Karzai and Pakistan
A day before he arrived in India,the Afghanistan president,Hamid Karzai,declared once again that there was no point in talking to the Taliban any more. In an address to the Afghan nation on Monday,Karzai said that Kabul must focus instead on negotiating with Pakistan,which controls the Taliban and the Haqqani network. We are confronted with governments not the forces which are dependent on them. Therefore we should talk to those who have got the authority, Karzai said.
It is not that Karzai is very hopeful of a successful engagement with Pakistan. His point is that the peace process in Afghanistan is not about internal reconciliation,but of external interference from across the Durand Line. I personally made efforts to have good relations with Pakistan. These efforts have been unprecedented but unfortunately Pakistan has not supported us, Karzai said.
Worse still,the senior intelligence officials in Kabul have accused the ISI of plotting the murder of Burhanuddin Rabbani,a former president of Afghanistan appointed by Karzai as the interlocutor with the Taliban. Karzai described Afghanistan and Pakistan as inseparable brothers but added: Despite all destructions,calamities and problems,faced by both our country and Pakistan,Pakistan has played a double game and used terrorism as an instrument of policy.
Loya jirga strategy
With his strategy to engage the Taliban and its sponsors in Pakistan going nowhere,Karzai wants to convene the loya jirga,or the grand assembly of tribal leaders,to decide on a new strategy. But the loya jirga is unlikely to solve Karzais real problem: to develop leverage against the Pakistan army,which is trying to control the terms for ending the three-decades-old conflict in Afghanistan.
It is the United States that had all the levers to compel the Pakistan army to stop double dealing in Afghanistan. But as Karzai pointed out,the US and its allies are fighting the wrong war in the wrong country. The US has wasted much time and resources by fighting in Afghanistan,rather than attacking the root of the problem in Pakistans terror sanctuaries. While Karzai hopes that the Obama administration will turn up the heat on the Pakistan army,there are many in Washington who believe the way forward is to give more concessions to Rawalpindi.
Appeasing Rawalpindi
Barely a week after the outgoing US military chief,Admiral Mike Mullen,accused the Haqqani network of killing Americans in Afghanistan and called it a veritable arm of the ISI,there are folks in Washington who think America may have no choice but to buy Rawalpindis affections.
This comes after failing to win Pakistan armys support in the war on terror,despite shelling nearly $20 billion since 9/11. But then there is no rule that says countries will always learn from their mistakes.
Here is one thought on how Washington could get Pakistan to help the United States in Afghanistan. Michael O
Hanlon of the Brookings Institution says the central challenge for US policy is figuring out a way to give Islamabad adequate incentives to rethink its tolerance of groups like the Haqqani network.
OHanlon says the following favours to the Pakistan army might do the trick: get Kabul to accept the Durand Line as the border with Pakistan; ask Afghanistan to nudge India to give up its consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad; give Pakistan a say in Kabuls appointment of governors to the eastern provinces.
Daniel Markey,a leading Pakistan expert at the US Council on Foreign Relations,says that Pakistan seeks to have some influence in Afghanistan and uses militant groups like the Haqqani network towards that political end.
No one can disagree with that proposition. Markey goes on to add that the US should open up a way for [Pakistanis to project their influence [in Afghanistan without using these groups.
What might that involve? Unless the US offers some trade benefits or other types of assistance that Rawalpindi has sought for years,Markey does not see the Pakistan army budging. Can we [the US get them to change? Markey asks. But if these things might bring us plausible prospect of change,I think we should try.
The list of things that the US might have to offer to satisfy Pakistan could be quite a long one: Give Rawalpindi the much sought-after strategic depth in Afghanistan; compel India to hand over Kashmir; offer Pakistan liberal trade access to the US and European markets; extend a nuclear deal of the kind India had negotiated with the United States.
Would these satisfy the Pakistan army? Maybe not. Washington might want to put its final card on the table: a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for Pakistan,if General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani agrees to gently rap the Haqqani network on the knuckles!
The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi
