From a purely Pakistani perspective, the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan is going nowhere. If recent developments are any indication, the Taliban-inspired insurgency is on the rise. Taliban strength seems to be growing and they are taking on the coalition forces in larger numbers and more often. Their suicide bombers are taking a heavy toll both of the Afghan and ISAF troops and the area of their activity has widened.
There is also a marked swing of popular sympathy in favour of the Taliban because of the mounting collateral damage in terms of human life and population dislocation caused by the aerial bombings by the Nato planes on suspected Taliban hideouts.
As a result, the Karzai government's writ has failed to move beyond the municipal limits of Kabul, and the foreign forces have succeeded in establishing their control only in air or over their heavily fortified bases.
That's what prompted President Pervez Musharraf to tell the Toronto-based Globe and Mail the other day that the coalition forces should underpin their military campaign with diplomatic efforts. Observing that in Afghanistan "it is only the military strategy that is working" at present, the President strongly called for adoption of a multi-pronged strategy by introducing a political element of negotiations between the Afghan warring factions.
According to him, the warring factions are the Afghan government and coalition forces on one side and the Taliban and non-Taliban on the other. He thinks there are some other groups, who may be presently inactive or repressed by the Taliban, who too should be engaged.
"You sitting in the West don't know anything. So, don't teach me, come and learn from us. Come and understand the environment, and then decide what has to be done. We are doing more than any other country". Surely, it was a sort of changed Pervez Musharraf, his bluntness resulting from his being badgered by the 'not enough, do more' mantra.
If recent Afghan history is any guide, one would know that the Afghans are essentially political animals. They are good fighters but equally astute negotiators. Over the last 30 years or so they have not only fought fiercely against a superpower and then among themselves but have also conducted a number of political experiments. Unfortunately the outsiders do not understand their fight-fight, talk-talk system of politics.
For instance, in 1994 when about a dozen Islamabad-based Western ambassadors were taken to Herat and Kandahar by the then interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, in search of a new leadership to replace the ever-quarrelling Mujahideen commanders there was hardly a word said about the Taliban. But within a month of that visit the Taliban emerged on the scene.
In no time they captured Kandahar and then most of the country almost without firing a shot to set up a drug-free, weapon-free Afghan society. Indeed, it was to the great wonderment of the outside world, but it aptly symbolised the Afghan imponderables. The quarters that are interested in securing a stable Afghanistan should explore the whole range of options, not just the military, which given the Afghan history has very limited applicability.