Complaints upon complaints

Reading the comments on reports of the drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansur on Saturday, one can only wonder if the commentators are so blue-eyed or just have a bad memory. There are two main complaints about the incident. One is the complaint of Pakistan’s sovereignty that was damaged by the drone attack that came unannounced on Saturday afternoon while ‘information’ about it from the US side came on Saturday night after the attack. Well, this is a rather hypocritical complaint. Since the Musharraf government had joined the so-called war on terror (that produced more terror and spread it out over Pakistan) successive governments of PPP and PML-N have condoned (may be unwritten) agreements that the US can target Taliban with drone strikes and all they did was make a token noise about it. So it is well possible that this complaint is again a token one. But on the other hand Pakistan under PPP rule has already conceded its sovereignty to the US when they allowed the Abbottabad action in 2011. So one wonders why Nawaz Sharif acts upset and what he intends to do after coming back from London. It is in the first place the Pakistan army that insists on cooperation with the American and as long as this does not change the civilian government has no chance.

The second complaint is that Mullah Mansur was not cooperating with the ill-conceived quadrilateral peace talks though he had been promoted as new Taliban leader with the support of Pakistan because he was considered ‘ready for talks’. But when he assumed leadership some of the Taliban groups refused to accept him and the organization split up. Mansur during his short stint as official leader had to learn that the mood among the Taliban is not in favour of peace talks with the Afghan government.

The Taliban are an indigenous Afghan tribal construct where all constituent parts have equal rights in the decision making process. A leader can only lead if he recognises and accepts the spirit of the shura and leads accordingly. He cannot impose his opinion on the constituent parts of the organisation. Thus when Mullah Mansur recognised that the majority of the Taliban groups were against peace talks he had to accept this as the political line to be followed if he wanted to remain in power and not become controversial. There is no way for authoritarian leadership models in Afghan tribal society. Regardless if the next leader had been Mullah Omar’s eldest son or Sirajuddin Haqqani, both will have to follow the same line.

The only comment on Mullah Mansur’s death that makes sense is the one of Rahimullah Yusufzai who called it ‘the end of all peace talks’ for a long time to come.  The murder of Mansur will be avenged no doubt. Then a shurah was to elect a new leader, this time according to the rules which may take a while. The outcome of the process would be a more united and less fragmented Taliban that has improved chances in the ongoing war against foreign occupation. President Obama who is considered an ‘educated’ man has once again shown that he doesn’t understand much about foreign relations and especially not about how politics work in Afghanistan. If peace was his real goal he has successfully shot himself in the knee.

Ali Ashraf Khan

Karachi