04-01-2006, 03:13 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Is India checkmating us in Kabul? </b>
<i>Khaled Ahmedâs A n a l y s i s </i> - TFT
President Bushâs visit to Pakistan in March was a great disappointment in the eyes of most Pakistanis. One unhappy corollary of this visit was Kabulâs complaint made to him that Pakistan was involved in infiltrating the Taliban into Afghanistan from its training camps. President Karzai had given President Musharraf a list of men wanted by Kabul and the âgeo-coordinatesâ of the camps where the men were staying. Then President Karzai made the list public, which angered the Pakistani president who too went public with his own reprimand. He told President Bush that the Northern Alliance part of the government in Kabul was getting together with the Indians to poison Pak-Afghan relations through manipulating President Karzai.
GEO TV (8 March 2006) had its host Nasir Beg Chughtai discuss the issue with PML leader Mushahid Hussain Syed, former ambassador Mr Tariq Fatemi, former ambassador to Kabul Mr Rustam Shah, Brigadier (Retd) Rasheed Malik and Prof Mansur Akbar Kundi. Brigadier Malik said that Karzai was put to it by his minister Abdullah Abdullah of the Northern Alliance which dominated defence and interior ministries and the intelligence agencies in Kabul. He said that before this the American president Zalmay Khalilzad too had levelled similar charges against Pakistan. The Northern Alliance people had old links with India and had stayed for long years in New Delhi when there was trouble in Afghanistan.
<b>Powerless Karzai but âstrongerâ Afghanistan:</b> Brigadier Malik also explored an interesting angle: that India wanted Pakistanâs troops to be posted to the western border so that the army is divided and is not able to ensure proper security on the Indian border. (This was one of the aims of Pakistanâs low-intensity jihad in Kashmir vis-Ã -vis the Indian army in the 1990s.) When Pakistan had the Taliban ruling Afghanistan it could afford to place its entire army on the border with India as it felt no fear from the direction of the Durand Line. He said Karzai was powerless; he could not even visit Kandahar once after becoming president in Kabul because of lack of security. He said America had come to the region to control the resource of oil, but Pakistan had its own policy which should not be tangled with that of India.
Ambassador Fatemi said that Kabul was acting predictably given the nature of the dominant elements there, but he advised a less aggressive response to prevent the bilateral spat from getting out of hand. To keep things cool Pakistan should talk to the Americans because on ground theirs was the strongest presence with 19,000 troops. He also recommended using special envoys to Kabul instead of the media in imitation of what Kabul had done. He was particularly concerned about the start of a cold war between Afghanistan and Pakistan as that would redound to the advantage of India.
<b>Pakistanâs economic penetration of Afghanistan:</b> Talat Hussain (AAJ TV, 8 March 2006) talked to former secretary general of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr Akram Zaki, Mushahid Hussain Syed, PPP leader Abdullah Riaar and Mr Zahid Saeed, about the Afghan plaint. Mr Saeed thought that Iran could be involved in the affair because of its old links with Northern Alliance. He recommended that Pakistan announce clearly that the bases in Pakistan being used at present by ISAF forces would not be used by the Americans when they attack Iran. Mr Riaar said he knew Ambassador Khalilzad personally and thought his complaints about the Taliban living freely in Balochistan and the FATA areas were genuine. He suspected that those who did not capture the Taliban leaders from Balochistan might be thinking of a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan, affording Pakistan the strategic depth it once sought.
Ambassador Rustam Shah agreed that Pakistan should have played cool on Afghan complaints. He said Pakistan had given $250 million to Afghanistan as aid and 60,000 Pakistanis were working in Afghanistan with Pakistanâs exports climbing to $1.2 billion (up from $25 million), second only to its exports to the United States. He emphasised that despite Karzaiâs latest statements he was Pakistanâs man in Kabul because he became president with votes facilitated by Pakistan among the 2.5 million refugees still living inside Pakistan. He did not think that Iran was involved in the latest controversy. He thought Northern Alliance was no monolith but had a variety of components with whom Pakistan could interact cautiously. Afghanistanâs relations with India had always been good; in fact better than with Pakistan, except for the Taliban phase.
