Fighting the Pakhtuns

Ahmed Quraishi

There is a very simple question that every Pakistani government official needs to ask the Americans: If you fail to pacify the Pakhtuns in Afghanistan, is it Pakistan’s responsibility to sever historical ties and wage war against them?

This is the mother of all questions because it deals with the issue of some, not all, of the Afghan Taliban using Pakistani territory to attack occupation armies in their country. Apparently this is the excuse the United States is using to expand its failed Afghan war into Pakistan. US officials say Pakistanis are unable to exercise sovereignty over their own territory. Then some here inside Pakistan – in politics and the media – use this argument to ask another question: isn’t Al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban violating Pakistani sovereignty by using our border-pockets as hideouts away from action inside Afghanistan? This argument is used to justify US violations of the Pak-Afghan international border. If the Afghan Taliban can do it, why not the US military? So the justification goes.

Pakistan still has time to come out strongly with two arguments at policy level. One, there is no way of completely stopping Pakistani Pakhtuns, who are an integral part of the Pakistani nation, from sympathising with the Pakhtuns in Afghanistan. And two, the US must solve the ‘Pakhtun problem’ inside Afghanistan. The solution is not by starting a war between the Pakistani military – manned in substantial part by the Pakhtuns – and Pakistani Pakhtun tribes or some of the Afghan Taliban, like the so-called Haqqani network. This will not fix the toy the Americans broke in Afghanistan.

In other words: what is it the US is doing wrong in Afghanistan to spur Pashtun and Taliban resistance, including pushing some of them inside Pakistan? And should Pakistan respond by killing these Pakhtuns because the US says so?

There are two more strong arguments that can strengthen a Pakistani policy review, which is overdue nine years into a failed war.

One is the fact that the Pakhtun and Taliban resistance against occupation in Afghanistan is not a function of the Pakistani tribal areas. The US military dare not claim that Pakistan’s devastated tribal belt is alone responsible for the rout facing US, NATO and ISAF forces across Afghanistan. But this is what the Americans imply when they shift the world focus to Pakistan without anyone from the Pakistani side disputing this twisted American logic.

And the second argument has to do with Al-Qaeda. Pakistan needs to dispute American claims about the quality and strength of Al-Qaeda presence in the Pakistani tribal belt. London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies is not exactly a den of antiwar activism. In a report last month, the think-tank questioned the US-policy line that Al-Qaeda can muster attacks anywhere outside Afghanistan or Pakistan.

If anything, we are seeing a US-occupied Afghanistan becoming a magnet for unknown terrorists from multiple backgrounds and questionable loyalties using Afghan soil to enter our tribal belt, as in the case of the Germans involved in the alleged Mumbai-style Europe-terror plot. Washington is conveniently using these conspiracy theories to expand its war onto Pakistani territory without any credible evidence.

Pakistan does not have a quarrel with the Afghan Pakhtuns or the Afghan Taliban. The latest US reports and assertions that Pakistan’s spy agencies maintain contacts with either are ridiculous. Islamabad must maintain those contacts. In fact, we must expand contacts with the Afghan Taliban in view of the double game the United States played with us in Afghanistan over the last eight years, where it turned Kabul into an Anti-Pakistan Central and deliberately expanded and continues to encourage Indian presence on our western borders.

The American duplicity extends to peace talks. Washington wants us to enter into a war with Afghanistan’s Pakhtuns while it secretly establishes contacts and tries to win them over behind Pakistan’s back. The same argument extends to the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Kashmiri groups. Islamabad can’t shower bombs upon Kashmiris who decide to become part of LeT or support their kin resisting Indian atrocities in Kashmir. The solution there too is for India to resolve its own problems. Its festering occupation in Kashmir, like the festering American occupation in Afghanistan, is breeding a two-way violence that first and foremost de-stabilises Pakistan. Our answer can’t be to send troops to crack down on Pakhtuns and Kashmiris. others need to answer for their actions that are destabilising Pakistan and the region.

