Page 2 of 2 Afghan battle lines become
blurred By M K Bhadrakumar
the Taliban takeover in Kabul in
1996. The big question is whether Iran would
countenance a Taliban organization that is
cleansed of murderers of monstrous ferocity like
Mullah Dadullah (or rabidly obscurantist
extremists like Mullah Omar) entering mainstream
Afghan politics.
Arguably, it might. At
any rate, almost on the heels of the consultations
in Pakistan by Ambassador Ronald Neumann, US
special envoy on Afghanistan,
early this week, Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Islamabad on
Thursday. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is
due to visit Kabul in June. Musharraf's close
confidant, Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid, was
received by Ahmadinejad in Tehran early this week.
While Mullah Dadullah's killing might have
dealt a significant blow to the Taliban
insurgency, Iran will still be cautious about the
Taliban's command structure. Iran will also factor
the growing anti-American sentiments among the
Afghans. But Iran cannot be missing the point that
it has indeed become a meaningful interlocutor for
the US with respect to Afghan situation - just as
over the future of Iraq.
The Afghan bazaar
perceives that Ahmed Zia Massoud (brother of Ahmed
Shah Massoud and vice president in the Karzai
government) is the leading figure in the United
Front. Some say Massoud staged a putsch against
Karzai. There is bound to be speculation about
ascendancy of Russian influence. Moscow went on a
publicity binge over the visit by the delegation
of the Collective Security Treaty Organization to
Kabul on March 9-13. But these are early days.
What cannot be overlooked is that Russia
and Iran are not quite on the same page. The
acrimony over the Bushehr nuclear power plant has
taken a toll. Ahmadinejad's public criticism of
Russian policies while on a visit to the United
Arab Emirates last week underscored that the trust
deficit is real.
The alignments remain
fluid. Qanooni, who is close to Tehran, is keeping
a low profile. "Ustad" Rabbani is doing the
talking. He is a great bridge-builder. Meanwhile,
Karzai alleges that the United Front is "supported
by foreign embassies". Indeed, the Front includes
personalities who kept links in the 1980s and '90s
with Moscow, Central Asian capitals or Tehran.
The United Front has rattled Karzai (and
Washington). Karzai wouldn't like the initiative
to slip into the hands of the United Front. The
Senate, which is dominated by his nominees, passed
its own resolution on May 8 calling on the
government to hold direct talks with the resurgent
Taliban and other opposition forces - "direct
negotiations with the concerned Afghan sides in
the country".
The Senate resolution also
sought that in the meantime, NATO military
operations against the Taliban should cease. It
said, "If the need arises for an operation, it
should be carried out with the coordination of the
national army and police and in consultation with
the government of Afghanistan."
This
partly aims at assuaging Afghan public opinion,
which is incensed over Karzai's inability to
protect the people from the excesses perpetrated
by the trigger-happy US forces. Meanwhile, the
lower house of Parliament has raised the ante by
exercising its constitutional prerogative to sack
Karzai's close confidant, Dadfar Spanta, pinning
responsibility for the recent deportation of
52,000 Afghan refugees from Iran. Karzai promptly
questioned the legality of the move.
To be
sure, Karzai is coming under multiple pressures.
On the one hand, there are the incipient moves by
political opponents eroding his credibility and
authority. On the other hand, the "international
community" has become critical of him. At a
high-level conference in Brussels on April 28,
Richard Holbrooke, former US ambassador to the
United Nations in Bill Clinton's administration,
said Karzai government had "lost momentum" and
transparency and was alienating its erstwhile
supporters.
He added that Karzai was
"walking away from democracy"; that NATO was
successful in containing the Taliban but the
Karzai government's bad performance was
rejuvenating the Taliban's support; that there had
been a "massive waste" of US and European money in
Afghanistan because of very poor coordination of
the aid effort; and that Karzai was losing his
authority.
Holbrooke harshly reprimanded
Karzai: "We don't want to see in Kabul the kind of
political chaos which in Baghdad is destroying the
coalition effort."
NATO Secretary General
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who was present, shared
Holbrooke's concerns. Given Scheffer's record of
parroting US thought processes, Karzai would have
felt exasperated. Indeed, within a week of the
conference in Brussels, Scheffer headed for
Islamabad, accompanied by the United States'
supreme commander in NATO, where he and Musharraf
pledged new anti-Taliban efforts.
Scheffer
said in Islamabad, "It is my strong opinion that
the final answer in Afghanistan will not be a
military one and cannot be a military one. The
final answer in Afghanistan is called
reconstruction, development and nation-building."
The new buzzword is an "integrated
approach" in Afghanistan. But no one has fleshed
it out. There is an Afghan opinion building up
over the imperative of an intra-Afghan dialogue
leading to genuine power-sharing. But the US and
NATO pretend they aren't seeing the groundswell of
opinion.
Their emphasis is on the
existential challenge posed by Afghan war to
NATO's global role. They look over the Afghan
ridge toward the new cold-war horizon. Meanwhile,
the US is inexorably losing its monopoly over
conflict resolution in Afghanistan. And regional
powers include some that are against the
open-ended presence of NATO forces.
It may
turn out that the real "tipping point" is not over
the Taliban's much-awaited spring offensive (which
may not even happen), but if regional powers begin
seriously to exploit the political rifts in
Afghanistan for undermining the NATO strategy.
Not surprisingly, Washington shudders to
think of any "regime change" in Islamabad in the
present circumstances, no matter the political
turmoil within Pakistan. As Scheffer put it in
Islamabad on May 8 during the first ever visit to
Pakistan by a NATO secretary general, NATO and
Pakistan find themselves in the "same boat", and
should seek an enduring, mutually beneficial
partnership that goes beyond the "war against
terror". And who else could hold the Pakistani end
of the bargain better than Musharraf?
M K Bhadrakumar served as a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for
more than 29 years, with postings including
ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
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