By Dr. Nayyer Ali

Pakistan and Afghanistan

February 16, 2007

Is Pakistan to blame for the continuing war in Afghanistan, and if it is, why is it doing so? This question is hotly debated by all the parties involved in the ongoing struggle to stabilize and reestablish an effective Afghan state.
During last year Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly blamed Pakistan for providing support and safe haven to the “Taliban” who are continuing to attack Afghan government and NATO forces in the southern Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan. On the flip side, President Musharraf has totally dismissed these accusations as false, and lays the blame for the war in Afghanistan on the Afghans themselves.
Karzai, along with some NATO generals, claims that Taliban commanders have safe havens inside Pakistan. They meet openly in Quetta. South Waziristan, where Pakistan signed a deal with the local population to pull out the army in exchange for their peaceful behavior, is supposedly now a major source of Taliban fighters coming over to Afghanistan. Karzai also claims that Pakistan does not do enough to control its border and prevent the flow of militants across to Afghanistan. Finally, there are occasional charges that figures in Pakistani military intelligence, the ISI, are helping Taliban fighters obtain weapons and supplies. Given that these Taliban fighters are attacking American units, this would mean that while Pakistan is supposedly allied with the US, it is also actively helping a force that is fighting and killing American soldiers.
Pakistanis reject these accusations. First, they point out that it was Pakistan that killed or captured almost every single major figure in Al-Qaeda. Over 700 Pakistani soldiers have been killed along the border in operations against the militants. In addition, it is not Pakistanis that make up these fighters who are coming across, but Afghan refugees, of whom over two million are still in Pakistan. Why doesn’t the Afghan government properly resettle these people? Wouldn’t that solve the problem? Pakistan has offered to fence and mine the border with Afghanistan, but Karzai did not want that, which suggests he is being rather two-faced. Pakistan has done much for Afghanistan. It took in a huge refugee population during the Soviet war, and it supported the Mujahideen who finally liberated the country. After 9/11, the Pakistani government abandoned the Taliban regime, and has been helpful in repatriating millions of Afghans. It provides much of Afghanistan’s imports, and is the main link between Afghanistan and the outside world.
So why are there these points of friction? The current Afghan government is dominated by the non-Pashtun minorities, and has been since the Taliban were overthrown. The main source of militants fighting the government is from the Pashtuns, and the primary driver of this is the feeling that they are left out of shaping Afghanistan. There has been very little reconstruction or security in the Pashtun south of Afghanistan. One cannot have a stable Afghanistan without satisfying the needs of the Pashtuns. This is why the real problem is political and needs a political settlement.
There is in fact no Taliban at this point. The organized Taliban movement was defeated and scattered after 9/11. “Taliban” is a term now used to describe any Pashtun opposed to the government. But it is a rhetorical trick used to delegitimize the Pashtun opposition to the government.
The other stumbling block is the Afghan desire to claim parts of Pakistan as theirs. The Afghan-Pakistan border is based on the Durand Line which defined the northern border of British India. The Afghans have never recognized the Durand Line, and this causes concern among Pakistanis that Afghanistan harbors ambitions against them. The coziness of the Karzai government with India heightens Pakistani anxiety. While Pakistan is not causing the Pashtun rebellion, it is happy to look the other way as a means of applying some pressure on the Afghans to finally recognize the Durand Line. This was also the reason why Pakistan was willing to fence and mine the border but the Afghans were totally against it. Karzai, if he is serious, should offer to recognize the Durand Line in exchange for the vigorous assistance of Pakistan in ending the rebellion.
In addition, it is absolutely vital to resettle the remaining three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan back in Afghanistan. Since the defeat of the Taliban, over four million Afghans have returned home, but there remain three million from whom the rebellion against Kabul can recruit. If they were back home in Afghanistan, there would be far less violence to blame Pakistan for.
A stable, prosperous Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s best interest. It would be a major purchaser of Pakistani exports, it would be the gateway to Central Asia, and as it develops, would offer excellent opportunities for Pakistani companies to invest and expand. The geography of the two nations binds them together. It is unfortunate that the current conflict stands in the way of this. Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com

 

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