Our Disjointed Afghan Policy
By Dr Ghayur Ayub
London, UK
Governments do not change ongoing policies, no matter which party wins an election. But Pakistan is unique in this regard.
Over the years, we have seen new governments introducing new policies within the first six months of their inception to prove that they are doing something superb for the country and for the people. Whether this trend helps the public is another matter; all I can say is that, in the process, the crafty bureaucrats improve their ratings in the eyes of politicians running the government. I have already written on the subject of Health Policies’; today I would like to write a word or two on our Afghan policy that seems disjointed.
As a matter of principle, the policy-makers of progressive countries make foreign policies according to the circumstances and situations in their immediate neighborhood. They know that any trouble with neighbors can create unnecessary hindrance in the country’s progress and developmental effort, especially if a particular neighbor happens to have a troubled past.
History tells us that the shrewd British created a buffer zone between Afghanistan and united India to avoid problems spilling over to the mainland. They called it the Tribal Belt. Cleverly, they controlled the region by mixing the centuries-old Khanate system with the administrative setup of the British Raj and termed it the FCR. Through the FCR, they legalized tribal customs based on the Jirga system and linked them with the Indian Penal Code by inserting a few draconian clauses that gave unprecedented powers to the political agent. The system worked well, indeed very well.
At the birth of Pakistan, the British left us with virtually nothing - no security, no financial backups, no government, no army, practically nothing. All we had was a limping imported bureaucracy from the Indian Civil Service.
Unlike India, Pakistan lacked visionaries and visionaries don’t grow on trees. The situation got worse with the untimely demise of the Founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah leaving Pakistan in a vacuum with short-sighted policy-makers who were only good in ad hocism. The process continues. If it wasn’t for the specific instructions of Quad-i-Azam to keep the tribal belt a buffer zone, our political forefathers would have engulfed them into settled area; just as they are trying to do so at present.
They ignored the basic principle of neighborhood importance and sidelined Afghanistan. A prime example was the replacement of the first Pukhtun ambassador, A. S. B. Shah. According to sources, he was replaced because Afghanistan was the only country that voted against Pakistan in the United Nations.
I. I. Chundrigar, originally from Bombay, was sent out as Pakistan’s envoy. He lacked knowledge of Pukhtun customs and culture and was known for his poor opinion of Afghans. (As luck would have it, he later became the prime minister!) Diplomatic mistakes such as his appointment cost us dearly. Instead of improving the situation; we sowed the seeds of mistrust.
Over the years, the situation got worse, and we started playing in the hands of foreign powers for all the wrong reasons. As a result, we were once used in the name of ‘fundamentalist Islam’ and were left high and dry after the super power using us achieved its goals. Now, it is using us again in the name of ‘moderate Islam’ to fight a war which we did not initiate.
I am not against joining a country as a coalition partner in a war as long as it is in the interest of that country. Those interests could be financial, developmental, social, cultural, honor and in the case of Pakistan, religious. The criteria of such interests should focus on public welfare. But sadly, the leaders seemingly ignore these criteria. Today, our leadership is fighting a war not because of its commitment to the public welfare but because their commitments are glued to issues like the NRO.
Coming back to the topic, I remember, my father was the Consul of Pakistan in Kandahar in 1958. That was the time when relations between the two countries were at their lowest ebb which led to the closure of embassies and consulates. Before the closure, agents from the Afghan secret service chased us wherever we traveled. Once we were traveling from Kandahar to Chaman and on the way we lost track of them. My father asked the driver to turn back in case they had met an accident and were in need of help. We found them a few kilometers down the road. To our query they told us that they had run out of Benzene. We helped them fill their tank. They were very grateful and became friendly.
They used to tell us that Pakistanis were good people and the majority of Afghans respected and liked them. Such a message coming from officials of the secret service meant a lot, especially in those days when the two governments were at loggerheads.
The interesting thing was that those goodwill feelings had nothing to do with religion. If religion played a pivotal role in political and social life then Hindus and Sikhs would not have developed thriving businesses in Kabul and other major Afghan cities.
This subtle goodwill surfaced in the coming decades when they supported us in our wars with India in 1965 and 1971. They spread their arms and opened their hearts during those difficult days. But our leadership successively failed to understand the Afghan psyche.
It was the visionary leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who, for the first time, understood this psyche and took steps in the right direction. He worked hard to reduce tension created by his misguided predecessors and built a realistic cordial relationship with Sardar Dawood Khan. According to retired senior bureaucrats from the Foreign Office, the two leaders were on the verge of signing an agreement on the Durand Line issue. The final draft was already cleared by both the governments. But Dawood was assassinated and the document never reached the signing table. Waiting for an opportune moment ZAB was also removed from the scene and the matter was not taken up by the military government disrupting the continuity of a stable policy.
Similarly, the Nawaz Sharif government approached Engineer Masood by holding a meeting with the Taliban government in Dushanbe in 1997. More meetings were subsequently held in Ashqabad and Dushanbe in the following year. The final draft was prepared which, among other things, included a framework with the following salient features:
1. The Taliban agreed to take members of the Masood group in the Shura.
2. The Shura was to frame a Constitution for Afghanistan within three months.
3. Elections were to be held according to that Constitution bringing all the divergent groups within the constitutional democratic framework.
An important meeting was arranged between Engineer Masood and the Taliban in November 1999 to finalize the deal. On October 12, 1999, the army took over power and when the interior secretary (by then he was removed from his post) asked the government about the meeting, he was told Afghanistan was not the top priority on the list of the military government.
It is the lack in continuity of a stable Afghan policy that pushed Pakistan back on the track of diplomacy. As a result, we have made, and are still making, more adversaries than friends, both within and outside the country with regards to Afghanistan. Lets us look at the results of such policy:
1. The Taliban are against us.
2. The vast majority of Pukhtuns are not happy.
3. The Afghan Muhajirs are against us
4. The Afghan government is not happy with us
5. The United States of America , as coalition partner, is not happy with us
6. The major political parties are not happy
7. The major political partner of the coalition - PML-N - is not happy
8. A good number of PPP members are not happy
9. A large number of MNAs and Senators are not happy.
10. The civil society is not happy
11. The lawyers are not happy
12. A sizable retired army officers are not happy
13. A vast number of students and other professional bodies are not happy.
14. A vast majority of tribals, including legislators, are not happy.
The big question is: Who is happy with this apparently disjointed Afghan Policy of ours?
