The Nato warning

As the US spy planes violated Pakistan's airspace on Sunday, a spokesman of the Afghanistan-based Nato forces warned Islamabad against stitching up peace deals with the tribal militants. "We have a right to question if these agreements put our troops and our mission under threat", he said at the media briefing he jointly addressed with an Afghan defence ministry spokesman in Kabul.
Both the Nato spokesman and the Afghan official were insistent that with relative peace restored in the restive tribal areas consequent to peace parleys, the militancy has increased in the eastern border provinces of Afghanistan. "It is no real solution if trouble on one side of the Durand Line is merely transferred to the other side", said the Nato spokesman.
Meanwhile the pilot-less US drones flew over Miranshah and some other areas of Northwest Waziristan Agency. The Pakistani jets did not scramble into space to interdict the intruders even when they were spotted some 40 kilometers inside our territory.
However, the government did admit that Pakistan airspace was violated, by saying the Nato countries' ambassadors will be assured that negotiations with tribal leaders will not be detrimental to the security situation of Afghanistan.
Indeed, the above-normal commitment to fight international terrorism has placed Pakistan between the rock and the hard place. When to the rapturous delight of the West, the Soviet troops left Afghanistan in the 80s the three-million plus Afghan refugees did not leave Pakistan.
They made homes here, married with locals and raised a whole generation of Afghans on the Pakistani soil. When the Taliban captured Afghanistan their counterparts in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan celebrated. And when the United States fought the Afghan Taliban to punish them for hosting the Arab Mujahideen - who had earlier been brought and trained there by the CIA - their Pakistan-based counterparts joined them.
Much to the chagrin of Pakistanis in this so-called war on terror the government of Pakistan joined its forces on the side of the United States. So, a part of the Afghan war shifted to Pakistan as the local Taliban refused to remain indifferent to the plight of their ethnic and ideological allies in Afghanistan.
As a result, over the last six years Pakistan suffered more troop casualties than the combined forces of Afghan government and its Western allies, in addition to rampant suicide-bombings throughout the country. Blaming this state of affairs on the Musharraf-led military approach, the people of Pakistan voted into power the government, which replaced the military approach with a multi-faceted development-based approach and started peace dialogue with militants.
Given the correctness of the new approach it did not take long for peace to return to Swat district while fighting ceased in the FATA areas. To the extent that guerrilla wars draw strength and sustenance from neighbouring countries, the Afghan Taliban are being helped by their sympathisers in the tribal areas of Pakistan. But it is hardly at a scale that it should change the balance of fighting inside Afghanistan.
The fact is that the Afghan Taliban is a major force in their own country, enjoying support at their ethnic base, which is the majority Pushtun population. Given that non-Pushtun warlords had overthrown the Taliban government with the help of the United States the present ruling elite in Kabul does not enjoy the popular Afghan support.
What the Nato forces are now contending with are not essentially the al Qaeda fighters but ordinary Pushtun youth of Afghanistan. Given their alienation from power, which tends to deepen their poverty and sharpen their hostility towards the Karzai government, the Afghan Taliban is not in short supply of fighters.
Surely, we feel that the Nato governments need to look at their engagement in Afghanistan in its correct perspective. They should know a little bit of history of the tribal region to comprehend the concept of 'Jirga' and how issues of war and peace are settled through dialogue.
Since historically the tribals have never been fully defeated they do not accept negotiations as an act of vanquished people. They also do not surrender arms, because it is against their tradition. Another point that our interlocutors should be able to convey to the Nato ambassadors is that al Qaeda has ceased to exist in Pakistan, but there are millions of devout Muslims who should not be seen as extremists.
In fact, the success of ANP, a nationalist, liberal political party, in clinching a peace agreement with die-hard religious elements of Swat should help the Nato ambassadors understand the rationality of talking to the militants. At the same time it should be conveyed to the Nato governments that enough is enough - no more drones in Pakistani air space.