Is India interfering in Balochistan? Ambassador Rustam Shah also reminded the discussants that India was a big power and was working in Afghanistan on the strong basis of its past relations. The people who ruled Afghanistan today had gone and lived in India for long years, but still India was not alone as the big influential power in Afghanistan. In his view Central Asia and Turkey had stronger influence. He advised Pakistan not to become too obsessed with India in Afghanistan because ultimately Pakistanâs proximity and strategic position will dominate.
The latest position was that Pakistan had given to President Bush conclusive proof of Indiaâs interference and Northern Allianceâs conspiracy to undermine Pakistan in Kabul. But before the American presidentâs visit, when the TV channels in Pakistan were abuzz with talk of Indian interference in Balochistan in the shape of monetary and material assistance to terrorists there, the government had no concrete proof against India. Appearing on <b>AAJ TV (21 February 2006) Federal interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao had told host Talat Hussain that during the last meeting between President Karzai of Afghanistan and President Musharraf, Pakistan had not offered any proof of the involvement of India in the supply of weapons to Balochistan through Afghan territory. He said the subject was only mentioned as Pakistan had no proof of Indian involvement.</b>.Â
<b>A âcoolâ response to a traditionally hostile neighbour:</b> The above discussions yielded useful insights into how the âexpertsâ think. Ambassadors Fatemi and Rustam Shah came across as the most balanced commentators in an environment of a rather stilted âbig-powerâ anger at âsmall-powerâ Afghanistan. Contrary to popular thinking, it is the big power which has to exercise restraint. The very idea of restraint presumes possession of power; if you donât have power you tend to make a lot of noise without anyone taking note. The noise Kabul makes is not likely to affect Pakistan, nor is it likely to thwart Pakistanâs silent counter-measures. The lesser party verbalises more than the status quo power. Note the fact that President Musharraf verbalises far more on Kashmir than India does without any risk to its status quo dominance.
Afghanistanâs revisionist nationalism has always been intense vis-Ã -vis Pakistan. Kabul whether under the Pushtuns or non-Pushtuns has always been anti-Pakistan. India has always been Kabulâs friend in the subcontinent. Nehru rejected the old Afghan claim of Pushtunistan but he didnât mind egging the Afghans on to chide Pakistan on the issue to lessen Pakistanâs own irredentism vis-Ã -vis Kashmir. Afghanistan was the only state that cast a negative vote when the UN General Assembly was admitting Pakistan as a new member in 1947. Pakistan could not develop a pro-Pakistan lobby in Afghanistan, partly because the Pushtuns of Pakistan regarded Afghanistan as their hinterland of pure pushtunwali as they developed a hostile sub-nationalism in the face of Punjabâs domination. The non-Pushtuns now assembled in Northern Alliance never really mattered.
<b>Pakistanâs strength vis-Ã -vis Afghanistan:</b> Pakistan was always a strong power as far as Afghanistan was concerned. It never felt threatened by Afghanistan despite Indiaâs political and cultural dominance there. On the other hand, Kabul damaged itself by pursuing an irredentist claim on Pakistanâs territory over long years without any result, the same way Pakistan damaged its own potential for growth as a nation by pursuing the cause of Kashmir against India. (Afghanistan had a weaker legal claim on Pakistani territory than Pakistan on Kashmir.) But there was annoyance in Islamabad that resulted in covert preventive mischief across the border. The mujahideen and the Taliban were finally supposed to correct the imbalance and establish Pakistan as a permanent dominant influence in Afghanistan. That of course did not happen because no one in the neighbourhood would allow Pakistan to become dominant in Afghanistan.
