Dr Marvin G Weinbaum, scholar-in-residence and Director Pakistan Center, Middle East Institute, WashingtonDC, is professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served as an analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1999 to 2003. He is currently a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute in WashingtonDC.
His research, teaching, and consultancies have focused on the issues of national security, state building, democratisation, and political economy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author and editor of six books and has written over a 100 journal articles and book chapters. Dr Weinbaum was awarded Fulbright Research Fellowships for Egypt in 1981-82 and Afghanistan in 1989-90, and was a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in 1996-97.
He has expertise on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. TNS spoke with him on his recent visit to Pakistan.
Excerpts follow:
The News on Sunday: There are impressions that America is on the back foot in Afghanistan after a long war. How do you see the situation now and after the withdrawal of US troops and NATO forces in Afghanistan? Will the situation worsen, as many people fear?
Marvin G Weinbaum: I don’t think defeat is the right word. Americans are leaving Afghanistan because Afghanistan, today, is capable of taking on most of the responsibilities that had been exercised by the Americans and others. It is time for this responsibility to shift. Have they (Americans) accomplished everything? No. But, on the other side, they are leaving behind the potential for a viable Afghanistan. The American and NATO forces target was to rid the area of Taliban extremists and those who support them. We accomplished that very early on. But we did not finish the job. The US got involved in Iraq. It worked the way but it lost its focus. If you compare it with the Afghanistan in the 1990s and 2000, there has been a great deal of accomplishment.
Regarding the future, the situation might worsen. The Afghan Taliban are not looking for negotiations. Also, the US withdrawal does not mean they are going to walk away from this region. They pledge to support the country economically, rather handsomely for the next decade; the international community will be active here. If they have legitimate election, legitimate government, and if they have an army which is capable to stand against Taliban and they can pay the salaries of and make the adjustment from one economy to other then there will be no issue.
TNS: Don’t you think Afghan Taliban will try to disrupt law and order; and they will attempt to regain their areas leading the situation to a civil war? Will the US totally withdraw?
MW: Of course they will. But they are not going to be able to overrun heavily populated areas of Afghanistan. It is not the 1990s. There is danger of civil war if the government fails in improving the economy and if the army does not remain intact. But one should not assume that there will be a civil war. Can there be a civil war? Yes there can be. What the US is trying to get across is that the opportunity is here for a viable Afghanistan after 2014. Pakistan may be the most crucial after 2014 in determining the future of Afghanistan. And the future of Afghanistan ultimately is going to determine the future of Pakistan because if Afghanistan falls prey to extremist forces this will have a direct impact on Pakistan.
Particularly talking about Afghanistan, we have given the country the capacity to be able to manage if there is continued outside assistance and, as I say, if Pakistan and Afghanistan can recognise that they have common enemies and common interests. And that is going both ways -- if Pakistan falls prey to the extremist forces or if Afghanistan falls prey this will be detrimental to both countries. Their insurgencies are intertwined. If the two countries are not on same page, they can consolidate themselves and turn back.
Also, in those days Pakistan was not a nuclear capable country nor was India. We did not have on our minds international terrorism. Those two factors have changed everything. There is no way the international community can walk away and expect that these problems of proliferation and dangers of conflict in the subcontinent which will affect not only the region but the globe are going away.
Overwhelmingly, the Afghan people want the continued presence of international community. And so do the countries of the region like Pakistan, China, Russia, India and Iraq; all have said Afghanistan has to get continuous international support. The only way to get it is to sign strategic agreements.
TNS: Pakistan, these days, is engaged in talks with Taliban. As an observer from the US, how do you see these talks?
MW: I think this could have a very negative impact for this region. If an agreement is reached and it will be agreement here on resolving the differences with extremists; those differences are too great. That is not going to happen. What the agreement might be like is to contain Pakistan’s insurgency. But what will happen is that once they succeed there (if they do) they will again join forces against Pakistan.
I don’t think they will probably reach an agreement. But if they do ,that can be a danger for Afghanistan. Pakistan should explore chances of peace but it should not be under the illusion that somehow they are going to resolve these differences on either side because at this point in time at least the insurgents are in control but it doesn’t have to be that way forever.
If you have right policies, these insurgents will shrink. But the way it is right now on both sides, the insurgents want a kind of government which is antithetical to the constitutional system of both countries. Basically it changes the character of the country. I think that kind of resolution is irreconcilable.
