Arguably, the US’ highest priority today in the South Asian regional context is disengagement and orderly retreat from the Afghan conflict. What the US doesn’t want is to leave behind a weak Afghanistan. For this purpose, the US will support Afghanistan and in doing that it has already declared Afghanistan a major non-NATO ally and has signed a long term ‘strategic partnership agreement’ with it pledging Afghanistan support through 2024. A future stable Afghanistan is the world’s insurance policy against terrorism. Donors from world over are also likely to pledge $ 16 billion or more to the safety and security of Afghanistan up to 2015. The world is ready to stand behind and support the emergence of a stable and secure Afghanistan. But are we?
It is important today that we force a change in the behaviour of the Afghan government, or the sponsors of the terrorist proxy groups or the terrorist groups themselves who operate against us from the soil of Afghanistan. Because if we don’t do this now we may not have a prepared script that the world must read and know the manner in which we will defend and respond if threatened with offensive actions. We must demonstrate our military capability to defend our western borders and if we cannot we must build on that capability with speed now.
We must also eliminate all ‘safe heavens’ that we are told harbour terrorists. These we can ill afford to keep; because if we do nothing about them, then we may in future invite ‘hot pursuit’ in the form of joint US-Afghan commando operations across the border inside the Pakistani territory. ANA or its proxies must fear an able and capable army on the western borders that can stop them from operationalising their military capabilities to execute operations inside Pakistani territory. We have already been reminded by US about the consequences of keeping ‘the snakes in the backyard’. We have also been told to stop testing the patience of USA. All these warnings warrant a change of direction for our afghan policy, the fundamental components of which have already been spelled out by our ex PM during his address to the students of NDU last month.
We must now decide the ‘red lines’ that we as a state expect the ANA or its proxies not to cross in dealing with the security situation on our western borders. These red lines must be communicated to the Afghan government with clarity and conviction. Hot pursuit or limited tactical operation by ANA or its proxies inside our borders may be one such red line.
The defining challenge for the Pakistan army in the years ahead would be to ensure it does not allow any cross border operations inside the Pakistani territory from Afghanistan. Simultaneously, it must ensure that the ‘safe heavens’ we have been told are still harbouring terrorists are not used as platforms to initiate aggressive action inside Afghanistan. The time for Pakistan army to allocate additional resources and prepare a credible defence against the growing threat on our Western border is today. Tomorrow may be too late.
MUHAMMAD ALI EHSAN
Karachi
