The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Beyond the Khyber Pass

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Tuesday, Oct 05, 2004

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Beyond the Khyber Pass

By M.K. Bhadrakumar

Pakistan has long involved itself in Afghanistan's affairs. How will it now deal with the move towards democratic pluralism?

DURING HIS visit to New York to address the 59th session of the United Nations General Assembly, the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, got enormous attention in the American media — almost as much as Iraq's interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi. This was hardly surprising — Pakistan happens to impact on two crucial upcoming elections, one in Afghanistan (October 9) and the other in the United States (November 27).

The advent of democracy in Afghanistan will support the Bush administration's claim that its war on terrorism is succeeding. Equally so if, in the critical six-seven weeks ahead, Pakistani armed forces kill or capture an HVT ("High Value Target") belonging to the Al-Qaeda. That would weigh with U.S. public opinion and enhance George W. Bush's re-election prospects. In both contexts, Pakistan finds itself on the centre-stage.

Thus the Bush-Musharraf discussions in New York on September 23 were terrorism-centric. The U.S.-Pakistan joint statement spoke of a "rich agenda of cooperation" between the two powers on the "global war on terror" for which "appropriate resources will be made available". It said the U.S. was appreciative of Pakistan's efforts and there would be "long-term U.S. commitment to Pakistan." It underlined the "urgency of maintaining a safe environment for fair elections" in Afghanistan and placed on record Mr. Bush's appreciation of Islamabad's efforts to arrange "out-of-country voting" by Afghan refugees living in Pakistan in the October 9 elections.

In a "background briefing," an unnamed "senior administration official" in Washington corroborated the impression conveyed by the joint statement. He characterised Mr. Bush's objective as: "first, to demonstrate that the U.S.' partnership with Pakistan and our commitment to Pakistan's success is a long-term commitment"; and "second, to talk about the war" in which General Musharraf had "stepped up efforts to root out Al-Qaeda and Taliban elements" from the Pakistan-Afghan border region — a region "largely untouched for over a century." The "overriding theme" for Mr. Bush was that the U.S. would remain committed to Pakistan if it stayed on course in the war in Afghanistan.

Pakistan finally seemed to have got the status it had been seeking — that of a "frontline state," to quote Gen. Musharraf, in the U.S.' war on terrorism. Other Pakistani grievances in the post-Taliban situation — that the Northern Alliance groups had a preponderant role in the power structure in Kabul; that countries unfriendly towards Pakistan were manipulating Afghan policies; that a level-playing field was unavailable to the Pashtun community; that the U.S. was asking Islamabad to do "more" despite Pakistan's sincere contributions; and that the U.S. had been an inconstant friend of Pakistan in the past — had already been attended to.

Without doubt, Pakistan is once again poised to leave its footprints on Afghanistan's history. This brings us to the heart of the matter: what is the raison d'etre of Pakistan's Afghan policy? It is assumed rather simplistically that Pakistan's drive to gain "strategic depth" vis-à-vis India constituted the leitmotif of its Afghan policy. One could arguably travel on this track, but it leads nowhere in particular. The plain truth is Pakistan's Afghan policy has traditionally stood on three legs — each of which is native to Pakistani soil.

First, Pashtun nationalism. The core issue for Pakistan was to somehow channel inchoate Pashtun tribal sentiments within Afghanistan towards Kabul lest they meandered towards Peshawar and threatened Pakistan's national unity. Pakistan chose to address the issue by steadily fragmenting the Pashtun tribal communities in Afghanistan and manipulating the splinter groups. Gen. Musharraf admitted at one time that the Taliban itself represented a formation encompassing Pashtun sentiments and it was important for Pakistan's security to have a Pashtun-dominated regime in Kabul.

Whatever might have been Pakistan's compulsions in the 1950s and 1960s vis-à-vis Pashtun nationalism, Pukhtoonkhwa (the demand to rename thus the North-West Frontier Province) has not resonated recently. Pashtuns who account for about 10 per cent of Pakistan's population are fairly well represented in the country's institutions. About 30 to 40 per cent of senior officers in the Pakistan army are Pashtuns. Pashtuns have been a thriving business community. They have a stake in the Pakistani establishment. Yet Pakistan lacked the will to effect a paradigm shift in its Afghan policy. This despite Pakistan having allied with virtually all non-Pashtun groups within Afghanistan, and prominent figures such as Tajik leader Burhanuddin Rabbani and Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum (who actually helped the Taliban capture Herat in 1995), at one time or the other.

Uninterrupted democratic rule in Pakistan or a less presumptuous attitude towards the Afghan realities or a combination of both might have made a difference. At any rate, Pakistani policy failed to work. It could not appreciate the fact that Afghanistan too was a plural society. The churning under Communist rule and the Afghan jihad brought about an awakening among all ethnic groups. No recipe for Afghanistan predicated on a single ethnic group's dominance would prove durable.

A second aspect of Pakistan's policy was its machinations to subsume Afghan nationalism with Islamist ideology that was alien to Afghan culture and history. This thrust predated Al-Qaeda, the Afghan jihad and Zia-ul-Haq — it was traceable to the late 1960s. In fact, the Islamist (Muslim Brotherhood) regrouping of Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Peshawar, following the failed Islamist uprising in Kabul in 1975, took place under President Zufikar Ali Bhutto. Bhutto looked at it as "coercive diplomacy." For Zia, the equation held infinite possibilities. He extracted several derivatives from Afghanistan's enforced break from its cultural tradition. Islamism meshed well with Zia's domestic agenda; it gave the much-needed verve to the covert war of the 1980s, which made Pakistan a "frontline state" in the Cold War and, in turn, brought in huge American (and Arab) support. The rest is history. Substantially speaking, Zia's legacy has survived. Now that President Musharraf is inviting his countrymen to revisit nationalism in a spirit of "enlightened moderation," why should the Afghans not be allowed similar latitude?

The third aspect of Pakistan's policy followed from the above parameters. Pakistan came to regard Afghanistan over the years as an excusive "operational" theatre for its security agencies. Civil society was exorcised from the Pakistan-Afghan calculus; if diplomats were called in, it was only to perform an odd errand or two — they were superfluous to a policy that was single-mindedly geared to installing through force a subservient regime in Kabul. True, the policy had a huge resource base, in financial and material terms. But it stood sequestered from public discourses, and inevitably, over time got drained of intellectual reserve leaving behind an eddy of motiveless malignity.

The present regional alignments pose little threat to Pakistan. Also, Pakistan can look beyond the Khyber Pass and see a weak, impoverished country, which is hardly in a position to assert its defiance of the Durand Line. Yet signals are mixed. We read occasionally of wistful thoughts on Peshawar as a potential regional hub of trade. But we also hear on the ground the rumblings of `Plan B' — of Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami (Zia's favourite chariot of "Pashtun aspirations") once again slouching towards Kabul. It will be fascinating to watch how Pakistan comes to terms with democratic pluralism in Afghanistan.

(The writer is a former IFS officer with wide experience in Afghanistan and Central Asia.)

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