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3 Afghanistan's ball back in
Pakistan's court By M K
Bhadrakumar
In May, when Sir Sherard
Cowper-Coles arrived in Kabul as the new British
ambassador, there was intense speculation about
London's choice of a senior diplomat of the
highest caliber for an assignment in a losing war.
This was natural, since within the
Anglo-American condominium in Afghanistan, Britain
has all along been the "brains trust". The
intriguing question was, what was there in the war
at that point for
Cowper-Coles to salvage at
all for Britain? However, soon after taking over
in Kabul, in an interview with BBC Radio 4,
Cowper-Coles firmly rejected all suggestions that
the coalition forces were losing the fight against
the Taliban.
The ambassador took a big
step further last week when he termed the four-day
peace jirga, which concluded in Kabul last
Sunday, a historic occasion. "There was a palpable
sense of relief, pleasure, and of history being
made," he told The Guardian newspaper.
Significantly, British Defense Secretary
Des Browne forcefully echoed the ambassador's
optimism by asserting in a media interview last
week that the situation in southern Afghanistan
had reached a "turning point".
What
warrants such optimism? The jirga itself,
comprising more than 600 representatives of
Pashtun tribes, originated as an idea from Afghan
President Hamid Karzai a year ago with the backing
of the administration of US President George W
Bush - as an experimental effort to employ the
vehicle of traditional Afghan assembly for
fostering good-neighborly relations between
Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Engaging the
Taliban It was to have been held last
December in Jalalabad. Pakistan was lukewarm about
it. And, when it finally got under way in Kabul,
there was considerable skepticism. But it ended on
a high note. The jirga authorized a 50-man
team to be drawn equally from the two countries to
hold regular monthly meetings and to work to
"expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for
peace and reconciliation with the opposition".
In plain terms, the jirga has
launched an intra-Afghan peace process with a
comprehensive approach that aims to include the
Taliban and its ally Hezb-i-Islami. Pakistani
President General Pervez Musharraf, who attended
the closing session of the jirga, said
after his return to Pakistan that the proposed
50-member team should "engage warring forces in
Afghanistan to bring terrorism and extremism to an
end".
Musharraf played his cards astutely.
Addressing the jirga, he admitted with
disarming candor that, yes, the Taliban enjoy
support from Pakistan. "I realize this problem
goes deeper; there is support from these areas,"
he told delegates. Karzai, who sat beside the
general, nodded in approval.
There was no
acrimony over Musharraf's dramatic turnaround from
his consistent plea that the Taliban are an
indigenous Afghan force. Musharraf added, "There
is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from
Pakistani soil. The problem that you have in your
region is because support is provided from our
side."
In his characteristic way of mixing
bravado and bluster, the general underscored the
criticality of his government's role in the
forthcoming intra-Afghan peace process. Again,
Musharraf was forthright in asserting that any
meaningful settlement will have to be on the basis
of a political accommodation with the Taliban. He
said, "The Taliban are part of Afghan society.
Most of them may be ignorant and misguided, but
all of them aren't diehard militants and fanatics
who defy even the most fundamental values of our
culture and our faith."
Clearly, an
initiative that began as a modest effort aimed at
defining the role of Pashtun tribes in mending
Afghan-Pakistan relations seems to have galloped
away. Sitting in the white tent where the
jirga was held, the Guardian correspondent
observed, "After four days of talk, the language
was at times more Woodstock than Waziristan."
The jirga's agreement to push for
reconciliation with the Taliban and other
opposition groups constitutes a vindication of
Pakistan's stand that options other than a
military solution should be adopted in reaching a
settlement in Afghanistan. The high drama
surrounding Musharraf's appearance in Kabul at the
concluding session of the jirga - allowing
himself to be persuaded to attend by US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, who phoned him thrice -
has enabled Pakistan to move to the center stage
of the negotiations involving the Taliban.
Musharraf made it clear that the key to
making success out of any conceivable Afghan peace
process in the near future will be winning
Pakistan's support, and that cannot be extracted
through threats and exhortations. He underlined
that the West can certainly aspire to make
progress with him, provided Pakistan's legitimate
concerns and interests are recognized.
Accordingly, the jirga proposed in
a draft agreement that a 50-member team of tribal
representatives should "immediately undertake the
opening of negotiations with the resistance on how
best and how soon to end the violence in the
country". Furthermore, it said, as soon as the
peace and conciliation jirga begins its
consultations with the opposition, a ceasefire
should come into effect between the Taliban and
the US-led coalition forces for a period to be
mutually agreed on.
The draft document
continued, "This would give a respite to both the
resistance and the [Afghan] government to consider
coolly
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