The ‘peace’ mantra

Pakistan’s leaders, civilian and military, have been piping the ‘peace in Afghanistan’ tune for some time now, and certainly since the US signed an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw troops from the country. Islamabad has been trying hard to take credit for facilitating the meetings between Zalmay Khalilzad and the Taliban in Doha that broke the ice between the two protagonists. Further, after the Doha withdrawal agreement, Pakistan’s leadership has been stressing an ‘inclusive’ power sharing arrangement to prevent a continuation of the civil war, peace in and around Afghanistan, and escape any fallout or spillover of the Afghan conflict.

While these policy pronouncements from the highest to the lowest in Pakistan’s top echelons of power sound eminently rational, reasonable and sweet, what is happening on the ground and on the battlefield in Afghanistan appears to run contrary to all this. One does not have to search far to find critical reporting and research on how Pakistan under Musharraf played a double game of ostensibly supporting the US in Afghanistan while also nurturing back to life Washington’s (now clearly established) nemesis in the form of the Taliban. This duality continues, with speculation whirling around Pakistan’s ‘facilitating’ the Taliban’s current offensive since May 2021 when the US started its withdrawal, which is now approaching completion.

The contradiction at the heart of Pakistan’s policy vis-à-vis Afghanistan is that it is pursuing contrary goals. Can peace be attained in Afghanistan in the teeth of the ruthless offensive by the Taliban? Can such a gambit provide the circumstances for a peaceful political settlement between the warring sides? Needless to say, these appear to be rhetorical questions.

As anticipated by informed observers, there is a noticeable uptick in Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and its erstwhile tribal areas. Every day brings fresh news of policemen and soldiers being killed or wounded in gun and bomb attacks, including land mines. Whether the ‘sleeper cells’ of the TTP have woken up or its presence just across the Afghan border is responsible is a moot choice.

From all accounts and appearances, for all the fancy talk about peace, reconciliation, power sharing, a reformed Taliban and what have you, the issue is actually being decided on the battlefield. Having captured some strategic border crossings and isolated posts (largely in the non-Pashtun north, northwest and east of Afghanistan), the Taliban are now escalating to the siege of cities. Thus the provincial capitals of Herat and Lashkar Gah are under siege, with street-to-street fighting in progress in the former. Bombardment, from artillery or the air, is being employed by the hard-pressed Afghan government forces and their allied militias such as Ismail Khan’s forces in Herat. This comes as a surprise since it was widely assumed that the Afghan air force had been reduced to a lame duck after the US withdrawal for lack of spares and maintenance. It could also be that the US, despite being denied air bases in Pakistan, has found ways to pound the Taliban from the air wherever they appear to be pressing the Afghan government side too hard. Kandahar airport was briefly put out of commission by Taliban rocket fire on August 1, 2021, but soon restored. Its importance in terms of an air bridge between Kabul and the southwestern provincial capital cannot be overestimated.

Meanwhile, Pakistani National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf and ISI chief Lieutenant-General Faiz Hameed visited Washington recently to, amongst other things, ‘sweet talk’ the US into not ‘abandoning’ Afghanistan (or Pakistan?). The issue revolves around the likely scenario of the Taliban paying lip service to talks and a political settlement with the Afghan government while pursuing an all-out military victory on the ground through a guerrilla strategy of indirect approach, which implies attacking and taking the weakest points first, and then nibbling away until the relatively fortified and heavily defended cities can be made to tumble one after the other like dominos. Since the Taliban seem bent on an outright military victory, there is concern in Islamabad that even if they succeed, the Taliban government that emerges as a result will struggle to be recognised, let alone legitimised, in the world. It could face even greater isolation than even its previous regime in 1996-2001, which was recognised by just three countries, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. So, Moeed and company are trilling, don’t ‘abandon’ a Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

Regional powers such as Russia, China and Iran (not to mention the neighbouring Central Asian States) are attempting a pragmatic engagement with the prospective ‘new’ rulers of Afghanistan casting a long shadow on the country’s horizon. They are basically arguing ‘let and let live’, meaning restrain the inimical religious fundamentalist movements located in Afghanistan from attacking us and we may be inclined to ‘do business’ with you. Pakistan too has similar concerns regarding the TTP. Can the Taliban be taken at their word about not allowing Afghan soil to be used in future against neighbouring countries? Given their ideological and political proclivities and closeness to some of these movements, particularly the TTP, that is a stretch too far.

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Copyright Business Recorder, 2021