar Spanta spoke to AFP in an interview a week after the Al-Jazeera television network said Afghan President Hamid Karzai had met the man who runs the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in talks mediated by Pakistan.

Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban all deny any such meeting.

Spanta's comments signal an about-turn by the Afghan government after months of overtures to Islamabad in efforts to prompt Pakistan to deal with militant groups, including Al-Qaeda and the Taliban based along the Afghan border.

Spanta told AFP on Monday that Afghanistan had "tremendous evidence" that Pakistani authorities allowed Al-Qaeda and other terror organisations to operate on the country's soil and had presented it to Islamabad "many times".

Islamabad had failed to act against the groups based in Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border, he told AFP.

"My expectation is that Pakistan after nine years - because theoretically Pakistan is part of the anti-terror alliance - they have to begin to take some serious measures against terrorism," he said.

"They have to hand over the leadership of the terrorist groups, they have to give a list of the people they have arrested and are holding in the detention centres in Pakistan.

"We have evidence that the terrorists from Pakistan are involved in daily attacks against our people and international 'jihadi' groups are active here. They have their base and sanctuaries behind our border and this is a serious problem.

"We have to address the menace of terrorism," Spanta said.

Karzai had been seen as trying to reach an arrangement with Pakistan - possibly including a power-sharing deal with the Taliban - that would help bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year.

This was also seen as a way of giving Pakistan a stake in Afghanistan's future, despite broad opposition among the Afghan politicians and public.

Senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials had visited Kabul in recent months on goodwill visits, Spanta said.

"I hope we can begin a constructive dialogue with a serious agenda during the next meeting in Islamabad, or in Kabul... maybe next month," he said.

Spanta said Pakistan had failed to act against Al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban leadership known as the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, the minor Hekmatyar group, Hizb-u-Tahrir, as well as "Uzbek and Chechen terrorist groups".

"It is not a particular secret that the terrorists have sanctuaries in Pakistan, that they have training centres, that they have the possibility to come to Afghanistan, attack us and go back," said Spanta.

He denied that Karzai had met Sirajuddin Haqqani, who runs the Haqqani network which often launches attacks in Afghanistan, or the Taliban, "through mediation of Pakistan forces or otherwise".

Pakistani security officials indicated last month, however, that they were planning to help broker peace efforts in Afghanistan by acting as a bridge between the Kabul government and powerful Haqqani network.

 

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AfPak Behind the Lines: Iran in Afghanistan and Pakistan​

This week's installment of Behind the Lines covers Iran's role in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Hillary Mann Leverett, a former National Security Council official and co-author of The Race for Iran.

1. In late May, then-top commander General Stanley McChrystal said there is "clear evidence of Iranian activity" in training and providing weaponry to the Taliban in Afghanistan. What are Iran's core interests in Afghanistan, and how have they evolved in the last nine years? How do those complement or work against what the U.S. and NATO are trying to achieve there?

Iran has a strategic stake in Afghanistan that has not changed in the last nine years. Tehran's overriding interest is to prevent Afghanistan (with its long and lawless border with Iran) from being used as a platform from which to attack or undermine the Islamic Republic or to weaken Iran's standing as a regional power.

To prevent Afghanistan from being used as an anti-Iranian platform, the Islamic Republic has worked, over many years, to form relationships with Afghan players who could keep Iran's Afghan enemies (principally the Taliban but also other anti-Shiite and anti-Persian groups) and their external supporters (principally Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two of Iran's most important regional antagonists) in check. To this end, Iran has worked to strengthen and unite Afghanistan's Shiite Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities (which together comprise about 45 percent of the population) as a counterweight to anti-Iranian, pro-Saudi, and pro-Pakistani elements among Afghan Pashtuns (roughly 42 percent of the population). The Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities were, of course, the core of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban during the 1990s, and were supported by India and Russia as well as Iran.

In contrast to Iraq, where Shia are a clear majority of the population and Shiite groups linked to Tehran are the most important political forces in the country, Iran knows from bitter experience that the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking communities provide, at best, inadequate protection for Iranian interests in Afghanistan, because they cannot govern the country in a way that keeps it relatively stable and minimizes Pakistani and Saudi influence. So, alongside its alliances with the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking groups, Iran has also cultivated ties to some Pashtun elements in Afghanistan and supported the country's Pashtun President, Hamid Karzai.

