Beyond diplomatic niceties

Considering how Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani lambasted Pakistan on foreign soil, you wouldn’t imagine that he was the president of a country that does not belong to itself. Since 1979, every ruler in Afghanistan has owed his existence to foreign masters.

Ghani is a forlorn nominee who will fall like a house of cards were the US to walk out, leaving him to himself. He even lacks support of a local warlord group to survive. Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah is at least supported by a faction. Ghani has no legs to stand on in the position that he holds.

A country that owes its economy to a continuing war and welcome billions – $50 billion from the US alone, $13 billion of which is fed directly into the Afghan economy every year – cannot be faulted for misspeaking about a neighbour that is Afghanistan’s ‘real’ lifeline.

That he spoke in India goes to prove that money still buys loyalty in Kabul. He blamed Pakistan for supporting the Taliban which, to him, earned their loyalty for Pakistan. But Ghani did not inverse the logic on his own fragile state acting as an agent of his paymasters - Washington and Delhi.

He has no qualms about settling with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – an original Taliban and a sworn enemy of foreign occupiers, with links as old as 1979 with Pakistan – but slavishly continues to cite the Haqqanis as his real and present danger.

The denominational Taliban, in whose fold the Haqqanis belong, now have a political office in Qatar and have active contacts with both Americans and the Afghan establishment, becoming politically reconcilable.

With some imagination, Ghani can reduce his burden of strife by a rapprochement with them but lacks the political power in Kabul to carve space for it. Frustrated and fettered, he continues to spew venom at others to compensate for his own and his state’s inadequacies. Had Ghani’s NDS not gone berserk with the news of Mullah Omar’s demise and not sabotaged the peace process under the Quadrilateral arrangement, Afghanistan may have been well on the road to peace.

When you stop being your own master and do someone’s bidding, you deliver the spoils for the other only. Until June 2014, it may have been right to allege misconduct on Pakistan’s part. Since then, Operation Zarb-e-Azb has rid North Waziristan from the debilitating clutches of groups which hurt not only Afghanistan but Pakistan as well. Most of these groups either stand fully vanquished or have been thrown back to their bases in Afghanistan where they came from following the US onslaught after 9/11. It is now up to Ghani and the American forces to deal with them as they please. Inabilities within the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are surely not of Pakistan’s making.

Even when these groups were ensconced in North Waziristan, they were always within the easy reach of American drones which loitered unhindered over these regions, successfully targeting many others. Why and how the Haqqanis survived remains an enigma.

Ghani has singularly failed to envision what stares Afghanistan in the face as the ‘real threat’ – Daesh. The Americans continue to remain in Afghanistan – and Donald Trump will surely state this at some point – to ensure Daesh does not find an alternative parking spot since the noose is tightened around it in Iraq and Syria. Ghani cannot foresee this threat because Afghanistan has outsourced its sovereignty to others, who, Ghani believes, will not only sustain him in power but will also know what to do with the threats.

With such lackadaisical approach to matters of security, his own department of internal security, the NDS, openly dwells with Indian intelligence agencies, concurrently serving their cause and furthering their agenda.

As it happens, splinter groups of the TTP – of Pakistani origin, and which target Pakistan and have found havens in Afghanistan under official patronage – also rub shoulders with Daesh. Many of them having declared open allegiance to its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. While such franchises serve the Indian and Afghan cause to foster terrorism in Pakistan, they also build on the dirty work of Daesh, giving it the eminence it needs to anchor itself in this region.

Ghani failed to register this fact in Amritsar. The Heart of Asia conference became more about how India and Afghanistan could collectively criticise Pakistan rather than secure Afghanistan’s future. In the meanwhile, Daesh is finding an increasing foothold in Afghanistan. 

The NDS may like to help Ghani learn a bit more. However, both may not be inclined to teach or learn for other reasons.

There was a lot Sartaj Aziz could have said to Ghani’s harangues in Amritsar. But he did not. At least two issues stood out. Ghani blamed Pakistan for providing sanctuaries to the Taliban. Although this is true, these are not the Taliban alone but over five million Afghans who have gravitated towards Pakistan since 1979, found home here and are now unwilling to leave. Without a sanctuary they wouldn’t have a place to go to. Some of these elements turned against Afghanistan and kept the cadres supplied, while others chose to turn on Pakistan.

It has been a while for Ghani to have taken back his people and eliminated their reasons to continually revisit Pakistan. But he has not. This leaves Pakistan in a quandary. It can either play the nice guy and host them for a longer period while suffering increasing terrorism emanating from support structures existing among them; or, it can act as the realist, put its foot down and secure our country.

A mention of Kulbhushan Yadav dwelling with these Afghans could have reinforced the message.

Likewise, the $500 million given to Afghanistan could have been better used by Pakistan to put border control mechanisms into place. This could have helped convert the Durand Line into a controlled border to save Pakistan from the toxic brew of morphing terror consortiums. Pakistan should have agreed to this advice. We can hardly be in a race to give money away.

The time for niceties – and, in fact, timidity – is over. The time for the diplomacy of the nineteenth and twentieth century is over.

But it is rather too much to expect from some fossils at the Foreign Office. It is time to find some spine and respond at the diplomatic level in kind, putting before the world Pakistan’s case of fighting the evil of terror both outside and inside the country.

It doesn’t help to be the whipping boy of the region and be coy about it. Pakistan lacks the necessary wherewithal to conduct today’s diplomacy and thus continues to appear the loser. At Amritsar, Pakistan not only lost its pride, but also lost an opportunity to effectively defend itself by launching a diplomatic counteroffensive.

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com