Because of its internal composition and its territorial interface with its neighbours, Afghanistan remains a Hobbesian state liable to export disorder rather than importing order from any of its neighbours. Uzbekistan holds sway in the north with Mazar-e-Sharif feeding culturally and economically more into Central Asia than southwards. Taliban (with Pakistani help) tried to take it twice but failed. Pakistan had ousted the Indian embassy from Kabul in 1996 in retaliation for Ahmad shah Massoudâs destruction of its own embassy in 1995, and thought it could extend the Taliban rule to the North too. Earlier Najibullah had violated Pakistanâs area of influence in Jalalabad by defeating the ISI in 1989 but could not hold it for long. Pakistanâs reluctant effort to let the Taliban oust Iran from Herat also came quickly to grief. This is how the neighbourhood has interpenetrated Afghanistan economically and culturally and prevented it from becoming a normal state.
<b>Pursuing regional trade instead of security:</b> After 2001, Afghanistan is âstrongerâ than Pakistan because of the ISAF forces and the United States. Pakistan may be tempted to keep the weapon of future dominance by retaining the âTaliban optionâ, but it will be of no use at all. Afghanistan as always will be closed to single-power domination. The only thing going for Pakistan is the big trade spin-off from being an ally of the US. This is the paradigm that is more realistic and is bound to make better progress in a Hobbesian state. Let Pakistan pursue trade in Afghanistan and lessen its military competition with Afghanistanâs other neighbours to export its goods further than it has so far succeeded in doing. The competition with India should also be eschewed. A more cooperative strategy would yield better dividends.
<b>Pakistan should seriously consider giving India a land corridor to reach the Central Asian markets where it has always been a favoured party</b>. It is known that President Musharraf has considered this trade route but has chosen instead to link Kashmir to the general question of trade. For the sake of Pakistanâs future and his own security he should think out of the box, ditch his last remnants of <b>Indiacentricism, applying the same logic he did to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which was accepted without the precondition of Kashmir.</b>
Pakistan as a transit state has been posited as a dream but it has not been fleshed out through practical steps in the realm of foreign policy. The earlier paradigm of military competition has failed. Internal self-correction has failed. The only thing that has succeeded despite much cribbing about Kashmir is normalisation with India. Pakistan has fewer military options in Afghanistan today.<b> The âIslamic griefâ in Pakistan </b>is directed against President Musharraf but much of it is cosmic, not related to reality.
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<i>Khaled Ahmedâs A n a l y s i s </i> - TFT
President Bushâs visit to Pakistan in March was a great disappointment in the eyes of most Pakistanis. One unhappy corollary of this visit was Kabulâs complaint made to him that Pakistan was involved in infiltrating the Taliban into Afghanistan from its training camps. President Karzai had given President Musharraf a list of men wanted by Kabul and the âgeo-coordinatesâ of the camps where the men were staying. Then President Karzai made the list public, which angered the Pakistani president who too went public with his own reprimand. He told President Bush that the Northern Alliance part of the government in Kabul was getting together with the Indians to poison Pak-Afghan relations through manipulating President Karzai.
GEO TV (8 March 2006) had its host Nasir Beg Chughtai discuss the issue with PML leader Mushahid Hussain Syed, former ambassador Mr Tariq Fatemi, former ambassador to Kabul Mr Rustam Shah, Brigadier (Retd) Rasheed Malik and Prof Mansur Akbar Kundi. Brigadier Malik said that Karzai was put to it by his minister Abdullah Abdullah of the Northern Alliance which dominated defence and interior ministries and the intelligence agencies in Kabul. He said that before this the American president Zalmay Khalilzad too had levelled similar charges against Pakistan. The Northern Alliance people had old links with India and had stayed for long years in New Delhi when there was trouble in Afghanistan.
<b>Powerless Karzai but âstrongerâ Afghanistan:</b> Brigadier Malik also explored an interesting angle: that India wanted Pakistanâs troops to be posted to the western border so that the army is divided and is not able to ensure proper security on the Indian border. (This was one of the aims of Pakistanâs low-intensity jihad in Kashmir vis-Ã -vis the Indian army in the 1990s.) When Pakistan had the Taliban ruling Afghanistan it could afford to place its entire army on the border with India as it felt no fear from the direction of the Durand Line. He said Karzai was powerless; he could not even visit Kandahar once after becoming president in Kabul because of lack of security. He said America had come to the region to control the resource of oil, but Pakistan had its own policy which should not be tangled with that of India.