As part of its cultivation of ties to Pashtun elements, Iran has almost certainly reached out to some Taliban factions. But I would wager a substantial sum that America's "ally" Pakistan is providing vastly more support to the Afghan Taliban than anything the Islamic Republic might be doing. And Tehran remains strongly opposed to the Taliban's resurgence as a major force in Afghan politics, for two reasons. First, the Taliban have traditionally persecuted Iran's Afghan allies -- especially the Shia Hazara -- and have even murdered Iranian diplomats. Second, Tehran sees the Taliban as a pawn for the expansion of Pakistani and Saudi influence in Afghanistan.

As Tehran pursues this strategy of multiple alliances within Afghanistan, it must also assess the evolving role of the United States there and the implications of the U.S. posture toward Iran for Iran's Afghanistan policy. If the United States and NATO could convince Iran that they want an independent and stable Afghanistan that would be friendly to Iran, then U.S./NATO and Iranian strategies and tactics could complement each other very constructively. (This was very much the case in the months following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, when I was one of a small number of U.S. officials engaged in ongoing discussions with Iranian counterparts about how to deal with Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, and U.S. and Iranian policies regarding these issues were rather closely coordinated.)

But, if Tehran perceives Washington as hostile to its interests -- which, unfortunately, is currently the case, given the Obama administration's drive to impose sanctions and continued use of covert operations to undermine the Islamic Republic -- then Iranian policymakers will regard the United States, along with America's Pakistani and Saudi allies, as part of the complex of anti-Iranian external players that Iran needs to balance against in Afghanistan. In this context, Iran has a strong interest in preventing U.S. troops in Afghanistan from being used to attack Iran directly, used as covert operatives to undermine the Iranian government, or used to strengthen Iran's regional rivals.

2. What is Iran's likely reaction to the expected U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan, scheduled to begin in July 2011? How might Iran react if the Taliban's influence across Afghanistan grew, particularly in Herat and other border provinces?

In contrast to the United States, which seems at least to be looking for a viable exit strategy from Afghanistan, there is no exit strategy for Iran. Iran publicly calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, partly because U.S. forces there could be used against Iran. But Tehran also calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan because Iranian policymakers believe that the extended U.S. presence there is seen by much of the population as an occupation and that it is this occupation which is fueling an increasingly fierce cycle of violence and instability. From Tehran's perspective, this cycle of violence and instability empowers Iran's Afghan adversaries, principally the Taliban, and their external backers, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, both of which are regional rivals to the Islamic Republic.

For an Iranian standpoint, the most constructive American strategy would have been for the United States to begin a gradual but steady withdrawal of troops a few years ago when that could have helped shape a political settlement based on power sharing among all of Afghanistan's major constituencies. From an Iranian perspective, such a settlement could have included the Pashtun, though, at least at the time, not necessarily the Taliban, and would have given Iran's Afghan allies -- who, at the time, were also America's allies -- the upper hand. Today, Iran is concerned that, as America belatedly positions itself to begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan next year, the Obama administration still has no coherent strategy regarding President Karzai's drive for a political deal -- a deal which, because of mistakes made by Washington, must now include the Taliban and its chief external backers, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

In the political and security vacuum that is today's Afghanistan, Karzai's effort to engage the Taliban is generating deep unease among Iran's allies in Afghanistan's Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities. Already, the leadership of these non-Pashtun communities -- who also dominate the upper echelons of the Afghan military -- are organizing to resist, by force, any serious attempt at power-sharing between Karzai's government and the Taliban. If the Taliban's political influence across Afghanistan continues to grow -- particularly in an environment conditioned by what Tehran sees as America's strategic and tactical incompetence -- Iran will support its Afghan allies as they "push back" against a resurgent Taliban.

3. It's been reported that Pakistan is seeking to increase its leverage in Afghan reconciliation talks. What might Iran's reaction be to an increase in Pakistani influence in Afghanistan?

Iran is concerned that the United States' interest in fostering sufficient stability in Afghanistan for long enough to allow U.S. troops to begin leaving next year will lead Washington to drop the "red lines" it has imposed on Taliban participation in a political process. Iran is concerned that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia will be able to use the Taliban's unchecked involvement in a power-sharing arrangement as a proxy to expand their influence in Afghanistan at Tehran's expense and to threaten the Islamic Republic.

Under these circumstances, Iran will intensify its support for key players among the Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek groups, just as it did during the civil war that broke out after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and after the Taliban took power in Kabul in 1996. These dynamics raise the risks of renewed civil war in Afghanistan -- a civil war that would simultaneously be a proxy war among Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, the country's most powerful external players. These were precisely the conditions under which al-Qaeda found sanctuary and thrived in Afghanistan during the 1990s.

