Opinion The great Game Folio
A fortnightly column on the high politics of the Af-Pak region,the fulcrum of global power play in Indias neighbourhood...
Doing the deal US President Barack Obama is neither endorsing nor rejecting the Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaq Kayanis shuttle diplomacy to Kabul. Asked on the margins of the G-20 summit in Toronto over the weekend about Kayanis efforts to impose Pashtun militant groups on Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai,Obama was careful in the construction of his response.
I think its too early to tell. I think we have to view these efforts with scepticism but also with openness. The president added that conversations between the Afghan government and the Pakistani government,building trust between those two governments,are a useful step.
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency,Leon Panetta,was a little more sceptical on whether it was possible to cut a deal with any of the militant groups the Afghan Taliban or the Haqqani network. We have seen no evidence that they are truly interested in reconciliation… would surrender their arms… denounce al Qaeda… would really try to become part of that society, Panetta said.
Unless the militants are convinced that the United States is going to win and that theyre going to be defeated,I think its very difficult to proceed with a reconciliation thats going to be meaningful, Panetta insisted. The remarks of the US president and his intelligence chief bring us to the central questions of the current American strategy towards Afghanistan. One is that Obama wants to find a political solution to what has become the longest military intervention in American history.
Two,it is not a question whether Washington wants to negotiate with the Taliban and other militant groups; the issues are about when and how. What is at stake,then,is not high principle,but the timing and terms.
The realists in the administration argue that without gaining the military upper hand over the Taliban,Washington cant persuade them to negotiate reasonably. No one is betting right now that the Americans are in sight of a victory in Afghanistan.
The other set of issues are about the terms of reconciliation. As Panetta summarised them,the US wants the Taliban to lay down arms,dissociate from al Qaeda,and accept the current Afghan constitution.
The Taliban has its own pre-condition. The international forces must withdraw before any serious talks. For the moment,clearly there is no room for a serious negotiation. What then is Kayani upto? To tease Kabul and/or Washington to scale down their demands for reconciliation.
July 2011
The negotiation of a political deal will be significantly influenced by how other important political actors in Afghanistan,Pakistan,the region and the United States choose to respond. Of all these actors,the US Congress is one of the most important,for it holds the purse-strings for the conduct of the American war in Afghanistan.
At the confirmation hearings of Gen David Petraeus as the new military commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan,the full range of Congressional views from demands for an early withdrawal of American troops to the removal of an artificial deadline for the beginning of US disengagement will be heard this week.
Obamas opponents from the left and the right would want to shred the deliberate ambiguity that the president has constructed around the date of July 2011 that he set for the beginning of a political transition in Afghanistan.
The last time he was in front of Congressional panels a few days ago,Gen Petraeus had to carefully skirt probing questions on where exactly he stood on the question of July 2011. The general,whose political skills are widely acknowledged,chose to underline the importance of the ground conditions that obtain in the summer of next year. He would want to make sure there is no light between himself and the commander-in-chief on July 2011.
Kayanis ambition
Since the partition of the subcontinent,the Pakistan army has been consistent in its quest to establish a government in Kabul that is deferential to Rawalpindi. Success has been elusive,except for a brief period during 1997-2001.
Sceptics would argue that for all his recent bold moves towards Kabul,Kayani cant control Afghanistan. They would say the Pakistan army and ISI are good at deconstruction but not the construction of any thing,let alone a stable regime in Kabul.
Cynics would simply add that a Pakistani triumph in Kabul will be short-lived and will mark the beginning of yet another cycle of conflict where all internal and external actors regroup. Delhis worriers would want to know the consequences of a Pakistani hegemony in Afghanistan,even if it were short lived. It is this debate Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will have to address in defining the Indian response to Kayanis shuttle diplomacy.
raja.mohan@expressindia.com
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