Ambassador Fatemi said that Kabul was acting predictably given the nature of the dominant elements there, but he advised a less aggressive response to prevent the bilateral spat from getting out of hand. To keep things cool Pakistan should talk to the Americans because on ground theirs was the strongest presence with 19,000 troops. He also recommended using special envoys to Kabul instead of the media in imitation of what Kabul had done. He was particularly concerned about the start of a cold war between Afghanistan and Pakistan as that would redound to the advantage of India.
<b>Pakistanâs economic penetration of Afghanistan:</b> Talat Hussain (AAJ TV, 8 March 2006) talked to former secretary general of Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr Akram Zaki, Mushahid Hussain Syed, PPP leader Abdullah Riaar and Mr Zahid Saeed, about the Afghan plaint. Mr Saeed thought that Iran could be involved in the affair because of its old links with Northern Alliance. He recommended that Pakistan announce clearly that the bases in Pakistan being used at present by ISAF forces would not be used by the Americans when they attack Iran. Mr Riaar said he knew Ambassador Khalilzad personally and thought his complaints about the Taliban living freely in Balochistan and the FATA areas were genuine. He suspected that those who did not capture the Taliban leaders from Balochistan might be thinking of a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan, affording Pakistan the strategic depth it once sought.
Ambassador Rustam Shah agreed that Pakistan should have played cool on Afghan complaints. He said Pakistan had given $250 million to Afghanistan as aid and 60,000 Pakistanis were working in Afghanistan with Pakistanâs exports climbing to $1.2 billion (up from $25 million), second only to its exports to the United States. He emphasised that despite Karzaiâs latest statements he was Pakistanâs man in Kabul because he became president with votes facilitated by Pakistan among the 2.5 million refugees still living inside Pakistan. He did not think that Iran was involved in the latest controversy. He thought Northern Alliance was no monolith but had a variety of components with whom Pakistan could interact cautiously. Afghanistanâs relations with India had always been good; in fact better than with Pakistan, except for the Taliban phase.
Is India interfering in Balochistan? Ambassador Rustam Shah also reminded the discussants that India was a big power and was working in Afghanistan on the strong basis of its past relations. The people who ruled Afghanistan today had gone and lived in India for long years, but still India was not alone as the big influential power in Afghanistan. In his view Central Asia and Turkey had stronger influence. He advised Pakistan not to become too obsessed with India in Afghanistan because ultimately Pakistanâs proximity and strategic position will dominate.
The latest position was that Pakistan had given to President Bush conclusive proof of Indiaâs interference and Northern Allianceâs conspiracy to undermine Pakistan in Kabul. But before the American presidentâs visit, when the TV channels in Pakistan were abuzz with talk of Indian interference in Balochistan in the shape of monetary and material assistance to terrorists there, the government had no concrete proof against India. Appearing on <b>AAJ TV (21 February 2006) Federal interior minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao had told host Talat Hussain that during the last meeting between President Karzai of Afghanistan and President Musharraf, Pakistan had not offered any proof of the involvement of India in the supply of weapons to Balochistan through Afghan territory. He said the subject was only mentioned as Pakistan had no proof of Indian involvement.</b>.Â
<b>A âcoolâ response to a traditionally hostile neighbour:</b> The above discussions yielded useful insights into how the âexpertsâ think. Ambassadors Fatemi and Rustam Shah came across as the most balanced commentators in an environment of a rather stilted âbig-powerâ anger at âsmall-powerâ Afghanistan. Contrary to popular thinking, it is the big power which has to exercise restraint. The very idea of restraint presumes possession of power; if you donât have power you tend to make a lot of noise without anyone taking note. The noise Kabul makes is not likely to affect Pakistan, nor is it likely to thwart Pakistanâs silent counter-measures. The lesser party verbalises more than the status quo power. Note the fact that President Musharraf verbalises far more on Kashmir than India does without any risk to its status quo dominance.