4. How would the 'grand bargain' between the U.S. and Iran affect stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Post-conflict stabilization in Afghanistan requires recognizing and working with the integral connections between Afghanistan's internal balance of power and the broader balance of power among major states in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia. And that means cooperation with Iran is essential to stabilizing Afghanistan and, by extension, Pakistan.

Following 9/11, Iran worked with the United States on the short-term project of overthrowing the Taliban -- but with the long-term goal of prompting Washington to reconsider its hostile posture toward the Islamic Republic. In effect, the Iranians hoped that cooperation with the United States would facilitate a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain" -- but this approach did not work, largely because of American resistance to a broader opening to Iran.

Under current circumstances, Iran would need to be persuaded to cooperate once again with the United States in Afghanistan -- persuaded, in particular, that power-sharing could be done in a manner that addressed Tehran's longstanding concerns about the Taliban, the regional balance of power, and U.S. intentions toward the Islamic Republic. This cannot be done while Washington is pursuing sanctions against Iran -- however feckless they may be -- and offering progressively less veiled support for regime change in Tehran. Today, cooperation with Iran on post-conflict stabilization in Afghanistan has to be embedded in a broader strategic understanding between the United States and the Islamic Republic -- what my husband, Flynt Leverett, and I have described as a U.S.-Iranian "grand bargain".

So, in other words, a U.S.-Iranian grand bargain has become essential to avoiding something close to strategic failure in Afghanistan. The Islamic Republic will, as I described, continue supporting its longstanding Afghan allies in resisting a Taliban onslaught backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. But, in the absence of a broader strategic understanding, those efforts will be seen, in Washington, and elsewhere, as undermining whatever political arrangements the Karzai government has reached with the Taliban. And that will fuel a regional proxy conflict with Afghanistan as the main battlefield, and with the United States drawn increasingly into supporting Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. That is a position the United States has been in before. We should not want to go there again.

 

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A Smart Pashtun Play​

Why Washington should back Karzai.
While the U.S. struggles to get its act together in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, widely ridiculed as corrupt and ineffectual, is consolidating his power and moving toward a peace deal with the Taliban. The U.S. is trying to stop him, but Karzai's bold moves could help the U.S. and NATO find a graceful way out of the deepening Afghan quagmire.
Internally, Karzai is seeking to win over his fellow Pashtuns—the biggest ethnic bloc in the country—who had been largely excluded from key security posts, which were held by U.S. protégés representing the Tajik ethnic minority. Three weeks ago Karzai replaced his Tajik intelligence czar, Amrullah Saleh—an outspoken opponent of his outreach to the Taliban—with a respected Pashtun in the intelligence hierarchy, Ibrahim Spinzada. Now, in a little-noticed move, he has promoted two Pashtun generals, Shir Karimi and Mohammed Akram, to the pivotal posts of chief and deputy chief of staff of the Army, both posts previously held by Tajiks.
Externally, Karzai is carrying on an exploratory dialogue with Pakistan's Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has come to see him twice recently in Kabul to explore a peace settlement with the Taliban, which has close ties to Islamabad's intelligence agencies. Since the Taliban's leaders and fighters are all Pashtuns, and its propaganda depicts Karzai as a U.S.-Tajik puppet, his peace initiative helps him consolidate Pashtun support.Washington is alarmed by the terms of the peace deal now being explored. Former Pakistan foreign secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan suggested recently what that agreement might look like, observing that the Taliban is entrenched in certain key Pashtun provinces, such as Khost and Paktia, "where they should be accommodated." Significantly, he made no mention of power-sharing in Kabul and dismissed the possibility of another nationwide takeover.
If it is the price for his continuance as president, Karzai might be prepared to accept Taliban control over some of its local strongholds, perhaps as part of broader constitutional reforms strengthening provincial autonomy. But the U.S. should not object to such a deal, provided that the Taliban and its Islamabad backers agree to safeguards barring the use of these provinces as bases for international terrorist activity. What matters most to the U.S. is barring or limiting Taliban power-sharing in Kabul, and ceding power to the Taliban in some local strongholds might be necessary to achieve this goal.
For a variety of reasons, Washington has ignored the historic Pashtun dominance in Afghanistan. Pashtun kings ruled Afghanistan from its inception in 1747 until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1973. Today the Pashtuns make up an estimated 44 percent of a population of 28 million. The Tajiks make up 27 percent. Yet Tajiks have held the levers of power in Kabul because they were in the right place at the right time during the confused months leading up to the U.S. ouster of the Taliban government that ruled from 1996 until 2001. When victorious U.S. forces marched into Kabul, the Northern Alliance—a Tajik-dominated, anti-Taliban Afghan militia—was there too, and with U.S. help, a clique of Tajik generals seized the key security posts in the new government.

