US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher said in Islamabad on Friday that despite the North Waziristan agreement, "terrorists are still going into Afghanistan." He was quick to add though that the US did not succeed either "to curb violence and extremists, and they both need to harness more efforts to make the region peaceful and safe."
Indeed, the government in Islamabad acknowledges that people are still going into Afghanistan, but not for lack of efforts to stop cross-border movement, and that the movement has come down considerably. In fact, just a day before Boucher made his remarks, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, General David Richards, backed Pakistan's position at a press conference he addressed at the end of a tripartite meeting of military commanders from Pakistan, Afghanistan and ISAF.
He said that enhanced deployment of Pakistani troops in the border region had "helped considerably in bringing down the graph of insurgency in Afghanistan as compared to last winter." He also recognised Pakistan's difficulties observing that monitoring of a 2,500 km porous border in the hilly terrain remains a huge task. "Still, reduction in the incidents since autumn has much to do with the activities on Pakistani side of the border. We are the beneficiaries on that side of border."
It is obvious from these observations of the military commander, who has to deal with the issue on a day-to-day basis, that the cross-border activities indeed have decreased because of the different measures that Pakistan has been adopting. But the porous nature of the border and the close links that exist between the people living on either side, as also the presence of about 2.5 million Afghan refugees, render the task that much difficult.
Boucher's assertion that both Pakistan and the US need to harness more efforts sounds sensible as long as the US and the Karzai government are willing to make a distinction in the nature of the efforts the two sides have to undertake. Pakistan's role is clear, which is to stop undesirable elements from going across to the other side to fight. Towards that end, aside from deploying some 80,000 troops that the ISAF commander says have helped, it has decided to fence the border.
Islamabad has also accepted the Canadian government's suggestion to give up its plan to mine the border as well, and instead to adopt other measures such as monitoring through satellite imagery and unmanned drones as well as to introduce biometrics identification system for people crossing the border at various designated points of entry and departure.
And, of course, the Tripartite Commission is there for the three sides' commanders to share intelligence and take quick action to prevent undesirable activities. It is for the Kabul government and the US-led coalition forces to do the rest on their side of the border.
First of all, they must identify the reasons for the Taliban resurgence. As western analysts have been pointing out, the US started a new war in Iraq while Afghanistan was far from pacified. That meant diversion of soldiers and economic resources to the new theater of war. Iraq has also come to serve as a fertile training ground for the Taliban/al Qaeda activists, who have learned new fighting techniques there to use them against their opponents in Afghanistan.
The western countries did not honour their financial commitments for the reconstruction and rehabilitation work, aggravating the sufferings of the war-weary ordinary Afghans.
The US-led coalition forces tried to win the war with the help of corrupt warlords; and the American military earned the anger of common Afghans through torture and humiliation of prisoners it held at the infamous Bagram prison.
For its part, the Karzai government failed to undertake any imaginative policy measures to create law and order or to win the hearts and minds of its people, in particular the Pushtun population, thus creating a certain amount of nostalgia for the peace that prevailed during the Taliban rule.
It also failed to curb poppy cultivation, which had all but disappeared under the Taliban rule, letting the country become a major centre of heroin production and smuggling. All these factors allowed the Taliban to regroup and pick up the fight with a vengeance.
Many of its leaders are veterans of the war against the erstwhile Soviet Union, hence well versed in guerrilla warfare. And to finance their campaign they do not have to look towards any outside source, thanks to abundance of heroin production.
The US and the Kabul government would be well advised to take a hard look within Afghanistan to address the situation, rather than to put unfair pressure on Pakistan to do more than what it is already doing.