Afghanistanâs revisionist nationalism has always been intense vis-Ã -vis Pakistan. Kabul whether under the Pushtuns or non-Pushtuns has always been anti-Pakistan. India has always been Kabulâs friend in the subcontinent. Nehru rejected the old Afghan claim of Pushtunistan but he didnât mind egging the Afghans on to chide Pakistan on the issue to lessen Pakistanâs own irredentism vis-Ã -vis Kashmir. Afghanistan was the only state that cast a negative vote when the UN General Assembly was admitting Pakistan as a new member in 1947. Pakistan could not develop a pro-Pakistan lobby in Afghanistan, partly because the Pushtuns of Pakistan regarded Afghanistan as their hinterland of pure pushtunwali as they developed a hostile sub-nationalism in the face of Punjabâs domination. The non-Pushtuns now assembled in Northern Alliance never really mattered.
<b>Pakistanâs strength vis-Ã -vis Afghanistan:</b> Pakistan was always a strong power as far as Afghanistan was concerned. It never felt threatened by Afghanistan despite Indiaâs political and cultural dominance there. On the other hand, Kabul damaged itself by pursuing an irredentist claim on Pakistanâs territory over long years without any result, the same way Pakistan damaged its own potential for growth as a nation by pursuing the cause of Kashmir against India. (Afghanistan had a weaker legal claim on Pakistani territory than Pakistan on Kashmir.) But there was annoyance in Islamabad that resulted in covert preventive mischief across the border. The mujahideen and the Taliban were finally supposed to correct the imbalance and establish Pakistan as a permanent dominant influence in Afghanistan. That of course did not happen because no one in the neighbourhood would allow Pakistan to become dominant in Afghanistan.
Because of its internal composition and its territorial interface with its neighbours, Afghanistan remains a Hobbesian state liable to export disorder rather than importing order from any of its neighbours. Uzbekistan holds sway in the north with Mazar-e-Sharif feeding culturally and economically more into Central Asia than southwards. Taliban (with Pakistani help) tried to take it twice but failed. Pakistan had ousted the Indian embassy from Kabul in 1996 in retaliation for Ahmad shah Massoudâs destruction of its own embassy in 1995, and thought it could extend the Taliban rule to the North too. Earlier Najibullah had violated Pakistanâs area of influence in Jalalabad by defeating the ISI in 1989 but could not hold it for long. Pakistanâs reluctant effort to let the Taliban oust Iran from Herat also came quickly to grief. This is how the neighbourhood has interpenetrated Afghanistan economically and culturally and prevented it from becoming a normal state.
<b>Pursuing regional trade instead of security:</b> After 2001, Afghanistan is âstrongerâ than Pakistan because of the ISAF forces and the United States. Pakistan may be tempted to keep the weapon of future dominance by retaining the âTaliban optionâ, but it will be of no use at all. Afghanistan as always will be closed to single-power domination. The only thing going for Pakistan is the big trade spin-off from being an ally of the US. This is the paradigm that is more realistic and is bound to make better progress in a Hobbesian state. Let Pakistan pursue trade in Afghanistan and lessen its military competition with Afghanistanâs other neighbours to export its goods further than it has so far succeeded in doing. The competition with India should also be eschewed. A more cooperative strategy would yield better dividends.
<b>Pakistan should seriously consider giving India a land corridor to reach the Central Asian markets where it has always been a favoured party</b>. It is known that President Musharraf has considered this trade route but has chosen instead to link Kashmir to the general question of trade. For the sake of Pakistanâs future and his own security he should think out of the box, ditch his last remnants of <b>Indiacentricism, applying the same logic he did to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which was accepted without the precondition of Kashmir.</b>
Pakistan as a transit state has been posited as a dream but it has not been fleshed out through practical steps in the realm of foreign policy. The earlier paradigm of military competition has failed. Internal self-correction has failed. The only thing that has succeeded despite much cribbing about Kashmir is normalisation with India. Pakistan has fewer military options in Afghanistan today.<b> The âIslamic griefâ in Pakistan </b>is directed against President Musharraf but much of it is cosmic, not related to reality.
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