Daily Times Editorial Jan 26, 2010

Summitry on Afghanistan

In a concentrated burst of diplomatic activity, a series of summits has taken place, is taking place as these lines are being written, and will take place after they appear in print. On Monday, a trilateral summit amongst Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan transpired in Istanbul, hosted by Turkish President Abdullah Gul and attended by the Pakistani and Afghan presidents. On Tuesday, Pakistan’s six plus two formula would be applied for a summit of Afghanistan’s neighbours, also in Istanbul. On Wednesday, the much hyped and anticipated conference on Afghanistan in London would get underway. In the second summit in Istanbul, Pakistan, Iran, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, all immediate neighbours of Afghanistan, would be represented. In addition, the US will be in attendance, and in a substitution for the original invitee Russia, the UK. At the London conference, around 50 countries will be participating. All this shows the increasing focus on, and increased activity to find ways of resolution of, the Afghan conflict.
The thrust of most opinion on the issue centres on the possibility of opening a dialogue with, and welcoming in from the cold, mid-level Taliban fighters, considered to be less ideologically motivated and perhaps fighting for money or to avenge grievances against the Karzai government, the foreign forces supporting that government, or the warlords who form the warp and woof of the incumbent Kabul regime. The terms on which such fighters may be welcomed back and rehabilitated in Afghan society include a renunciation of their past proclivities and views, an acceptance of the Afghan constitution and political setup, and an avowed farewell to arms. A great deal of the hopes residing in this initiative spring from the fact that resources will now be made available to Kabul to sweeten the return of such fighters with jobs, homes, security against former enemies, etc. The Obama ‘surge’ of some 30,000 fresh troops is intended to weaken the hold of the Taliban insurgency, secure the cities, population centres and main highways, and thereby persuade even the leadership of the Taliban that their struggle does not have any hope of succeeding in its objectives by force of arms. That development, it is hoped, will open the door to negotiations with the Taliban leadership on seeking a political solution to the Afghan quagmire. There are unprecedented hints of late that Mullah Omar may be shifting ground slightly to envisage accepting the demand that the Taliban distance themselves from al Qaeda, but he remains adamant that the other side must commit to a withdrawal of all foreign forces, without necessarily being forthcoming on the issue of accepting the Afghan constitution or political order.
These diplomatic, political shifts have been made possible in recent days because of Saudi Arabia’s mediation between the Taliban and the Karzai regime, through discreet contacts hosted by the Kingdom since the last two years. Whereas Pakistan’s ISI has been left out of this loop at the insistence of the hosts and the two sides of this coin, the redoubtable intelligence arm of the Pakistani military now feels even more confident of calling the shots in any negotiated settlement in Afghanistan because of its closeness to the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership and fighters are hosted on Pakistani soil. The ISI’s insistence, according to reports, that it alone will mediate between the Taliban and the US and Afghan authorities, without permitting direct contacts between the warring sides, may be read as an attempt to ensure that Pakistan’s oft-touted but little explained ‘national security interests’ in Afghanistan are safeguarded. Reading between the lines reveals that the Pakistani military establishment still harbours apprehensions and a horror of the possibility of growing Indian influence in Kabul squeezing Pakistan in a ‘nutcracker’ between a hostile India to the east and a less than friendly Afghanistan under Indian influence to the west. This paranoia may put a spanner in the works of the London conference, where the US and UK are pressing for an increased role for India in any eventual settlement of the Afghan imbroglio, a notion rejected in toto by the Pakistani military establishment and which is arguably being worked against by the two summits in Istanbul, where India is not represented.
The notion of a regional solution to Afghanistan’s woes sounds fine in theory, and as far as its immediate neighbours and the chief architects of a political settlement allowing the US and Nato forces to withdraw at some future date, i.e. the US and UK are concerned, poses better prospects of success. The fly in the ointment is Pakistan’s opposition to opening the door further to an Indian role, the rock on which the London conference and all similar initiatives beloved of the west may make shipwreck.