No
matter what the Chinese may say about 2012 being
the year of the dragon, this is going to be the
year of the Taliban so far as the United States is
concerned.
The New Year began with an
exciting media "leak" by senior United States
officials in Washington that the Barack Obama
administration was considering the transfer to
Afghan custody of a senior Taliban official,
Mullah Mohammed Fazl, who has been
detained at the US facility
at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for the past nine years.
The officials claimed Fazl might be
released (or transferred to Qatar) in response to
a longstanding request by Kabul as a
"confidence-building measure" intended to
underscore to the Taliban the US's seriousness in
engaging them.
To be sure, the Obama
administration is raring to go. Just about four
months are left for the summit meeting of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in
Chicago, an event showcasing Obama's leadership of
the Western alliance - and that he can lead from
the front - embedded within his unpredictable
re-election bid. The summit is expected to focus
world attention on the Afghan situation.
With the Europeans caught in existential
angst due to their grave economic crisis, Obama
needs to use all his charm on his NATO colleagues
not to ditch him in Afghanistan. For that, he
needs to convince them that he is leading them to
the end of the dark tunnel. The Chicago summit
cannot afford to fail, as happened with the two
events leading to it - the Istanbul meet on
November 2 and the Bonn Conference II on December
2.
But the mood in the region surrounding
Afghanistan is turning ugly. Moscow has dealt a
devastating blow to the game plan drawn up by the
US and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh
Rasmussen eyeing Central Asia tactically as the
backyard for Afghan operations if push comes to
shove in the US's relations with Pakistan - and
strategically as a platform for the great game
toward Russia, China and Iran.
In a
geopolitical coup, the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) summit in Moscow on December
20 took a momentous decision that for the setting
up of foreign military bases on CSTO territory,
there had to be approval by all member states of
the Moscow-led alliance that also includes
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan President
Nurusultan Nazarbayev announced with a straight
face:
The most important outcome of our
meeting was an agreement on the coordination of
military infrastructure deployment by
non-members of CSTO on the territory of CSTO
member states. Now, in order to deploy a
military base of a third country on the
territory of a CSTO member state, it will be
necessary to obtain official approval of all
CSTO member states. I think this is a clear sign
of the organization's unity and its members'
utmost loyalty to allied
relations.
The last sentence was
dripping with irony since the Obama administration
had just recently taken a decision to provide
military assistance to Uzbekistan in a policy
turnaround with the intent to hijack the key
Central Asian country to undermine the CSTO. To
Washington's dismay, Uzbek President Islam Karimov
not only attended the CSTO summit in Moscow, but
went on to voice his support of the alliance's
decision.
With this, Moscow signaled to
Washington that its monopoly of
conflict-resolution in Afghanistan has to end. The
US has a choice to crawl back into Pakistan's
favor and persuade Islamabad to reopen the transit
routes that have been shut down for a month
already or, alternatively, fall back on the
Northern Distribution Network for supplying NATO
troops and for taking the men and materials out as
the troop drawdown picks momentum through 2011.
The CSTO decision hangs like a sword of
Damocles on the US base in Manas near Bishkek, the
capital of Kyrgyzstan, which is a strategic hub
for air transportation.
There is no
evidence so far that Russia and Pakistan have
begun acting in tandem - although, in his
statement anticipating Russia's foreign policy
priorities for 2012, Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov did single out Pakistan.
As the
crow flies ... Amid all this, Fazl's
possible release from Guantanamo comes as a
masterstroke by Washington aimed at scattering the
growing regional bonhomie over the Afghan
situation. The Obama administration hopes to
release a fox into the chicken pen. Fazl is one of
the most experienced Taliban commanders who has
been with Taliban leader Mullah Omar almost from
day one and he held key positions commanding the
Taliban army.
He would have been a
favorite of both Mullah Omar and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his
"homecoming" ought to bring joy to both. On the
other hand, he was also culpable for the massacre
of thousands of Hazara Shi'ites during 1998-2001
and was possibly accountable for the execution of
eight Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan
city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Fazl inspires
visceral hatred in the Iranian mind and could
create misunderstandings in Pakistan-Iran
relations (which have been on an upswing in recent
years) and put Islamabad on the horns of a dilemma
vis-a-vis Mullah Omar.
Fazl is also a
notorious personality from the Central Asian and
Russian viewpoint insofar as he used to be the
Taliban's point person for al-Qaeda and its
regional affiliates such as the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Chechen rebels. He was
also in charge of the strategic Kunduz region
bordering the "soft underbelly" of Central Asia
where he was based with IMU chief Juma Namangani
at the time of the US intervention in October
2011.
Fazl belongs to the "pre-Haqqani
clan" era. Will the Haqqani network - a key
component of the Taliban-led insurgency from its
base in Pakistan's tribal areas - accept Fazl's
"seniority" and give way to him? Pakistan may have
to prioritize its "strategic assets"; it is a
veritable minefield.
Enter Qatar, which is
increasingly emerging as the US's closest ally in
the Middle East next only to Israel. The Obama
administration feels impressed by the skill Qatar
displayed in theaters as diverse as Libya, Egypt
and Syria in finessing the Muslim Brotherhood and
other seemingly intractable Islamist groups and
helping the US to catapult itself to the "right
side of history" in the Middle East.
The
Obama administration is optimistic that if Fazl
could be left to able Qatari hands, he could be
recycled as an Islamist politician for a
democratic era.
Fazl does have the
credentials to bring Mullah Omar on board for
launching formal peace talks. Fazl enjoys
credibility among the Taliban militia and they
would be inclined to emulate his reincarnation.
His bonding with Islamist forces in Pakistan and
the ISI could be useful channels of communication
with Islamabad, which will come under pressure to
cooperate with the US-led peace talks, or at the
very least refrain from undercutting them.
Indeed, he is the perfect antidote to
Iran's influence in Afghanistan. Once Qatar is
through with him, Fazl becomes just the right
partner for Washington in the great game if the
Arab Spring were to appear in Central Asia,
holding prospects of regime change and the rise of
"Islamic democracies" in the steppes. Fazl can be
trusted to persuade Taliban not to make such a
terrible issue out of the US plans to establish
military bases in Afghanistan.
However,
will the plan work? Pakistan may have fired the
first salvo of the New Year to demolish the US
plan when Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit
said in Islamabad on Monday:
Establishing sustainable security
and stability in Afghanistan is impossible
without Iran's role. To establish security and
reinvigorate Afghanistan, Iran must be given due
attention and must be trusted, because pushing
the trend of peace and establishing durable
security and stability without Iran's
partnership is impossible.
Basit was
speaking within earshot of the whirring sound of
the Iranian cruise missile with the ferocious name
Qader (Mighty) fired from an undisclosed location
unambiguously demonstrating Tehran's capability to
enforce a blockade of the strategic Strait of
Hormuz.
An accomplished diplomat, he
certainly knows Doha lies just 547 kilometers away
as the crow flies from the Strait of Hormuz. Fazl
won't be safe in Doha.
Ambassador M
K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included
the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and
Turkey.
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