Supporting Karzai's overtures to the Pashtuns would counter Taliban propaganda that the U.S. doesn't care about the nation's largest ethnic group. But one risk of Karzai's strategy is that it could lead to a Tajik counterattack. Strong American support for Karzai would be necessary to keep the Tajiks in check. That would also avoid the appearance that America is opposing Pashtun interests again, which would only strengthen the Taliban's position in the insurgency and in the peace process that appears likely to unfold. U.S. cooperation with Karzai is also necessary because if he and his Pakistani interlocutors can come up with a formula for peace, Taliban leaders will still insist on a U.S.-NATO timetable for withdrawal as a precondition for definitive negotiations. Ironically, when and if a timetable is announced, the Taliban's emotive appeal as the spearhead of opposition to a foreign occupation will be deflated. As Howard Hart, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, told Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, "the very presence of our forces is the problem. The more troops we put in, the greater the opposition."

 

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Pakistan's catch 22​

BY SAMEER LALWANI Monday, March 15, 2010 - 12:17 PM Share

For years, the United States has miscalculated Pakistani strategic interests in Afghanistan, which continues to involve tactical and operational support for some sections of the Taliban.

It is now becoming clearer how Pakistani interests are driven not only by 'strategic depth' -- military doctrine oriented towards India -- but also by concerns of regional encirclement and hedging against expected western withdrawal.

In part due to western misconceptions of Pakistani interests, threat-perceptions and capacities, Pakistan has possessed far more bargaining power in its relationships with the US and Afghanistan than conventional estimates of relative power predict. In the near-term, Pakistan has significant leverage controlling routes for most NATO supply lines, commanding influence over various militant networks, and signalling greater resolve in its commitments. But this asymmetric leverage may soon erode.

Part of strategic assessment is projecting a range of trends, even if they currently seem unlikely. If Pakistani leaders continue to ignore emerging trends in the Central Asian and northern Afghan theatre and fail to update their beliefs and bargaining strategies, particularly with the U.S. and NATO forces, they risk overplaying their hand. The irony is that the current Pakistani strategy that hedges on militant ties may eventually lead to the very isolation and encirclement it has sought to avoid.

Pakistan has not paid enough attention to the present and future economic shifts in Afghanistan that could potentially shake up the regional balance of power. Afghanistan has long depended on its southern neighbour for its primary source of trade, transport and communications. Its ties and border with China were narrow, its links to its Central Asian cousins (Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) were obstructed by the Soviet Iron Curtain, and despite strong cultural ties to Iran, Afghanistan's economic insignificance and series of hostile governments inhibited this relationship.

As a result of Afghanistan's isolation, Pakistan has commanded tremendous political and economic influence over Afghanistan, and, by consequence, seemingly unfettered leverage over the U.S./NATO occupation since 2001. But emerging economic trends can precipitate shifts in power, alliances and geopolitical leverage.

The first real shift is China's entrance onto the scene. China's $3 billion investment in Afghanistan's Anyak copper mine will require the construction of a new railroad between Afghanistan and China's Xinjiang province and an electricity station. Once online, investments in other critical resources like coal, iron, aluminium and marble will rise and induce even more trade linkages between the two countries. This is even without prospecting for other game-changing resources like oil and gas that have long been suspected to be in abundance in Afghanistan.

Second, northern Afghanistan's links to Central Asia will continue to deepen. Thanks to an Indian-constructed bridge in 2007 linking Afghanistan and Tajikistan, trade through that route increased sevenfold within a year and Afghan land values along that route shot up dramatically. Not to be outdone, Russia too has offered to facilitate a rail transit corridor linking Europe to Afghanistan via Uzbekistan. Increasing Afghan involvement in Central Asia can spin off and spill over, positioning it to capitalise on its natural endowments and become the regional hub of water resources, energy distribution and hydroelectric power.

Third, Afghanistan is developing an alternative southern route to the Arabian Sea. While in the past, landlocked Afghanistan depended on Pakistan to transport its goods through the port of Karachi, Indian completion in 2008 of the 135-mile road from Nimroz province to Iran's Chahbahar port provides an efficient transport corridor for goods between Central Asia and the Persian Gulf.

