As insurgency stands at a critical stage, the TTP containment must take precedence
For once there is some method in Karzai’s madness about Pakistan – a hatred he has nurtured since his refugee days in Quetta, when he blamed his father’s murder on the Taliban assassins backed by the ISI. Since becoming president, he has openly accused Islamabad of continuing covert aid to the Taliban proxies, provided logistical help to Indian intelligence near the Pak-Afghan border and exploited ISI-CIA differences, complicating insurgencies on both sides.
But last week’s skirmishes at the Durand line, followed by Karzai’s advice that the Taliban turn their guns on Pakistan instead of stoking the anti-government insurgency, seem more a calculated series of events than the usual isolated incident followed by his irrational rhetoric.
Late next year after the Americans, and Karzai, leave, few dispute that Afghanistan will most likely disintegrate into territories held by powerful warlords. Whatever government comes to power in Kabul and however limited its writ, it is sure to be dominated, or at least influenced, by the Taliban. The insurgency, gaining ground and momentum since the infamous Spring Offensive of 2006, has not only outfought coalition forces on the ground, but also outwitted them in propaganda warfare. And most Afghans find it difficult to fault the Taliban’s portrayal of Karzai as a second Shah Shuja, the installed puppet from the British wars and the original Great Game. No better analysis of similarities between the two, including their Popalzai descent, can be found than Wiliam Dalrymple’s recent piece in the New York Times (The Ghosts of Afghanistan’s Past, NYT, April 13, 2013).
According to recent interviews, Karzai is determined to reverse his reputation of ineffectiveness and corruption – pretty fair charges considering he was handpicked by the NATO countries at a Bonn conference to represent the Afghan people, and recent admission that he did indeed receive hundreds of millions in unaudited CIA money. No doubt much of the money was channeled to power brokers through his late brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, hated as the richest and most corrupt man in Afghanistan till he was killed by his most trusted bodyguard in 2011.
In playing the Pakistan card to save his legacy, Karzai is also cleverly trying to divide the Taliban. He is aware that Mulla Omer forbade Afghan insurgents from engaging on the Pakistani side, which led to serious differences with al Qaeda, who later bankrolled the TTP in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Last week’s border clash erupted after Afghan security guards fired at a Pakistani military contingent erecting a border gate. Subsequent claims that Kabul ‘will never recognise the Durand Line’ and ‘Pakistan is the real enemy’ succeeded in mobilising large demonstrations across the country, uniting Afghans on an anti-Pakistan front, even leading parliamentarians to cite the ISI as Afghanistan’s biggest problem. And since, like any successful insurgency, the Taliban have been careful to cultivate public opinion in their favour – owing largely to the incompetence of the central government – thousands rallying to Kabul’s call might just split opinion in the rebellion hierarchy.
In Pakistan, where the TTP continues to reorganize – despite military successes in the tribal area – the administration is still without a cohesive strategy. The outgoing government had its ups and downs, but it finally settled on a doable arrangement – the army will bolster gains in the north, but stop short of going too far, especially since desperation tactics have pushed militants to strategic enclaves near main cities. The military now recognizes the insurgency as an existential threat, but all sides will push for talks, with steady de-escalation the only rational objective. Yet the N-League’s waltz back to Islamabad marks a sharp shift to the right within the power establishment. The military has just been through a painstaking cleansing of personnel that viewed any suspicion of the clergy, even its most militant ranks, as blasphemy. And the Lashkars and Jaishs that the League has long cajoled exercise considerable influence in its constituencies, threatening operational paralysis.
The insurgency stands at a critical stage. Nawaz must realise that caving in to rightist influences at this point risks seriously weakening Islamabad’s position. And the further the Taliban push, the more the chance of forces across the western border trying to funnel their problems into Pakistan. Containment of the TTP must take precedence, regardless of concerns of N’s friends who continue to maintain links with the militants. The possibility of talks exists only so long as the military clutch ensures a position of strength. One false move will not only reinvigorate the TTP, but also an increasingly hostile, and adventurous, Kabul. In the words of David Ignatius’s fictional CIA mastermind Ed Hoffman, later immortalized in Body of Lies by Russell Crowe, “We take our foot off the throat of this enemy for one minute, and our world changes completely”.
The writer is Middle East Correspondent, Pakistan Today, and can be reached at [email protected]
