An international conference in Bonn this week,attended by nearly 100 nations and international organisations,sought to create the conditions for an orderly Western military retreat from Afghanistan and ensuring the international communitys continued support to the government in Kabul after 2014.
That the conference ended in a whimper,thanks to its boycott by Pakistan and the Taliban,is hardly surprising. Both the Bonn conference and the one in Istanbul that took place last month were based on the assumption that diplomacy can ensure a successful political transition in Afghanistan.
It would be naïve to believe that the US can win at the negotiating table what it could not secure on the battlefield after a decade-long intervention in Afghanistan at the cost of much blood and treasure.
That the West turned to diplomacy in Afghanistan was in itself an acknowledgement of the failure of its military plans to consolidate the post-Taliban political arrangements in Kabul that were outlined at the first edition of the Bonn conference a decade ago. Diplomacy can be a useful complement to the successful application of military power. But it cannot be a substitute for military victory.
A second set of problems relates to the expectations that the Taliban can be induced to negotiate a reasonable political compromise on the political future of Afghanistan. Having earlier underestimated the resilience of the Taliban,which enjoys the Pakistan armys support,Washington and its allies are now negotiating from a position of weakness.
The American military leadership argued that with sufficient time and resources it could whack the Taliban into suing for peace. That does not,however,fit in with President Barack Obamas political calendar and the growing exhaustion in the US Congress with the Afghan war.
The leaders of the Taliban,meanwhile,had chosen to kill former president Burhanuddin Rabbani,Kabuls principal interlocutor for negotiating a political reconciliation. That revealed the Talibans commitment to a peaceful resolution of the civil war.
The history of civil wars in our age reminds us that they are not easily amenable to a negotiated compromise. More often than not,civil wars end in the victory of one party over the others. The Sri Lankan conflict is the latest example of that trend-line. In Afghanistan,the Taliban and its supporters think time is on their side and victory will soon be at hand.
Third,diplomacy can succeed only when the divergence of interests between different parties to a conflict is bridgeable,and there is room for finding win-win solutions to all.
In Afghanistan,what we have instead is a zero-sum game.
Few can deny the fundamental incompatibility of the goals of the international community with those of Pakistan in Afghanistan. The world says it wants a strong and centralised state in Afghanistan. Pakistan,in contrast,wants a weak state in Afghanistan that it can control.
The international community is willing to live with a moderate Islamic state in Afghanistan that is tolerant of sectarian diversity within the nation and does not export its ideology to the rest of the world.
The Pakistan armys instruments for influence in Afghanistan the Taliban and the Haqqani network espouse a radical and intolerant variant of Islam and are in alliance with international groups that seek to spread their influence through terror.
On the face of it,these powerful contradictions between the international community and Rawalpindi can only be resolved when one side makes significant concessions. For the US this means either leaving Afghanistan at the mercy of the Pakistan army or turning up military and economic heat on Rawalpindi in order to change its strategic calculus.
Rawalpindi is betting that the US and Europe do not have the stomach to follow the latter course. The Pakistan army chief,General Ashfaq Kayani,appears to have convinced himself that the West will have to quit Afghanistan sooner than later,and will need his support for a safe military passage out of the region.
Kayani has ordered the civilian government to review the entire gamut of the bilateral relationship with the US as he enforces a blockade of the international forces in Afghanistan,whose most important logistical line runs through Pakistani territory.
Meanwhile,Washington is in two minds. The Obama administration understands that the Pakistan army is part of the problem in Afghanistan,but is unwilling to follow through with the consequences of such an assessment given its dependence on Rawalpindi for conducting military operations.
As a result,Washington will continue to oscillate between trying to finesse the Pakistan problem and confronting it head on. That the US has a weak hand does not mean Pakistan is about to prevail in Afghanistan.
Rawalpindis boldness in confronting the US is indeed impressive. But Kayanis ability to control the events in Afghanistan might be rather limited. The Pakistan economy is in doldrums,the civil-military relations are in a shambles and Rawalpindis attempts to negotiate with the militant groups fighting the Pakistani state are going nowhere.
Meanwhile,the sectarian rivalry between Shia and Sunni extremist groups that has entrenched itself in Pakistan and gained ground in the Middle East amidst the deepening conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran has begun to envelop Afghanistan.
As Washington dithers and Rawalpindi overreaches,India cannot bet on international conference diplomacy of the kind we have seen in Bonn. Instead,New Delhi should brace itself for anarchy and civil war in the north-western marches of the subcontinent as we approach 2014.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research,Delhi,express@expressindia.com