With the Khyber Pass under constant attack, this insurgent-free route could provide an alternative for supplying western troops with non-lethal goods and aid to the Afghan government. This would cost Pakistan economically as well as geopolitically since currently 75 per cent of non-lethal supplies are transported through the port of Karachi. If the U.S. is able to reopen its base in Uzbekistan as planned, Pakistan's influence will erode even further.

Not all Afghan economic trends are bypassing Pakistan. Projects to build high-transmission power lines and natural gas pipelines connecting South to Central Asia are being funded. But the violent instability of southern Afghanistan and Pakistani tribal areas threatens these projects by driving up transaction costs and sowing distrust. If Pakistan cannot demonstrably control these regions and contain militants, other regional integration paths will attract states and investors, eventually locking in with repeated use, and locking out Pakistan.

Exclusion from the regional economic future is hardly the worst part. China's rising long-term investments in Afghanistan and expanding influence will make it increasingly intolerant of Pakistani-supported Taliban elements, especially those that prove disruptive to its economic interests or foment and support Uighur militancy in Xinjiang, as the Taliban did in the 1990s. This could cost Pakistan an arms supplier, a great-power patron and its wedge strategy with the United States.

The most disturbing consequence for Pakistan is that these economic trends are creating conditions for a de facto partitioned Afghan state. The more stable north and west -- with international linkages, economic growth and acceptance of the Afghan central government and western troop presence -- can emerge self-sufficient and defensible while pockets of insurgency engulf the south and east.

Pakistan's support for certain Taliban elements that underwrite this territorial partition could result in a Pakhtun rump state that galvanises nationalist separatism in Pakistan's tribal frontier. Rather than providing a zone for strategic depth, this "blowback" scenario could redirect militant networks against the Pakistan state, thus compounding its security dilemmas, overstretched military and economic fragilities.

Shortsighted Pakistani strategy may eventually result in a Pakistan engulfed in militant fires while surrounded by unfriendly states after years of Pakistani complicity with militant externalities. In other words, regional economic and political trends shaped by Pakistani policy could lead to the very isolation and encirclement it most fears.

For these reasons, as Gen. Kayani has recently intimated, Pakistan needs to begin recalibrating its position on Afghanistan, before it is too late. This requires a serious reappraisal of its militant ties, credible Pakistan buy-in that marries its own geo-strategic interests with Afghan and regional stability, and real accommodation of some U.S. and NATO interests.

 

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A de facto partition for Afghanistan​

By: Robert D. Blackwill
July 7, 2010 04:53 AM EDT

The Obama administration's counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan seems headed for failure. Given the alternatives, de facto partition of Afghanistan is the best policy option available to the United States and its allies.

After the administration's December Afghanistan review, the U.S. polity should stop talking about timelines and exit strategies and accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of its historic stronghold in the Pashtun south. But Washington could ensure that north and west Afghanistan do not succumb to jihadi extremism, using U.S. air power and special forces along with the Afghan army and like-minded nations.

Enthusiasts for the administration's counterinsurgency strategy, or COIN, are likely to reject this way forward in Afghanistan. They will rightly point out the many complexities in implementing de facto partition.

De facto partition is clearly not the best outcome one can imagine for the United States in Afghanistan. But it is now the best outcome that Washington can achieve consistent with vital national interests and U.S. domestic politics.

There are many reasons for this.

Even if President Barack Obama adds a year or two to his timeline for major progress, the COIN strategy appears unlikely to succeed. Given the number of U.S. combat forces now fighting, the Taliban cannot be sufficiently weakened in Pashtun Afghanistan to drive it to the negotiating table on any reasonable timeline. True, the Afghan Pashtun are not a unified group. But they do agree on opposing foreign occupation and wanting Pashtun supremacy.

"We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation," CIA Director Leon Panetta said on June 27, "where they would surrender their arms, where they would denounce Al Qaeda, where they would really try to become part of that society. ... Unless they're convinced the United States is going to win and that they are going to be defeated, I think it is very difficult to proceed with a reconciliation that is going to be meaningful."

With an occupying army largely ignorant of local history, tribal structures, language, customs, politics and values, the United States cannot, through social engineering, win over, in the foreseeable future, sufficient numbers of the Afghan Pashtun on whom COIN depends.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's deeply corrupt government — as unpopular as the Taliban — shows no sign of improvement, and Afghanistan has no history of a robust central government. Allied efforts to substitute Western nation building for Afghan nation building will continue to fall short. The Afghanistan National Army is not expected to be ready to vanquish the Taliban for many years, if ever.

Moreover, Pakistan's military and intelligence services, with their dominating optic of India as the enemy, have shown no willingness to end support for their longtime Afghan Taliban proxies — or accept a truly independent Afghanistan.

