Elections in Pakistan, Afghanistan to determine future of region: US expert

It is the outcome of elections in Pakistan and Afghanistan rather than the size of US troops in post-2014 Afghanistan that would more critically determine the future of the region, a noted American expert said.

Underscoring the importance of the upcoming democratic transitions in neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan – which have been at the forefront of the fight against al Qaeda-linked terror – Peter Bergen, director of New America Foundation told a Congressional hearing that last Saturday (March 16) marked an “extraordinary” moment in Pakistan’s history, as this was the first time that a civilian government had served its entire five-year term (from 2008 to 2013).

He said for the first time in its history, the Pakistani military appeared both unwilling and unable to mount a coup against any civilian government.

Appearing before a House Foreign Affairs sub-committee, Bergen argued that it was the outcome of the general elections in Pakistan this year and in Afghanistan next year, rather than the precise number of US soldiers, who were posted in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of American combat troops in December 2014 that were “the most critical factors in determining the future of both countries, and also in securing the long term interests of the United States in the region”.

“Around six weeks from now, in May, Pakistanis will go again to the polls to elect a new civilian government for a five-year term, and there is now a good prospect for continued, uninterrupted civilian government until at least 2018.”

Despite the visibility of the hard-line religious parties on the streets of Pakistan, in the voting booth, these parties had recently fared very poorly, he told lawmakers, while expressing his views on way forward in the region.

Although, a coalition of religious parties secured control of two of Pakistan’s four provinces in an election in 2002 and 11 percent of the votes to the National Assembly, they garnered only a piddling two percent of the vote in the 2008 election.

“The showing of the pro-Taliban religious parties in the May 2013 election is likely to be equally unimpressive,” he said.

He felt that an unprecedented era of lengthy civilian rule would help the political governments exercise more influence on national security and foreign policy toward Afghanistan and India.

Another great opportunity (and potential peril) will present itself in Afghanistan within the next year, when Afghans go to the polls in April 2014 for the third presidential election since the fall of the Taliban.

“If that election is perceived as being relatively free and fair this would go a long way to ease tensions in the Afghan body politic, increase Afghanistan’s overall security, and reassure both Afghan and outside investors that the country has a promising future.”

“On the other hand, if the 2014 election is seen as unfair, corrupted and is deeply contested this would likely precipitate a vicious circle of conflict, deteriorating security, and capital flight.”

“The US, therefore, should do everything it can to provide technical and security assistance to make these elections go as well as possible. But unlike what happed in the run up to the 2009 Afghan presidential election, the US should not get involved in backing certain candidates.”

He told the panel that Pakistan had some important common goals with the United States on Afghanistan’s future.

“On Afghanistan, Pakistan has some important common goals with the United States, NATO and Afghans themselves. Pakistan does not want to see Afghanistan collapse into a renewed civil war, which would destabilise Pakistan, nor does it want to see the Taliban in charge of the country again,” Bergen said.

“These basic shared goals – no civil war and no Taliban control of Afghanistan can help to create the conditions for a successful post-2014 Afghanistan,” noted Bergen, who along with other analysts testified on the way forward in Pakistan and Afghanistan after 2014 US military drawdown.

Bergen said the Afghans could go a long way to reducing the tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan by recognising the Durand Line that was drawn by the British in 1893 as the border that divided Afghanistan from what is now Pakistan.

“The fact that Afghanistan doesn’t officially recognise this border makes its claims that Pakistani-based militias routinely violate this border ring a little hollow,” he pointed out.

He said a key step to improving the relationship would be a shift from a relationship in which the US sent aid to Pakistan to one in which the emphasis was on trade that benefits both sides. “In short, trade rather than aid.”

Textiles constituted 60 percent of Pakistani exports, half its manufacturing output and a third of its industrial employment, Bergen told lawmakers. “Yet Pakistani textiles make up less than 4 percent of US textile imports. Pakistani textile imports to the United States are taxed at roughly 12 percent, while those from France are taxed at only three percent. The tariffs on Pakistani textiles should be reduced.”

He said a further step should be to negotiate a US-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement. Even if such negotiations were protracted, as was often the case with such agreements, they would be a signaling device showing that the United States was serious about a new kind of relationship with Pakistan and would help to assuage the bruised Pakistani feelings surrounding the US-Indian civilian nuclear deal.

On the United States’ controversial drone programme, he said, “Seemingly at least partly in response to the deep unpopularity of the drone programme in Pakistan, the number of drone shrikes has declined significantly since 2010 when there was the greatest number of strikes, 122, to 48 strikes last year. This is a good development because if the cost of drone programme that kills largely low level members of the Taliban is deeply angering 180 million Pakistanis that is a very high price to pay.”