TNS: But if state does not talk to them, it will have to fight with them and that will lead to further chaos. Also, people here blame the US for creating this monster after leaving them alone in 1990s. Can these extremists now dominate the state too?
MW: It is a danger which Pakistan should have addressed a long time ago. It is a danger Pakistan has allowed to fester. The danger has grown overtime. Not just in the Frontier but elsewhere in Pakistan. That’s exactly the problem that Pakistan has been blaming others for what becomes its problem. Now how the problem started is because of the jihad and civil war. And it is not that others are not responsible for how the problem started. But now the problem exists on its own. It is not going to go away unless you take it away. Of course, jihad was supported by the US at that time.
Jihad was paid for by the US and Saudi Arabia. It then turned over all funds towards Pakistan to run the jihad. It was the jihad against communists. This jihad, in the 1980s, led to the change of leadership structure in the Frontier province where the traditional leaders gave way to those who had money and guns. It was an unintended consequence. People who should have seen danger in it, creating this mindset of radical forces, did not see it. And by the international community withdrawing, it allowed this growth inside Afghanistan and ultimately inside Pakistan.
Now we should not be asking who is responsible but what we can do. The question is what policies are going to address the situation that has become a major threat. And if we think that threat is overwhelmingly powerful then we are going to concede to it. Then it is going to take a lot of resolution on the part of both countries to come to the conclusion that they have a shared interest in curbing extremism.
What has to disappear is the idea that either country can give sanctuary to the insurgents of the other country. Neither country is going to have stability if the other country fails. Also, Pakistan used these jihadi and other groups to further its foreign policy but in doing that it created a domestic threat.
At the moment, Afghan Taliban do not represent domestic threat because they do not turn on Pakistan state but Pakistani Taliban have turned on the Afghanistan state. There is no reason why they should take over Pakistan. Pakistan is capable of defending its country against this if it has the political will to do so.
TNS: There has been a lot of trust deficit in Pak-US relations for the past few years. How do you see the relations between the two countries now and in the future?
MW: We have come a long way since then. I think we have stabilised the relationship. We have better understating of each other now. Pakistan is going to be dependent upon on China. That is not the real issue for the US. Pakistan is going to have sensitivities the US has to recognise, for example, it does not serve the US to push Pakistan to take action against extremists. Pakistan has to decide that for itself. That’s the real difference. Also, both countries have concerns about terrorism, stability in this region; and nuclear proliferation.
TNS: The recent Saudi aid to Pakistan is under hard criticism with fears that it might lead to another proxy war in Pakistan -- a war between Saudi Arabia and Iran? What do you think of this development? Is this a good choice for Pakistan?
MW: Saudi Arabia bears some responsibility against unintended consequences. They want to spread the Wahabi faith. They want to keep Iran out and in doing so they enabled, may be inadvertently, the extremism to grow. Extremism in Pakistan is not in Saudi Arabia’s interest. All the countries’ interest is in having a stable Pakistan. Pakistan should make every effort to avoid any proxy war.
This government is tilting towards Saudi Arabia more than before. But I have confidence, for example, when it comes to sharing nuclear weapons, Pakistan is not going to do that. But Pakistan has reasons to maintain relations with both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran can do a lot of damage in Pakistan, while Saudi Arabia is willing and feels an obligation to help Pakistan because Pakistan can help Saudi Arabia in different ways.
Pakistan can provide security for countries in the Gulf including Saudi Arabia. I think Pakistan has the right to pursue whatever policies it feels is going to be in its best interest. I think Pakistan will have to have relations with both countries (Iran and Saudi Arabia).
TNS: While you suggest Pakistan to have balanced relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia, the US opposed the Pak-Iran gas pipeline project. How do you see Iran-America relations and their effects on Pakistan?
MW: If the Iran and America ties improve, this will also improve relationship between Pakistan and the US. Not everybody agrees on this but I think any kind of rapprochement with Iran and the US is going to make it possible. If Iran would not have gone into nuclear proliferation, the US would not have any objection to Pak-Iran gas pipeline. There are technical issues between Iran and the US and the major hiccup between their relations is whether the US agrees that Iran is able to enrich uranium and if so how much. That’s the issue.