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Thursday March 28, 2024

Is Pakistan adrift?

By Babar Sattar
June 18, 2016

Legal eye

The writer is a lawyer based in
Islamabad.

In trying to hone a national security and foreign policy that prevents us from getting stuck in the nutcracker in the future, have we been caught in the nutcracker today?

The underlying logic of our Taliban policy has been that Pakistan is loath to have a hostile Afghanistan on its west and a hostile India on its east, who join hands and act in unison against us. And what do we end up with? Our state narrative right now is that we have two hostile neighbours on the east and west working together against us under the patronage of the sole superpower, the US.

We lost Major Ali Jawad Changezi in an exchange of fire between Afghan forces and the Pakistan Army at Torkham this week. When did we last lose a soldier in an exchange of fire on our western border? ‘Unprovoked and indiscriminate’ fire was supposed to be a feature of our eastern border. The NDS and RAW are hostile agencies we are told, working together to hurt Pakistan – the CPEC, in particular. And the US acted unilaterally against Mullah Mansour, we are told, breaching our sovereignty and our trust in the US.

Sartaj Aziz, our de-facto foreign minister, said last week that the US was a “selfish friend” that courted us when it needed us and ditched us when its interests were served. This was our gripe in the 1990s when the US lost interest in post-Soviet Afghanistan and we were faced with the Pressler, Glenn and Symington amendments for doing things we had been doing all along – developing and augmenting our nuclear weapons capability. Are we back in the 1990s as far as the Pakistan-US relationship is concerned?

The good news, some say, is that we are not. The US isn’t abandoning Afghanistan, where it retains its troops. It is hunting Taliban chiefs in the neighbourhood. It is building a closer relationship with India. So is the US staying put in Afghanistan good news or bad? It is unhappy with the CPEC, we assert. In the new great game in the region, it is working with India, Afghanistan and Iran to counter China and Pakistan, we allege. Thus, even our own analysis seems to be that the US isn’t leaving the region; only pursuing interests contrary to ours.

The US has long pushed Pakistan on nuclear disarmament without success. While it keeps trying, there appears to be recognition in US policy circles that our programme is India-centric and unless things improve on the Pakistan-India front, neither sticks nor carrots will cause Pakistan to abandon its programme. NSG membership isn’t the cause of present tensions. Cancellation of the F-16 deal and the withheld Coalition Support Fund are also symptoms. The real source of tension remains our divergent approaches to Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Pakistan seems to be saying that its Taliban policy is rooted in real politick and not ideology. We continue to argue that the US-led coalition forces have failed to defeat the Taliban despite all efforts. That peace will have a chance in Afghanistan if we can find a way for the Taliban to become a part of Afghanistan government structures. The problem with our approach is that while the US and Afghan governments have been interested in varying degrees, the Taliban have vowed to continue to fight and kill.

Pakistan has been asked to do one of three things. One, if Pakistan has influence with the Taliban it must bring them to the negotiation table in a state where they are willing to deal with the Afghan government. Two, if the Taliban are unwilling to talk peace and if they keep attacking Afghan citizens and soldiers, Pakistan should fight the Taliban. And three, if Pakistan is unwilling to fight the Taliban, it must, as a minimum, deny them sanctuary and force them back across the border, where it would be up to the US and Afghan forces to fight them.

Whether it was Pakistan’s inability to deliver on the first or refusal to opt for the second or third options, the drone attack on Mansour seemed to be a clear message that the US (goaded by the Afghan government) is running out of patience with Pakistan. In case we have come full circle, are we faced with the 90s or the post-9/11 Musharraf moment to make up our minds about who we are standing with?

While the great game is about economics, the scourge of terror that continues to feed thw physical wars of the 21st century is about ideology. And in this conflict the modern world is on one side and faith-driven extremists on the other. If we side with forces of intolerance, be they of any hue (including the Afghan Taliban), we will neither win our in-house fight against extremism nor be able to defend our economic interests in the ensuing great game. If we are on the wrong side of the fight against extremist ideology, we will have no friends, not even China.

The biggest threat to the CPEC is from absence of physical security in Pakistan, whether that is due to policy confusion and inaction on the issue of fighting extremism or because we continue to pursue policies that create opportunities for our enemies to stir trouble within our borders. And that is why it is essential to ask this question: in crafting our national security and foreign policy, is our reliance on tactical gains, short-term manoeuvres, drummed up xenophobia and angry defiance of the existing world order a source of strength or weakness for us?

Before the beginning of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the summer of 2014 and the subsequent National Action Plan conceived post-Peshawar, we had been told for years that simultaneously fighting terror outfits of all sorts was impossible. We were warned during the Kayani years that an all-out fight against extremists would come with serious blowback, and that without civilian political leaders preparing the public for reprisals the military could not cleanse the Aegean stables. And then something unspectacular happened. We got a new army chief who had different ideas.

While the politicos were still talking about peace talks, Zarb-e-Azb commenced. There was no need to engineer public opinion. The people of Pakistan got behind the operation because they had had enough of the terrorists and their extremist patrons. Two years later, the state – driven by the military – has established unequivocally that it has the capacity to accomplish what it wishes to. There have been terror attacks in retaliation. But the general sense of safety within Pakistan has grown significantly and the dreaded blowback never materialised.

But we are being told the same story when it comes to the Afghan Taliban. We don’t want to open a front against them because if they join hands with the TTP, we will have a new war at our hands, which will come with serious blowback across Pakistan. Aren’t we claiming that we have already defeated the TTP, routed it from Fata and broken the back of terror outfits across Pakistan? Why then should an alliance between the Afghan Taliban and decimated indigenous terror outfits pose mortal danger to Pakistan?

Are we backing the Afghan Taliban because if we don’t they can wage a war on our soil? If that is true, is that not an argument in favour of taking on the Afghan Taliban with full might just as we have taken on their cousins, the TTP and LeJ etc? The Afghan Taliban are bad news, just like the TTP and LeJ. Their worldview doesn’t belong in the 21st century. If we wouldn’t wish their ideology upon Pakistan, let’s not wish it upon Afghanistan either. And whatever else we do, let’s at least stop trying to punch above our weight.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu