Confrontation serves no one

The 10th anniversary of the initiation of military action by the United States in Afghanistan passed quietly with the exception of some critical appraisals in the print and electronic media. This was a problematic decade for the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All had to adjust their original aspirations and goals regarding controlling Islamic militancy and terrorist activity in and around Afghanistan. Soon after the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, there was a debate in the media and academic circles as to who lost Afghanistan to extremist and hard line forces, like the Taliban. Most analysts thought that the Afghan situation in 2001 could be traced back to the global efforts in the 1980s to build-up Afghan-Islamic resistance in Pakistan for dislodging Soviet troops. This strengthened militant Islamic ideology and jihadi groups that were unable to create a credible alternate government after the exit of the Soviets. Their mutual rivalries plunged Afghanistan into a new crisis.
Pakistan partly succeeded in turning militancy to its advantage in Kashmir. However, this advantage was deceptive because it could not moderate the rivalry among the militant groups in the 1990s. These groups virtually went out of Pakistan’s control in the post-2001. However, by this time these groups developed varying degrees of societal roots in Pakistan, making it difficult for Pakistan’s security establishment to neutralise them. Some of these groups and Pakistan’s security establishment tolerated each other and avoided direct confrontation. Others challenged Pakistan in the tribal areas and mainland Pakistan. The initial optimism of the US to settle the Afghan situation in one to two years proved misplaced as it moved to Iraq in 2003. It had to adjust its goals from total elimination of the Taliban and a clear victory to a secure exit against the backdrop of an effective Kabul government. The Karzai government survived over the last ten years but its capacity to assert its writ is doubtful after the exit of the US/NATO troops. It has also revised its goal of knocking-out the Taliban to seeking political accommodation with some groups. The Karzai government faces a credibility crisis because of poor governance, corruption and under-representation of the Pashtuns in the Kabul-based state institutions.
Pakistan also faced setbacks. It had abandoned the Taliban and joined the global efforts to control terrorism in September 2001 with the hope of neutralising militant groups and stabilising Afghanistan in a year or so. This did not happen and the security situation deteriorated in Afghanistan in 2004-05 onwards. Their counterparts in Pakistan also showed greater activism in the tribal areas.
Pakistan virtually lost the effective control of the tribal areas to militant groups. The mainland Pakistan also witnessed the revival of the old groups that asserted their autonomy and developed links with the groups based in the tribal areas. It took a major effort on the part of the military to dislodge them from Swat/Malakand and South Waziristan in 2009. In five tribal areas, the military and different militant groups are fighting with each other with no sign of the military overwhelming them in the near future.
The major Pakistani failure is to build a widespread popular support for the military’s effort to control religious extremism and militancy. With the exception of the PPP, the MQM and the ANP, the political parties and groups maintain either ambiguous disposition towards Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups or express sympathy for them.
The government could not mobilise popular support for its discourse on religious extremism and militancy. The Islamic-jihadist discourse acquired far more acceptability that described counter-terrorism as American war that had nothing to do with Pakistan’s national interest and that Pakistan should stop military action in the tribal areas. This point-of-view runs into official circles, including the military, in varying degrees. The Pakistan government policies have actually strengthened the Islamic jihadist discourse. As Pakistan’s differences sharpened with the US on counter-terrorism strategies and the US began to emphasise that it was not getting enough Pakistani support in return for its financial support and military supplies, the government of Pakistan began to give inflated figures of Pakistan’s losses. Initially the government of Pakistan talked of Pakistani losses in countering terrorism as being over 30 billion dollars. By the beginning of 2011 the losses were said to be 84 billion dollars. This did not impress the US or the world community but the Islamists picked up Pakistan’s official data to argue that they were right in arguing that fighting terrorism did not serve Pakistan’s interests.
If the data on losses is correct, the government of Pakistan was unable to justify the continuation of cooperation with the US for countering terrorism. It failed to respond to the question whether Pakistan could save all losses had it stayed away from global efforts to counter terrorism? How would the continued support to the Taliban save Pakistan’s losses? Could Pakistan insulate its territory from the spillover of the conflict in Afghanistan? The decision of drawdown of US/NATO troops from Afghanistan has focused attention in Pakistan on the “day after” these troops quit. The general consensus among the analysts is that the civil strife in Afghanistan will escalate that will not only threaten the Kabul regime but spillover to Pakistani tribal areas, emboldening the militant groups based in mainland Pakistan.
A number of Pakistani and non-Pakistani scholars deliberated last week on the possible direction of the situation in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American/NATO troops in a conference in Islamabad organised by Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and Hanns Seidal Foundation. The overall tenor of the conference reflected anxiety and concern about the possible direction of events in Afghanistan after the troop withdrawal and their negative implications for the nighbouring states, especially Iran and Pakistan. A host of suggestions were made about what Pakistan and its security apparatus should do. The greater emphasis was on a region-based approach involving the states bordering Afghanistan. Afghanistan and the bordering states should pursue positive engagement rather than resorting to blame game or playing their individual games. Afghanistan and Pakistan need to work in harmony rather than the former picking up unnecessary confrontation with Pakistan because of its obsession with regime-survival and political status-quo in Kabul. Afghanistan needs to be more realistic and recognise its weaknesses. Pakistan will have to show patience towards Afghanistan. Confrontation does not serve the interests of either state.
The writer is an independent political and defence analyst.