EDITORIAL: United States Special Envoy for Afghan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, as expected, swung by Islamabad after visits to Kabul and Doha, where he met the Afghan government leaders and the Taliban, respectively. In Islamabad, Khalilzad met COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa, ISI chief Lt-Gen Faiz Hameed and other government officials. What little has emerged into public view after this round of shuttle diplomacy is the new proposed plan by the Biden administration to push the peace process forward. This plan entails a 90-day period of reduction in the violence that has continued to rage, if not incrementally increased, since the US-Taliban accord signed in Doha in February 2020, and national elections under a transitional Afghan government. In addition, Washington is launching an international and regional diplomatic effort to forge a consensus on the way forward to a negotiated peace. The reduction in violence, particularly by the Taliban, is expected to boost this diplomatic effort and pre-empt the traditional Taliban spring offensive. However, ever since the Doha accord, the Taliban have avoided attacking the US and NATO forces while pressing home their offensive against the Afghan government and its security forces irrespective of the season. It must be said that the response of the parties to the conflict and important stakeholders says it all about the chances of success of the new initiative. The Taliban are said to be considering the plan, but reports of their rejecting outright fresh elections as western interference says all there is to say about the chances of the plan’s success. The Afghan government, on the other hand, seems adamant that there will be no compromise on Afghanistan’s constitution and the people’s right to vote. Pakistan, perhaps because it has yet to digest the intricacies of the proposed plan, is meaningfully silent despite the US’s desire for Islamabad to use its influence with the Taliban to get them to agree. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has written a letter to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani urging him to develop a consensus in Afghanistan on negotiations with the Taliban on governance, power sharing, and related essential supporting principles, warning that the Taliban could make rapid territorial gains in the event of a US withdrawal. That withdrawal, fixed at May 1, 2021 by the previous Trump administration, now seems destined to become a casualty of the review initiated by the Biden administration because Washington feels the Taliban have violated the spirit if not the letter of the Doha accord by their persisting violence against the Afghan government.
The US’s difficulties in Afghanistan eerily echo similar dilemmas for every foreign invader and occupier of Afghanistan. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan has earned the sobriquet of ‘the graveyard of empires’. In the rush of blood following the 9/11 attacks, the US felt compelled to act once the Taliban government refused to play ball against al-Qaeda, the author of the attacks. Twenty years and many lives and lucre lost later, the classic dilemma Washington faces is it is likely to be damned if it does not withdraw, and damned if it does. The Taliban, sensing the exhaustion amongst the Americans regarding a seemingly never ending and unwinnable war, have pressed home their advantage by committing only to make it impossible in future for Afghan soil to be used to attack the US and its allies in return for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Arguably, the Ashraf Ghani government can be described as a bystander insofar as this deal is concerned. However, Pakistan, as a major stakeholder and supporter of the Taliban, feels compelled to play its role to facilitate the peace process since there may well have crept in a realisation that pushing the Pashtun Taliban card beyond a point could end up in a catastrophe in Afghanistan, with concomitant negative fallout for Pakistan itself. This catastrophe could, if it appears the Taliban are poised for victory and a total takeover, resurrect ethnic and sectarian fault lines that could conceivably tear Afghanistan apart. Islamabad therefore, in its own long-term interests, must follow up the positive role it has played in facilitating the Doha accord by bending its back to persuade the Taliban to find a modus vivendi with the Afghan government for a peaceful transition, lest the whole powder keg blow up in everyone’s face.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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