God’s own Country
Lt Gen ® Asad Durrani
That Afghanistan is not a very comfortable place for invading armies is no longer a
matter of great bewilderment. The syndrome has been studied and the conclusion
makes sense. Any state with such fault lines- geographic, topographic, demographic,
and ethnographic- and a tradition of waging tribal resistance would of course make
life difficult for an aggressor. The real mystery about this country is: how does it
defy perfectly good assessments, almost all the time!
After the Soviet withdrawal in February 1989, one reasonably expected that the
Mujahedeen, flush with victory over a superpower, would make short shrift of the
remnants. When the PDPA regime held out for three years, we were hard pressed to
explain. “Tribesmen waging guerrilla war on familiar terrain might frustrate foreign
invaders, but reducing garrisons was not their forte”. Though obvious, the wisdom
escaped us in our excitement. There was still a saving grace. Since the Mujahedeen
had failed to agree on the future of the post-Soviet Afghanistan, mercifully there was
no void in Kabul to provoke a messy scramble for power.
In March 1992 the PDPA regime collapsed from within and we faced precisely this
worst case scenario. Peshawar and Islamabad Accords, both backed by Pakistan,
provided for a broad based government and presumably for stability. The ensuing
civil war destroyed Kabul. This time only a bit of black humour saved the day:
“Buzkushi being the Afghan national game, it is but natural that they kill the prize
they fight for”.
During the next three years that the Mujahedeen were in power, the country
remained in a state of flux. And just when we were about to abandon it as a lost
cause, the Taliban descended as if by divine decree. Their rapid rise and the
prospects that to reunify Afghanistan they were the only game in town, lured
Pakistan to jump on their bandwagon. Sure enough, in a couple of years they had
taken over most of the country. Against all odds, the last chunk of northern territory
withstood the onslaught for four years. Once again we had to scratch our heads:
“maybe the North had better leaders like Massoud and Dostam; maybe the Taliban’s
treatment of ethnic minorities had driven them to desperate resistance; or maybe it
was because of external support to the anti-Taliban alliance! Whatever; the peace and
stability in Afghanistan remained elusive.
Post 9/11 saw perhaps the greatest role reversal of all times.
“One should negotiate from a position of strength” is a mantra that most of us have
embraced as an article of strategic faith. I am not sure if it ever works. What if in the
process it is the other side that improved its position, or refused to come to the table
unless it was strong enough to get a good deal? The real paradox in this dictum is
that once in position of strength, no one negotiates. The Taliban offered peace and
reconciliation in 2002. How Karzai would have responded if he had the power to
decide, one may never know; but we do know that the offer was rejected by the
occupying powers since the deposed militia was too week to deserve any
accommodation.
After the snub the Taliban had little choice but to resurrect themselves. As they
gained momentum some of them indeed were wooed as good or moderate Taliban
and thus worthy interlocutors. The Afghanistan Policy Obama outlined on the first
of December 2009 in his address at the West Point clearly underlined the need to
talk to the Taliban. The famous surge, essentially meant to create a force in being,
was used instead to soften them up so that once again they would be too weak to
talk. Against all odds though the Taliban grew from strength to strength, and just as
we started suspecting that it might now be they who would no longer be willing to
talk, Mullah Omer sent his emissaries to Doha.
Maybe there was a method in Mullah’s madness. Behind the scenes the talks were
on all the time. These were brought in the open when both the sides felt assured
they would not be seen talking from a position of weakness. Maybe that’s how this
mantra works! And just in case one was wondering why Karzai was playing hard to
catch on the Bilateral Security Agreement, we should go back a couple of years.
In May 2012, Obama came to Kabul to get Karzai’s consent for a strategic treaty. The
latter agreed but proposed that the part on foreign military presence beyond 2014
be pended for an year. If it was to get a better deal or to await the outcome of the
ensuing presidential elections in America, is difficult to judge. But soon thereafter,
Karzai called a Jirga to seek its views. “Foreign forces were welcome to stay but only if
subjected to local laws”, was the verdict. That was the Afghan way of saying “we’ve
had enough of them”. A follow-up Jirga, handpicked to give the BSA a nod, was
convened in November 2013. It did what it was asked to do even though Karzai had
declared he would not sign on the dotted lines.
Considering how desperately the establishment in Kabul needs the money and the
benefaction that comes with the BSA, Karzai’s antics do not quite explain his
gamesmanship. Some commonly held views are: it is all about his legacy (whatever
that means); that he was trying to mend fences with the Taliban who share his core
constituency; or that it was his way of settling scores with the US. The elephant in
the room is conveniently overlooked: foreign military presence, regardless of all its
rewards, would ensure continued violence. That may well have been the reason that
initiating peace talks with the Taliban was one of Karzai’s preconditions to sign the
BSA.