Courting Pakistan: Forging a Strategic Partnership

The United States and Pakistan is the world’s oddest couple, with an on-again, off-again friendship that has survived since the 1950s. Last week both sides completed a “strategic dialogue” in Washington amid fears that they were headed for another break-up. Those fears can only be countered if both the U.S. and Pakistan keep the larger goal in mind: the development of a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan.

Last week’s dialogue reiterated common goals on some key issues, including energy, infrastructure, agriculture and trade. But the hard issues – the Afghan Taliban operating inside Pakistani space, the Pakistan-India conflict over Kashmir, and Islamabad’s wish for a civil nuclear deal similar to the one given to India – were politely avoided in public commentary.

Part of the problem is Pakistan’s wariness of U.S. intentions. As the late Pakistani dictator General Zial ul Haq once explained to his ambassador in Washington, Jamsheed Marker, “Being friends with the United States is like living on the banks of a great river. Every four years it changes course, and leaves you either flooded, or high and dry!” The U.S. showers aid and attention on Pakistan when it suits its strategic interests in the region and then leaves. Pakistan meanwhile seeks security against a larger and potentially hostile neighbor to the east: India. Each pretends to meet the other’s needs while papering over differences.

The U.S., on its part, sees a deceptive ally in Pakistan; one which seeks aid to use it for defense against India while pretending to meet U.S. regional aims. The Obama administration is attempting to craft a new, longer-term relationship with Pakistan, and American officials travel frequently to the country and return praising the relationship effusively. But it is hard to distinguish their attempts to proclaim success for their individual missions from the reality on the ground.

The passage of the Kerry-Lugar Bill that promises at least $7 billion of aid to Pakistan over five years should have been a good omen, but Pakistani military and public opposition to the bill has put a crimp in the relationship, adding to the public perception of the U.S. as an intrusive and overbearing friend. The army high command, confident after its recent successes against its internal militancy and buoyed by public approval of its actions, recently revived the dialogue with the U.S. on its terms. Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani chose to focus on high visibility, high impact projects that would meet the country’s urgent energy and infrastructure needs, rather than dissipating its effect on a wide range of softer social sector projects with longer gestation periods.

To a large extent, Kayani’s actions appeared to be in accord with some of the targets set by Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. However, the real test will be in Pakistan’s ability to set up an effective governance framework to implement the projects rapidly and without leakage of benefits to the traditional elites that suck up assistance for their own benefit. If most of the aid begins to reach average Pakistanis, then the U.S. and Pakistan could build on this new structure. If not, then the U.S. Congress likely will call in its auditors and cut off the flow.

One piece of good news has been the rapid provision of aid for key road-building projects in South Waziristan that have been undertaken via the FATA Development Authority by the Pakistan army’s Frontier Works Organization. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported to have helped push this aid through after her exchanges with Kayani, who came up with this idea. If this project model succeeds, much more could be done in the frontier areas by bringing the locals on board to help identify and implement necessary projects.

Kayani is clearly trying to build bridges with the U.S. as a necessary ally. But the officer corps still harbors residual mistrust. To remove it, Pakistan must improve its civil governance by taking ownership of its project plans, setting targets and achieving them. The U.S. must deliver what Pakistan needs rapidly, and without too much intrusive monitoring that many Pakistanis fear is secretly designed to identify the location of Pakistan’s strategic nuclear assets. The U.S. must also give the Pakistan military more usable weapons to fight its militancy. And it must use its influence on India to give Pakistan breathing room, so it can concentrate on the war within rather than stay ready for action on two fronts, one against India and the other on the Afghan border. Opening U.S. markets to Pakistani textiles and other goods will also help in the near term.

In the longer run, Pakistan needs help to move up the economic value chain and into manufacturing goods. With its growing population, it needs GDP growth of 6% or more each year to keep improving the lives of its 175 million inhabitants, half of whom are below 18 years of age. That growth depends on foreign investment, which is critically dependent on security and good governance, both of which have been in short supply in recent years. But Pakistan must also avoid becoming dependent on aid or ceding its sovereignty in the process of acquiring aid. As its first military dictator, Mohammad Ayub Khan, put it bluntly: Pakistan needs “friends not masters.” What happens after the strategic dialogue in Washington will help prove the truth of that statement.