Decisively, the long-term COIN strategy and far shorter U.S. political timeline are incompatible.

The lack of progress in substantially pacifying Pashtun Afghanistan before Obama's July 2011 decision date will become increasingly clear — though proponents are sure to focus more on the costs of failure than on the likelihood of enduring success.

What then? If the COIN strategy cannot produce the desired results in the next 12 months, the administration has six broad policy alternatives:

1) It can stay the course with the failing COIN strategy or even "double down" on the U.S. commitment — despite the lack of intrinsic U.S. vital national interests tied to Afghanistan.

2) It can seek other ways to entice the Afghan Taliban to end violence and enter into a coalition government. Karzai now seems to be pursuing this, but his efforts cannot alter the grim realities on the Pashtun battlefield or the enemy's sustained intransigence. As Panetta says, why negotiate if you believe you are winning?

3) It can try to save parts of Pashtun Afghanistan, locale by locale — in an ink-blot strategy — fighting in some areas and acquiescing in others. But this would mean continuing major U.S. and NATO casualties in the south. It would also allow the Taliban — like the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese — to concentrate its forces, ink blot by ink blot, among a sympathetic or intimidated local Pashtun population. In any case, it only delays the inevitable when U.S. forces depart.

4) It can opt, as Vice President Joe Biden reportedly counseled before Obama's surge decision, not to fight the Taliban in the countryside. It can, instead, defend Kabul and Kandahar (epicenter of the Pashtuns and the Taliban's spiritual birthplace), intensify efforts to lure Taliban who can be bought with money or political power and work with local warlords rather than the central government.

5) It can initiate rapid withdrawal of all American forces, which would produce a strategic calamity for the United States. For it could lead, first, to all-out Afghan civil war; then, to the Taliban's probable conquest of the entire country. Since Afghanistan's neighbors would very likely be drawn in, it could ultimately destabilize the entire region.

It could also dramatically increase likelihood of the Islamic radicalization of Pakistan, which then calls into question the security of its nuclear arsenal. It might also weaken, if not rupture, the budding U.S.-India strategic partnership.

In addition, it would profoundly undermine NATO, perhaps persuading the alliance to never again go "out of area." It could trigger global support for Islamic extremist ideology and increased terrorism against liberal societies everywhere.

And worldwide, friends and adversaries alike would see it as a failure of international leadership and strategic resolve by an ever weaker United States, with destructive aftershocks for years to come.

6) Or it can adopt new U.S. policy goals for Afghanistan that, realistically, have a better chance of succeeding. This means accepting a de facto partition, enforced by U.S. and NATO air power and special forces, the Afghan army and international partners.

After years of faulty U.S. policy toward Afghanistan, there are no quick, easy and cost-free ways to escape the current deadly quagmire. But with all its problems, de facto partition offers the best available U.S. alternative to strategic defeat.

Announcing that we will retain an active combat role in Afghanistan for years to come and that we do not accept permanent Taliban control of the south, the United States and its allies could withdraw combat forces from most of Pashtun Afghanistan (about half the country), including Kandahar, over several months.

We would stop fighting and dying in the mountains, valleys and urban areas of southern Afghanistan — where 102 coalition soldiers were killed in June, the most in any month of the war and almost three times as many as a year ago. But we could be ready to assist tribal leaders on the Pashtun periphery, who may decide to resist the Taliban.

We would then focus on defending the northern and western regions — containing roughly 60 percent of the population. These areas, including Kabul, are not Pashtun dominated, and locals are largely sympathetic to U.S. efforts.

We would offer the Afghan Taliban an agreement in which neither side seeks to enlarge its territory — if the Taliban stopped supporting terrorism, a proposal that they would almost certainly reject.

We would then make it clear that we would rely heavily on U.S. air power and special forces to target any Al Qaeda base in Afghanistan, as well as Afghan Taliban leaders who aided them. We would also target Afghan Taliban encroachments across the de facto partition lines and terrorist sanctuaries along the Pakistan border.

Though careful analysis is needed, this might mean a longtime residual U.S. military force in Afghanistan of about 40,000 to 50,000 troops. We would enlist Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and supportive Pashtun in this endeavor, as well as our NATO allies, Russia, India, Iran, perhaps China, Central Asian nations and, one hopes, the U.N. Security Council.

We would continue accelerating our Afghan army training. We would devote nation-building efforts to the northern and western regions, where, unlike the Pashtun areas, people are not conflicted about accepting U.S. help and not systematically coerced by the Taliban.

