Page 1 of 2 SPEAKING FREELY A chance for redemption in Afghanistan
By Sharif Ghalib
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The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) announced
last week that they are conducting a broad
review of its operations in Afghanistan.
The review is largely perceived to have been stimulated by the persistent
violence across the eastern and southern provinces, stemming from stepped-up
cross-border subversive activities by the Taliban.
The upshot has led to increasing realization among the US and NATO allies of
the need to re-examine their approach towards their the mission in the country.
"Insurgent violence is at its highest level in Afghanistan since US-led forces
ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United
States. Suicide bombings, for example, have climbed 30% in some areas," the US
military has been quoted as saying.
As a matter of fact, the steadily declining security trend is a picture-perfect
justification for the review, as a great many within and outside Afghanistan
hold the perception that the country stands at a tipping point.
However, the usefulness and efficacy of any review would rest on the genuine
intentions of the international community to redress some of its fundamentally
flawed approaches toward the situation.
Yes, though there is an unequivocal common recognition of the ceaseless Taliban
insurgency and cross-border onslaught, there are also many other factors which
have contributed to the exacerbation of the situation.
Above all else comes the notorious role played by the Pakistani junta and the
country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI). For almost four decades
now, Pakistan has been engaged in an outright state-sponsored campaign of
subjugation in Afghanistan through a relentless pursuit of an interventionist
policy shrouded with systematic and flagrant lies, deception and distortion of
the plain facts and realities to the Pakistani public and to the international
community. It is all naively aimed at acquiring a "strategic depth" against the
likelihood of a war with neighboring India.
The subversive recourse became naked and out in the open after 1994 when
Taliban mercenaries crafted by Pakistan's military intelligence under the guise
of "demographic and geographic interests", and blatantly touted by the recently
overnight-turned-plain clothes-General Pervez Musharraf, were dispatched into
Afghanistan along with scores of Pakistani paramilitary units and ex-army
officers.
However, the wishful "strategic depth" dogma pursued by the Musharraf junta not
only failed to materialize in Afghanistan, but in fact miserably backfired and
ended in fiasco as Pakistan itself started to being gradually bogged down in
terrorism and anarchic frenzy, which manifested itself fully blown with the
recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistan now bears witness to the near end-results of that grotesquely
erroneous doctrine. The disquieting situation in which Pakistan is being
gripped - scoffingly dubbed by many as a "strategic ditch" - is the virtual
translation of Pakistan's chronic wrongful policies vis-a-vis Afghanistan, let
alone the deep-seated resentment and indignation Pakistan has earned among all
ethnic groups of Afghanistan, which otherwise could have been seen as a
fraternal neighbor with strong historical bonds.
The time is now ripe for the international community to revisit its rules of
engagement with Pakistan over Afghanistan. Six straight years into the peace
process in Afghanistan, it is simply preposterous if the international
community still continues with its appeasement policy toward Pakistan and turns
a blind eye to the physical infrastructure, recruiting and training centers and
hideouts of terrorism within its territory, and the steady flow of logistical
and organizational support it provides to the insurgency.
Enough has been said of the resurgence of militancy in Afghanistan and of
Musharraf's correlating intriguing posturing over the past six years. Let's
call a spade a spade. The root cause of the problems in Afghanistan lies in
Pakistan, as repeatedly spelled out by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. And
the Pakistani junta remains overtly complicit by playing both the fire fighter
and the arsonist. No more and no less.
The junta must realize that if the Talibanization of Afghanistan is to serve to
contain the domestic religious and nationalist backlash within Pakistani
society, as is occasionally implied, it no longer presents the rationale for
the stance because Pakistan already has the ultra religio-nationalist phenomena
at its doorstep. Furthermore, if the current line of policy to destabilize
Afghanistan
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