And what, exactly, they want to achieve
With economic giant China rising in the east and the US forming an alliance with India to foster efforts to contain China, Asia is taking center stage in global politics
Afghanistan has yet to come out of bloodshed as the 16-year-old grisly and bloody war does not offer any prospect of an immediate end. Come March the fighting season would rage again as the spring offensive fans fighting in hills and fields of rugged Afghanistan.
The war is fast tilting towards Afghan insurgent group Taliban. The regime in Kabul is losing its grip and Taliban now control majority area while the ISAF forces decided to leave Afghanistan – a measure being labeled by experts as a “total debacle”.
In July 2016, in light of the deteriorating security conditions, the US postponed the withdrawal of its troops until December 2016 and decided to maintain a force of 8,400 troops in four garrisons in Kabul, Kandahar, Bagram and Jalalabad indefinitely due to Taliban resurgence after the Battle of Kunduz.
But the situation could not improve on ground. Not only have the Taliban reinforced their grip on rural Afghanistan, terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS) are also gaining momentum.
According to Bill Roggio, the editor of The Long War Journal, the Taliban have a significant footprint in Afghanistan. Mr Roggio confirms that about one-fifth of the country is controlled or contested by the Taliban. “They probably either control or heavily influence about a half of the country,” Roggio said.
According to a study in year 2016 by Watson Institute, the cost of war in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been enormous during the past 15 years. The combined death toll is 173,000 and over 183,000 seriously wounded. Though the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan remain interrelated, over 111,000 people have been killed and over 116,000 were injured only in Afghanistan. Of these, around 31,000 of the dead are Afghan civilians.
The war in Afghanistan has had its economic impact too. According to the US media, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost US taxpayers nearly $5 trillion dollars and counting. The war has cost the United States more than $800 billion in direct appropriations to the US State Department and Department of Defense. As the Costs of War Project has documented, there are many other economic costs in the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Successive efforts by the international community to start peace negotiations in Afghanistan have suffered blows. Pakistan, a key player in peace efforts, has been at the forefront in the reconciliation process between insurgents and the Afghan government but these efforts have not yielded desired results. Peace in Afghanistan is crucial for Islamabad as destabilisation in Kabul has a spillover effect on Pakistan.
Initially, Pakistan made efforts to convince the Taliban for peace talks with the then Afghan President Hamid Karzai but the efforts were not successful. Later a quadrilateral group was formed involving Pakistan, United States, China and Afghanistan.
After a successful meeting held in Murree, Pakistan, also attended by top Taliban leaders and Afghan government ministers, the group also failed to make a breakthrough after the Taliban refused to attend future meetings after the killing of their leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone attack.
However, it seems successive failures have not deterred Pakistan as Islamabad recently launched fresh efforts for peace in Afghanistan, involving Russia. Recently, officials from Pakistan, China and Russia met in Moscow to discuss a new group formation for Afghan peace.
However, the recent move by the United Kingdom to join the peace process has left many surprised. This is not the first time that Britain has expressed willingness to join efforts for peace in Afghanistan.
In a fresh move, Britain has launched diplomatic efforts to help resolve the lingering stalemate between Islamabad and Kabul. Relations between the neighbours have been strained for months due to differences on how to deal with the problem of militancy, as well as finding a political solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. However, experts in Pakistan blame Indian intelligence agency, RAW, for media hype to foment hatred against Islamabad.
British ambassador to Afghanistan, Dominic Jermey, on 25 January visited Islamabad and met with the prime minister’s adviser on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, and National Security Adviser Lt Gen (r) Naseer Khan Janjua. It was unusual for an envoy posted in Kabul to travel to Islamabad and meet officials.
Though media claimed that Jermey’s visit was part of efforts by his country to defuse the ongoing tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, my sources in the ministry of foreign affairs claim Britain wants a role in the Afghan peace process – a welcome sign by all means.
“The United Kingdom looks forward to playing a facilitative role to promote peace and stability in Afghanistan. Both sides agreed on the need of continuous efforts towards reconciliation with the goal of achieving sustained peace in Afghanistan,” an official statement issued in Islamabad said.
Britain expressed a similar desire around two years ago. A British diplomat had informed me that the Pakistanis had been approached of his government’s eagerness to help resolve Afghanistan.
Britain is no stranger to either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Rather, policymakers in London know Afghanistan and Pakistan better than the US as Britain ruled parts of both countries in the past. Britain is no small country as UK’s economy is one of the largest in the world.
But the question that remains unanswered is why Britain wants a role in Afghanistan? Perhaps the answer is that Britain wants to adopt an independent policy in world politics now, after disassociating itself from the European Union. With the signals from Washington suggesting President Trump would adopt a policy focusing on US itself, UK now wants to step into Asia where new strategic partnerships are developing.
With economic giant China rising in the east and the US forming an alliance with India to foster efforts to contain China, Asia is taking center stage in global politics.
Russia’s immediate attention towards Afghanistan and the emergence of a new Eurasian alliance involving Russia and China is pushing all states to realign their policies. Iran and Turkey are already making efforts to join the new regional alliance being formed by China, Russia and Pakistan.
Moreover, European countries are also concerned about peace in Afghanistan, which is their next door neighbour. Any destabilisation in Afghanistan would have a spillover impact on Europe too where already several terrorism incidents involving Afghan citizens have attracted attention. They all want Afghanistan to settle early.
Since the world is well aware of the influence Pakistan yields in Afghanistan, everyone wants an alliance with Islamabad. The unprecedented success of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the expertise of Pakistan’s army in counterterrorism and kinetic warfare and Islamabad’s strong influence over the Afghan Taliban make it key to success in the Afghanistan peace process.
However, Pakistan-Afghan relations have seen deterioration over the past few years due to the Indian factor. Indian intelligence operatives have used the insurgency as a tool to foment hate in Afghan media against Pakistan.
This anti-Pakistan nexus was visible during the recently held Heart of Asia conference where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ganged up with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to blame Pakistan for everything wrong in Afghanistan. The same nexus between India and Afghanistan had come to the fore last year when both countries boycotted SAARC summit in Islamabad.
However, Pakistan found unexpected support from Russian special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, who rejected criticism against Pakistan. Moreover, Iran also showed support for Pakistan at the moot by offering support to help resolve the Kashmir dispute, which jolted New Delhi and Kabul equally.
Since any violence in Afghanistan has a spillover effort inside Pakistan, Islamabad continues to emphasise that a politically negotiated settlement is the most viable solution for Afghanistan. Use of force by the world led by the powerful US army for 16 years has not brought peace to the country and therefore the focus should be on pursuing peace through Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process.
The Afghanistan administration needs to take an independent stance on regional issues rather than playing like a poodle to New Delhi’s dictates. Moreover, Kabul needs to take action against the terrorists of Islamic State and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) rather than providing them safe heavens, enabling them to mount terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.
Quick action against TTP and IS militants by Afghan government would help rebuild mutual trust and cement the relationship. While the new army chief, Gen Qamar Bajwa, has introduced a new team in the military, Pakistan would have to pay heed to the concerns being expressed by the regime in Kabul and action should be taken against those who are blamed by Kabul for subversive attacks inside Afghanistan. Only this can help cement peace process as helping proxies has only damaged both Afghanistan and Pakistan.