There might even come a time when a stronger Afghan National Army could take control of the Pashtun areas.

Such fundamentally changed U.S. objectives and strategies regarding Afghanistan would dramatically reduce U.S. military causalities and thus minimize domestic political pressure for hasty withdrawal. It would substantially lower our budget-breaking military expenditures on Afghanistan — now nearly $7 billion per month.

This would also allow the U.S. Army and Marines to recover from years of fighting two ground wars; increase the likelihood that our coalition allies, with fewer casualties, might remain over the long term; encourage most of Afghanistan's neighbors to support an acceptable stabilization of the country and reduce Islamabad's ability to parlay the U.S. ground role in southern Afghanistan into tolerance for terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

In addition, it would allow Washington to focus on four issues more vital to its national interests: the rise of Chinese power, the Iranian nuclear weapons program, nuclear terrorism and the future of Iraq.

There are certainly problems with this approach:

The Taliban could trumpet victory or not accept a sustained status quo and continually test our resolve. It is likely that lower-level violence would persist in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, especially in the south. Pashtun Afghanistan could again become a hotbed of international terrorism, a dangerous outcome that probably could only be avoided by U.S. combat forces fighting there for years — and, in any case, the current Al Qaeda epicenter is in Pakistan.

In the context of de facto partition, the sky over Pashtun Afghanistan would be dark with manned and unmanned coalition aircraft — targeting not only terrorists but, as necessary, the new Taliban government in all its dimensions. Taliban civil officials — like governors, mayors, judges and tax collectors — would wake up every morning not knowing if they would survive the day in their offices, while involved in daily activities or at home at night.

But there would be no mountain caves in which they could hide and, at the same time, do their jobs. Over time, that could produce some degree of deterrence against Taliban support for terrorism.

Pakistan would likely oppose de facto partition. Managing Islamabad's reaction would be no easy task — not least because the Pakistan military expects a strategic gain once the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan.

Indeed, Islamabad might need to be persuaded to concentrate, with the United States, on defeating the Pakistan Taliban and containing the Afghan Taliban to avoid momentum toward a fracturing of the Pakistan state.

There might be potential pockets of fifth column Pashtun in the north and west. Karzai and his associates would almost certainly resist partition — and might not remain in power. Fearing a return of Pakistan dominance in Afghanistan, India would likely encourage Washington to continue ground combat in the south for many years to come — and would have to be told that was not in the cards.

Human rights in the Taliban-controlled areas would also probably be abysmal, including for minorities.

Putting together a coalition of like-minded nations to implement this strategy would be a daunting diplomatic challenge — not least with Tehran.

But even with all the challenges, it is better to accept defacto partition sooner rather than persist until our current COIN strategy has failed, triggering a domestic political eruption and, perhaps, a disastrous total U.S. military withdrawal.

Washington should not wait to change its objective and strategy in Afghanistan until even more U.S. blood and treasure have been lost in a fruitless quest among the Afghan Pashtun and the enemy proclaims that it has mighty America, like the Soviets, on the run out of Afghanistan.

 

[ajtr]

Kayani roots for Haqqani

G Parthasarathy​

There now appears to be recognition in New Delhi that direct allegations against Pakistan of sponsoring terrorism only invite bland and self-righteous denials. But the tone of India's approach has changed after Daood Gilani aka James Headley spoke candidly to Indian investigators in the presence of ISI officials and revealed substantive details of how the plot to attack Mumbai was hatched and about the role of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, other senior members of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and serving and retired Army officials, some of whom hid their true identity.

Confronted with these details during the visit of Home Minister P Chidambaram to Islamabad, the Pakistanis have promised thorough investigations. It would be naïve to believe that given Hafiz Saeed's close links with the ISI, Mr Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and virtually all major Islamic parties, the Pakistani Government would have the will or the inclination to act against the real masterminds of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist outrage.

Rather than accuse Pakistan directly of complicity in the Mumbai carnage, Mr Chidambaram said, "Nobody is questioning anybody's intentions. It is the outcome to become visible. We have agreed that there are certain outcomes we are looking forward to."Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, normally upbeat on India-Pakistan relations, remarked, "In dealing with Pakistan our attitude should be trust, but verify. So only time will tell which way the animal will turn."

Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna told visiting Pakistani journalists, "Mumbai is a deep scar. Pakistan must pursue those who were responsible." He added, "Political will is needed to tackle terrorism. Does the will exist? India has it." As a young Pakistani journalist noted, implicit in Mr Krishna's comments was "the Indian assessment that Pakistan and more specially the Pakistani Army does not have the will". Mr Krishna also left Pakistani journalists in no doubt that in a climate where there was a 'trust deficit' it would be unrealistic to expect major breakthroughs. He told the journalists, "It will take talks, lots of talks before an agreement."

