The Pak-Afghan Cauldron
By Dr Mohammad Taqi
Florida
“Ah, that deceit should steal such
gentle shape,
And with a virtuous visor hide deep vice” — Shakespeare.
In its so-called summer offensive — perhaps the fiercest in years — the Afghan Taliban attacked Afghanistan’s Wolesi Jirga, i.e. the lower house of parliament on June 22. The assault started with a Taliban bomber exploding his suicide vest followed by seven other terrorists trying to storm parliament, which was in session at the time. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) intercepted and killed all the attackers. In fact an Afghan army sergeant, Essa Khan Laghmani, told a news outlet that he singlehandedly took out six attackers.
Laghmani became an instant Afghan hero, was invited to the presidential palace the next day and honored by Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani. The Afghan parliamentarians remained steadfast during the attack and the speaker of the Wolesi Jirga, Mr Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, led from the front. Mr Ibrahimi was literally unmoved as the loud thud of the suicide bomber delivering his payload rattled parliament. The video of a composed Mr Ibrahimi saying in Dari: “Na tarsin, na tarsin, shorty e barq ast” (do not fear, do not fear, it is merely an electric short-circuit) was rightfully looped on the Afghan and international media as the face of a resolute Afghan democratic dispensation.
On the other hand, the video of Essa Khan Laghmani right after he had routed the Taliban assailants showed not just a soldier who had adrenaline rushing through his body but also clarity of mind about who the enemy was. Pointing to the corpses of the Taliban attackers, Laghmani spoke to the cameras in Pashto: “Za da watan khidmatgar yem, wallah ka da Pakistan ghulaman ba raa na kamyaba na shi” (I am a servant of my homeland and by God I will not let these slaves of Pakistan succeed). Laghmani’s claim underscores the disconnect between who the men in trenches perceive to be responsible for the plight of Afghanistan and Dr Ashraf Ghani’s nine-month-long diplomatic tableau to engage Afghanistan’s eastern neighbor as a partner in peace. One shudders to imagine that had the attack been successful it would have blown away any chance of negotiated peace along with its intended target. The tenacious ANSF men have averted an imminent tragedy but Dr Ashraf Ghani should still be a very worried man. He has naught to show for his prolonged peace overtures to Pakistan. The voices from within the Afghan parliament were quick to chastise Dr Ghani for what they consider as his misplaced faith in unreliable partners who are using the virtuous visor of peace negotiations to hide their real intentions. Afghan parliamentarians like Kandahar’s Abdur Rahim Ayubi and Paktika’s Nader Khan Katawazi, whom I had a chance to participate in a radio panel discussion with, minced no words about the futility of Dr Ashraf Ghani’s actions and squarely blamed the Pakistani security establishment for continuing to allow the Taliban and its affiliated Haqqani terrorist network to operate from east of the Durand Line.
The Afghan Taliban were quick to claim responsibility for the attack through their Voice of Jihad website. The attack had the Haqqani network’s signature all over it just like almost all previous spectacular terrorist attacks in Kabul. Just last month a guesthouse in Kabul was similarly targeted when an event, which the Indian ambassador Mr Amar Sinha had also been invited to, was underway. The June 22 attack was aimed to hit at the heart of Afghan democracy and timed perhaps to coincide with a) the last session of the Afghan parliament and b) the confirmation hearing of the new defense minister, Mr Masoom Stanakzai, that was supposed to take place that day. Mr Stanakzai had barely survived the September 2011 suicide attack that had killed the chief of the Afghan High Peace Council, Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani. By attacking parliament the Taliban have shown that the ostensibly gentle shape they displayed at the al-Khor, Qatar and Oslo, Norway conferences is but stolen to hide their vicious deceit. The lip service the Taliban paid to the Constitution, rule of law and women’s rights at those conferences are nothing but a ruse to gain political concessions.
At last week’s Oslo conference, the Taliban demanded removal of their cohorts from black lists, prisoners’ release and, above all, the reopening of their political office in Qatar without any restriction on the scope of its activities. They even said, “The Islamic Emirate should enjoy the right to utilize media and other resources for its political purposes.” The Taliban are clearly striving to make and secure maximum battlefield gains in Afghanistan while seeking political legitimacy internationally and thus a stronger negotiating position when the current fighting season ends this fall. The sophisticated nature of the Taliban’s military and political operations betrays a high level of planning.
The US State Department’s Country Report on Terrorism 2014, released earlier this month notes: “Portions of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Balochistan province remained a safe haven for terrorist groups seeking to conduct domestic, regional and global attacks. Al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other terrorist groups, as well as the Afghan Taliban, took advantage of this safe haven to plan operations in Pakistan and throughout the region.” In Pakistan, the already firm control of the Afghan policy by the security establishment seems intact, with the politicians not being able or willing to let out even a peep let alone ask for course correction. The Pakistani civilian officials are virtually peddling the brief handed to them by the powers that be. The Pak-Afghan cauldron is back to the 1990s.
Dr Ashraf Ghani had described his foreign policy as an arrangement to expand in concentric circles in which engagement with immediate neighbors took precedence. By gambling his whole political capital on Pakistan’s pledge to deliver peace in Afghanistan Dr Ghani has afforded the former a leverage bordering on veto power. Instead of regionalizing and internationalizing the conflict, Dr Ghani turned it into a bilateral issue and that too in a terribly lopsided relationship. While Dr Ashraf Ghani runs the risk of political isolation and even a potential debacle at home, he has also painted Afghanistan into a geopolitical corner. The attack on the Afghan parliament should be an eye-opener for the Afghan president that his ostensible peace process with the Taliban and Pakistan is untenable. The sooner Dr Ghani is able to see the real visage hidden deep under the virtuous visor, the better position he would be in to rebuild the international coalition that he let wilt on the vine.
(The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki)
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