Losing the moment

In the last few months Pakistan had the chance to take advantage of a very rare and golden opportunity in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. The concessions offered to Pakistan by Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani were unthinkable during the regime of former president Hamid Karzai.
All that was not out of some special love for Pakistan; it was the considered opinion of Ashraf Ghani that the key to any resolution to the problems in Afghanistan lies in Pakistan’s hands. His policy was simple: give whatever Pakistan demands, and then demand results on what Pakistan promised. This opportunity was also different from those on previous instances. For the first time in Afghanistan, this support to Pakistan was not restricted to one person, but represented institutional consensus.
Credit for this goes to former foreign minister of Pakistan Hina Rabbani Khar and former DGl ISI Gen Zaheerul Islam, and particularly to former ambassador of Pakistan in Afghanistan Muhammad Sadiq. They worked hard to befriend the northern Afghanistan leadership before the presidential elections in Afghanistan. Leaders like Abdullah Abdullah, Rasheed Dostam, Ostad Mohaqiq, Salahud Deen Rabbani and Ustad Ata not only backed Ghani in his stance over Pakistan, but rather went even two steps ahead of him in that.
This opportunity was also unique as the first time in history the US and its allies allowed Afghanistan and Pakistan to get that close. Both countries were offered a blank check by the US and its allies to settle issues with the Taliban. This also resulted in Afghanistan’s formal contact with China, on Pakistan’s urging and with the approval of the US, to negotiate with the Taliban.
Throughout the period of this ‘golden opportunity’, when representatives of the government of Pakistan and analysts representing the establishment were boasting about the success of Pakistan in Afghanistan, a few of us kept reminding people about the expectations of the Afghan government. Unfortunately in the end, Pakistan lost the otherwise golden opportunity with Afghanistan.
In fact Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and those around him did not assess the exact degree of control that Pakistan exercises over the Afghan Taliban. They kept promising the Afghan government that Pakistan would force the Afghan Taliban to sit at the negotiation table. Ghani, all the while, was telling his people that by April everything would be fine. It must be noted that the month of April ends the harsh winter season in Afghanistan and opens a very conducive environment for guerrilla fighters to launch their attacks. Ghani hoped that by April, with the help of Pakistan, the Taliban would settle issues and there would be no terrorist attack within Afghanistan.
But what happened totally shocked the Afghan government. Just after April, the Taliban targeted the whole of Afghanistan. This news was blacked out by the media; in reality, from April to date the Taliban attacks in Afghanistan have been more than a hundred a day. Explosions and suicide attacks are now routine in Kabul.
And for the first time, the Taliban not only entered northern Afghanistan but were able to capture whole districts in provinces like Kunduz, Badakhshan and Sari Pol. This forced Vice President Rasheed Dostam and political figures like Ustad Ata to wear their uniforms again and reorganise their personal forces to counter the Taliban.
All the while Ghani kept asking the Pakistani government to control the Taliban and Pakistan intimated its inability to do so. Three months back, Ghani wrote a letter to the prime minister of Pakistan to hasten efforts for reconciliation and dissuade the Taliban from terrorist activities in Afghanistan. He also sent a personal message through a friend in the IMF that he was losing patience.
This grim situation demanded that Pakistan should either make clear its inability to do the needful – through proper diplomatic channels – or force the Afghan Taliban to negotiate. However, nothing was done at our end.
One day Ghani sent a very harsh message to Pakistan, and our prime minister ordered that Taliban leaders be located in any possible way to conduct reconciliation negotiations at any cost. This resulted in the Murree Negotiations, which proved to be a very big mistake. No homework had been done prior to the negotiations. And this makeshift decision further strengthened, in Afghanistan and the US, the wrong perception that Pakistan had the ability to influence the Taliban. It was assumed that the Taliban are in Pakistan and that Pakistan is capable of forcing them towards any decision.
As a result, the US and Afghanistan increased pressure on Pakistan, asking us to stop the Taliban from conducting terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. It was also demanded that Mullah Omar and his top colleagues should participate in negotiations personally. Just before the second session of negotiations, however, the news of Mullah Omar’s death was revealed – which postponed any hope for meaningful negotiations.
This news ruined almost everything. To secure the trust and confidence of his colleagues, the new ameer Mullah Akhtar Mansoor rejected any possibility of negotiations in the near future. And the Taliban focused their energies on terrorist activities in Afghanistan to prove their authority. Dr Ghani had a press conference, with government representatives standing behind him, and accused Pakistan of not keeping promises. He also claimed that Pakistan is responsible for the violence in Afghanistan. The following day Abdullah Abdullah followed the same path, and the day following that Rasheed Dostam too held us responsible for the suicide attack on him.
This response was extreme and a bit early. If Ghani had restrained himself a bit more, perhaps the situation in Afghanistan would not be that bad. However, after the press conference, the chain reaction began.
The anti-Pakistan lobby got a conducive environment to do whatever was possible to damage relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan; they are still trying. Afghan ulema, with official support, issued a fatwa that war against Pakistan is jihad. For the first time in six years the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan is restricted within the building of the Pakistan embassy in Kabul.
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of all this is that the US and its allies fully support Ghani in his anti-Pakistan stance. Some even say that the US and Germany instigated Ghani to move on this front. This was also palpable in the ‘do more’ mantra of the US, which is again being repeated with intensity in Islamabad. The Haqqani Network is once more being discussed in US media; Foreign Affairs journal in its latest issue recommended to the US government that it should not expect anything positive from Pakistan.
So even though we lost a golden opportunity, that does not mean that only we were responsible for the failure. The Afghanistan end of responsibility also needs to be looked at – in the next column.
The writer works for Geo TV.
Email: saleem.safi@janggroup.com.pk