New Delhi evidently recognises that Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and his ISI chief are working overtime to get the Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, now based in Pakistan, to control southern Afghanistan through a deal they appear to be negotiating with a beleaguered Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is beset with fears of a precipitate American withdrawal. Simultaneously the ISI intends to keep the pot boiling in Jammu & Kashmir by backing Jama'at-e-Islami leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and target Indian interests through the LeT and the Taliban's Haqqani network across Afghanistan and in Bangladesh. Pakistan's assets in India like SIMI will also be used to keep Indian security agencies on edge, but a repetition of attacks like the Mumbai carnage could well be avoided for the present as any such attack will undermine Pakistani ambitions on its western borders with Afghanistan.

Both Sirajuddin Haqqani and his father Jalaluddin Haqqani have been long-term assets of the ISI. They are both members of the ruling council of the Taliban, headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. More importantly, Jalaluddin Haqqani, together with the ISI, has helped Osama bin Laden's jihadi network in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1988, When the Americans invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, Osama bin Laden escaped from the American bombing of the caves where he was hiding in Tora Bora. He was escorted to north Waziristan and has since been protected by the Haqqani network there.

The Haqqani network, now led by Sirajuddin Haqqani, openly claims that its support for Al Qaeda today is "at its highest limit". It also provides haven and support to jihadis from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq, and even from Germany. While Gen Kayani has stonewalled and stalled American requests to crackdown on the Haqqani network on one pretext or another, the Americans are now dumbfounded to learn that behind their backs the Pakistani Army has been seeking to persuade the Afghans to give a leading role, probably involving de facto control of southern Afghanistan, to start with, for Sirajuddin Haqqani, their protégé who is an Islamic radical with demonstrably inseparable links with Al Qaeda.

The question that arises is that why is Gen Kayani, scheduled to retire in a few months, so keen on pushing 'reconciliation' with the Haqqani network, backed by his ISI geniuses? As well-known American analyst Jeffrey Dressler avers, "The Haqqanis rely on Al Qaeda for mass appeal, funding and training. In return, they provide Al Qaeda with shelter and protection, to strike at foreign forces in Afghanistan and beyond. Any negotiated settlement with the Haqqanis threatens to undermine the raison d'être of US involvement in Afghanistan for over the past decade." One can only conclude that Gen Kayani and the ISI believe, like the Taliban leadership, that Taliban resistance will force an early American exit from Afghanistan, with the US willing to agree to any settlement that is "face-saving".

Afghanistan's neighbours and Russia have reacted with alarm to the ongoing Karzai-Kayani nexus which followed the sacking or sidelining of key officials suspicious of Pakistani intentions, like former Intelligence Chief Amrullah Saleh and Army Chief Gen Bismillah Khan by Mr Karzai. On July 1 an official spokesman of the Russian Foreign office warned: "Attempts by the Afghan leadership with the support of Western countries to establish a negotiation process with Taliban leaders to build a mechanism for national 'reconciliation' gives us serious cause for concern." The spokesman added, "Work to return repentant Taliban militants to civilian life should not be replaced with a campaign to rehabilitate the entire Taliban movement." The Chinese have noted that the Taliban have demanded unconditional American withdrawal as a precondition for any dialogue. Chinese 'analysts' aver, "War is prevailing and continuing (in Afghanistan) and the peace process has not started. Peace on the foundation of conditions is not possible, if the Taliban are not weakened."

The entire Afghan strategy of Pakistan is being managed primarily by the Army establishment, with the elected Government sidelined. It is a high-risk strategy which could well flounder as it is apparent that while the Americans are confused they are hardly likely to leave Afghanistan to the mercies of an ISI-backed Sirajuddin Haqqani.

The major reason for Pakistan's interest in having southern Afghanistan controlled by Haqqani is that it fears that the traditional Pashtun leadership in Afghanistan strongly rejects the Durand Line and supports the formation of a 'Pashtunistan'. High-risk policies by Gen Ayub Khan, Gen Yahya Khan and Gen Pervez Musharraf, leading to conflict with India, have in the past proved disastrous for Pakistan. Will Gen Kayani lead his country to similar disaster with his ambitions in Afghanistan?

 

[Ray]

The RAND report that I appended in a link (don't remember which, possibly the one of Pak News) very succinctly brings out the Haqqani link and the rationale thereof.