Washington works the Af-Pak-India triangle
By Zahid U Kramet
LAHORE - The United States' Af-Pak special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, and US
Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been running from pillar to post between
Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to end the "war on terror" and bring some sort
of stability to the South Asian region.
Until now they have not made much progress. The war persists. A troop surge in
Afghanistan was seen as the solution. And, acceding to the requests of his
counter-insurgency expert, General David Petraeus, and his commander in
Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, President Barack Obama sanctioned an
additional 30,000 US troops to ramp up the
approximately 100,000-strong coalition force already present in Afghanistan.
Obama's December 1, 2009, address at the West Point Military Academy charted a
new course when he remarked, "These additional American and international
troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces
and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in 2011 ...
America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan." In his
State of the Union address this week, Obama reiterated his commitment to having
US troops begin to leave Afghanistan in July 2011.
Reinforced at frequent intervals subsequently was that Pakistan held the key to
bringing the conflict to an end. But a trust deficit existed. Pakistan felt it
had sufficient influence over the Afghan Taliban to pursue peace talks. The US
persisted with "no quarter" to any of the Taliban.
Pakistan's perspective was that the al-Qaeda-aligned Pakistani Taliban led by
Hakimullah Mahsud in South Waziristan needed to be tackled first. The US
insisted the Afghan Taliban's Sirajuddin Haqqani network, which allegedly had a
fallback position in North Waziristan, must be targeted simultaneously.
Pakistan asked to use armed drones on selected targets. The US opted to operate
them unilaterally, indifferent to the political consequences of the collateral
damage with which Pakistan would have to contend. From the Pakistani viewpoint,
the cruelest cut of all came when Holbrooke announced during a visit to New
Delhi that India's role was crucial to ensure regional peace, while Pakistan
held India responsible for the restiveness in its western province of
Balochistan.
What rankled even more was when Indian intelligence chief Lieutenant General R
K Loomba was surreptitiously allowed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
to visit the Afghan National Army (ANA) headquarters in Kabul. This conveyed
the impression to Pakistan that the US could be looking at India to oversee ANA
operations against the Taliban on the withdrawal of the international forces
from the country beginning in July 2011.
A paper published by the US think-tank Council on Foreign Relations titled
"Terrorism and Indo-Pakistani escalation" further aggravated the situation when
it warned of more "Mumbai-style" attacks emanating from Pakistan which would
warrant India's imminent retaliation. (This was a reference to the attack by
militants on the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008 in which more than 150
people were killed.)
After an exchange of fire on the Pakistan-India border shortly thereafter,
Shireen M Mazari, the editor of the English-language daily The Nation, found
these signals ominous. In a front-page report titled "A two-front threat
emerging for Pakistan", she wrote, "A nightmare security scenario for Pakistan
seems to be emerging - that of a two-front military conflict ... after meetings
between Indian officials and America's Holbrooke and Gates ... we are seeing
unprovoked military firing." The implication was obvious.
Pakistan's immediate reaction was that it could not provide any guarantees
against more Mumbai-type attacks, with Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani reportedly saying to Gates, "Pakistan is itself facing Mumbai-like
attacks almost every other day and when we cannot protect our own citizens how
can we guarantee there wouldn't be any more terrorist hits in India?"
Gates is then said to have upped the ante with the caution that unlike the
Mumbai attack, India would not show restraint if attacked again. The same day,
Pakistan's Inter-Service Public Relations chief Major General Ather Abbas
conveyed a message to the visiting US dignitary that the Pakistan army was
looking to consolidate its gains rather than opening new fronts in its tribal
areas.
But the hard-pressed Pakistan security apparatus had moved on to counter the
rampant Taliban in another way. A week earlier, on Saturday January 16,
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran inked a regional pact to confront the Afghan
insurgency trilaterally and rejected a British proposal to include countries
which were not contiguous to Afghanistan, but agreed to include all those that
were, namely Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and China.
The Islamabad meeting and the trilateral summit that followed in Istanbul were
a prelude to the grand London conference on Afghanistan that began on Thursday.
The gala event has drawn 60 countries and has essentially been contrived to
deliver the message that the world stands united against al-Qaeda, but ready to
accede to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's reintegration proposal for the
Taliban.
America had finally accepted the need for this some days earlier, with
Holbrooke reported to have said, "We are ready to support it." He did not
divulge how exactly this was to come about. What Holbrooke did say, however,
was, "There are a lot of people out there fighting who have no ideological
commitment to the principles, values or political movement led by Mullah Omar."
Mullah Omar is an al-Qaeda ideologue and he would have to be won over for the
war in Afghanistan to be brought to an end. The onus of responsibility for this
will inevitably fall on the International Security Assistance Force-propelled
ANA forces in Afghanistan, and the Pakistan army on its side of the border. But
reining in Mullah Omar is not outside the realm of reality. It begins and ends
with the exit of foreign forces from Afghanistan. And that is already on the
anvil.
Obama has played his cards cleverly with his surge and withdrawal strategy in
Afghanistan. He has been helped by near-unanimous support for financial
assistance to rescue Afghanistan at the London conference. On the
implementation of its objectives, the Western coalition will not be seen to
have won the war, but much less the "arch-villains". Al-Qaeda, however, is
another matter.
Osama bin Laden's latest audio relay, if authentic, first and foremost referred
to the plight of the Palestinians. The Palestinians are Arab. The Arabs are
Muslim for much the larger part. Obama would need to be seen addressing the
Israeli settlements issue and the two-state prescription in earnest if he is to
make a mark in the Muslim world.
In a recent interview, Obama stressed that a second term in office was not his
primary objective. Being acknowledged for his achievements during his first
term was of far greater significance. Breaking the deadlock in Afghanistan
would be one such achievement. But if the ultimate aim is to break al-Qaeda's
back, it would require resolving the Palestine issue - and that may call for a
New York conference.
Zahid U Kramet, a Lahore-based political analyst specializing in
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, is the founder of the research and analysis
website the Asia Despatch.
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