Indeed, it would be a grave mistake to assume that just because this year’s
presidential elections were relatively violence free, the Taliban were now a spent
force (they will be, but not before some serious intra-Afghan dialogue). Only the
other day one of our former envoys to Kabul suggested that the Taliban might be
“tactically lying low”. Having seen them retreat to the countryside to recoup after
they were ousted from power in 2001, he had a point. Right now, some other factors
too must have counted. In recent years large sums of western money has flown into
the Taliban’ kitty. Some more may have been offered if they were to hold their fire
during the polls. Also likely that they were assured early end of occupation if they
did not disrupt the process. And indeed, since in Afghanistan most politics is local,
deals at all levels have long been in works. There may or may not be any connection
between these hypotheses and Obama’s latest pronouncements to withdraw all
combat troops by 2016, and to swap prisoners.
And God alone knows what triggered the swing in the presidential run-off round
between the two doctors, Abdullah and Ghani: stuffing of ballot boxes; the one-off
Pashtun unity; or for once the Taliban using their guns, Allah be praised, in support
of the democratic process! In areas under their control, they lined up everyone,
including women, to vote for the Ahmedzai Pashtun.
Churchill is believed to have stated that anyone claiming to second guess what the
Afghans would do next, should get his head examined. He also said something
unsavoury about the Americans but they seem to have learnt, both from Churchill
and from the Afghans. Those who have, are not taking for granted that a Karzai’s
successor must sign the BSA and are therefore keeping all their remaining options
open, before these too were exhausted. It seems that some of the regional countries,
who had over a decade to prepare for the inevitable exit of the foreign forces, have
also done some contingency planning.
Of course that’s what you do when the situation is so fluid, when there are more
ambiguities than there are clarities, and when the Afghans continue to confound all
predictions. You position yourself to cope with the likely developments- and to be
on the safe side, with an odd unlikely one as well. A tall order but not impossible to
meet provided one went about it the right way. Pakistan’s example is very apt.
During the last few years it reached out to all Afghan factions in the belief that
sooner or later the task of persuading them to find a consensus dispensation would
land in Pakistan’s lap. How it would acquit itself with the mission is hard to say, but
the discomfiture of some diehard Paki-bashers in Kabul indicates that we now have
fairly effective contacts with many of the major players. All the same, if and when
Pakistan succeeds to take all or most of the Afghan horses to water, to make them
drink it would need help from some credible Afghan figures (a wise thing to do in
tribal societies), and from other countries in the Region. I have no idea if we have
identified the right people and brought them on board, but Pakistan does seem to
have made some headway with Afghanistan’s other neighbours.
In the early 1990s, Iran and Pakistan tried to join hands on Afghanistan but failed. In
the present phase, they started by removing some of the irritants in their bilateral
relations. In a joint action the two countries demolished Jandullah, an anti-Iran
militia operating from Pakistani Baluchistan. However, Islamabad’s foot-dragging
on the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is inhibiting a qualitative change in the
relationship. It has also adversely affected Pakistan’s efforts to improve relations
with Russia with whom we were trying to mend fences for nearly a decade. Two
years back Putin was all set to embark on his first ever visit to Pakistan if only we
had the nerve to award construction of this pipeline to Gazprom; the one group with
money and skill that was willing to undertake this project.
Nonetheless, the three countries- Pakistan, Iran and Russia- along with China seem
to have reached some understanding on Afghanistan. During the various rounds of
the Istanbul Process- essentially an initiative to restore stability in the war torn
country- their positions were more or less in sync. Pakistan’s desire to forge
regional consensus was obvious when it did not exercise its veto on Indian
participation in the second round on 7 November 2011.
After many ups and downs (mostly downs) in the last decade, even the Pak–US
cooperation on the so called endgame in Afghanistan has improved. That’s the
clearest sign so far that a decent exit was now Washington’s first priority. Nebulous
objectives like bringing democracy to Afghanistan or denying Al-Qaida bases in the
region were to rationalise continued presence. A systematic campaign to tout that
the Afghan National Army was now “fairly able to assume security duties in the
country”, was the first indication that the occupation was coming to an end. After the
sterling performance of the Iraqi Army against the ISIS, no one needs to delude
oneself that these inflicted military structures, from Vietnam to Iraq and
Afghanistan, were any match for the nationalist forces.
The BSA card is for the US a win-win. If not signed by Kabul it would provide
Washington just the right argument to absolve itself of any responsibility for the
post 2014 mayhem. But if it is, the US could still buy or bribe its way out. Declaring
2016 as the new dateline may have some domestic motives as well, but that should
help strike the right bargain with the Taliban.
The run-off round of the 2014 presidential polls ran into a deadlock. It could have
been resolved through the instrument of mediation that is part of the Afghan
tradition, but the American intervention was more helpful, and so was the signal
both from the UN and the US that a grand coalition between Abdullah and Ghani
would be a good thing. That such an arrangement would be well placed to reconcile
the Taliban is not insignificant, but the all round realisation that an overarching
consensus was the sine qua non for stability in Afghanistan is probably the best
outcome of over three decades of turmoil in the “heart of Asia”.
The landscape in Afghanistan is dotted by a series of mountain ranges. One is thus
hardly ever “over the hump”. The path to peace in this God created country may still
not be smooth, but now that we have learnt something about its algorithm, we will
not be taken by surprise when the Afghans next take out a rabbit from their turban.