To Karzai From Pakistan: ‘Put Up Or Shut Up’

Category: Current Affairs
Written by: Amend Foster (on July 10, 2008 - 08:43 PM)

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan—“Pakistan needs to do more on war-on-terror”, the irritating sentence is very familiar to Pakistani ears.

It’s time Pakistan should seriously ‘do more’ even if it is irritates Karzai.

After the U.S. attack on Afghanistan back in 2001, Pakistan had to withdraw its support to Taliban and ever since has been facing security threats due to its policies perceived to be serving U.S. interests more than Pakistan’s own national security needs. Pakistan has been and still is facing severe criticism internally as well as from certain external quarters for its most conspicuous U-turn against the Taliban.

Since then, the tribal areas of Pakistan face a growing militancy while the settled areas are also rattled by the militants. Despite deploying about 70,000 soldiers on our western border with Afghanistan to fight terrorism, and having lost many of our soldiers in this fight, Karzai and NATO most of the time press Pakistan to do more.

The fact remains that Pakistan is not responsible for the war and for U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. The Afghan economy is now a narco-economy with over $150 billion dollars worth of drugs produced, processed and shipped from Afghanistan. Most of the major government officials, governors and ministers in the Karzai government are ‘drug lords.’

Even today the control of the government does not extended beyond Kabul, forcing Mr. Karzai to express his frustration by launching a blame game to hide his own failures.

Whereas in Afghanistan, and despite the superior weapons and technology, the U.S. and NATO forces failed to contain the anti-coalition opposition and fighters.

Afghans see the presence of aliens on their soil as occupation. These ordinary Afghans are now supporting those fighting against the U.S. occupation. Coupled with this the killing of a large number of innocent Afghan men, women and children every now and then in air strikes is increasing Afghan anger against the American presence.

In the wake of all these factors the U.S. policy, which seems more like a list of forlorn wishes, is set to boomerang in Afghanistan.

Taliban are now fighting positional wars with regular fronts in Khost and Kandahar regions. The weapons in the hands of the Taliban are supplied, as per more and more intelligence reports, by the Russians and even by Iranian sources. The contribution of Pakistani tribal areas in forging the strategic outcome of the war in Afghanistan is less than 10% from every strategic and military standpoint. For all practical purposes, the war is an Afghan problem and is not being controlled or decided from the Pakistani tribal regions.

But the Afghan and U.S. game is simple:

1. Blame Pakistan for all the sufferings and war in the country.

2. Initiate a head-on collision between Pakistani State and Pakistani tribal militants.

3. Create a rift between armed forces of Pakistan and Pakistani society.

4. Create environment for separation of tribal regions into an autonomous new country.

5. And leading up to the creation of enough chaos and anarchy in Pakistan to justify forced removal of Pakistani nuke assets. 

Frustrated by an apparent defeat in Iraq, loss of public approval and support in Afghanistan and failure to prove that the presence of NATO/U.S. forces is aimed at liberating the Afghans, the U.S. and Mr. Karzai seek an escape by blaming others.

Very systematically the local Pakistani Taliban are infiltrated by the U.S. assets led by Baitullah Mehsud to create hatred against the government and armed forces of Pakistan resulting in many attacks on law enforcement agencies. These U.S. assets in the garb of “Taliban” have succeeded to a great extent to create a divide between the local Taliban and the State.

U.S. assets within Pakistani political parties and media have been mobilized to create confusion among the Pakistani public about the security situation and the safety of our nuclear program. Under a well-planned strategy pressure is being built against nuclear weapons of Pakistan by floating false propaganda.

The more sinister plan is being woven for turning the Pakistani federation into a confederation by supporting the sub-nationalists in NWFP and Balochistan. The efforts for separating FATA from Pakistan have already been initiated by buying out tribal leaders from FATA. The demand for a separate province consisting of FATA is being fed to the tribal leaders, and press conferences and wide media coverage is being arranged to publicize this demand and prepare the public mindset for this eventuality.

A few months ago, a select group of little known tribal leaders was reportedly invited by the Americans on a trip to the U.S. where they were assigned the task to promote the notion of separate province of FATA.

Civil society organizations have also been activated to make grounds for the demand of making FATA a separate province. These NGOs funded by U.S. and Western countries are constantly arranging seminars and propagating the idea while at the same time formulating suggestions for the same.

Just four days ago the PPP government has announced turning FATA into a territory with an elected council and for the purpose has sought suggestions from these NGOs and other stakeholders.

The U.S. has already has committed to pumping millions of dollars in for ‘development’ of FATA to be utilized through non-government organizations to win minds and hearts resulting in gaining local support.

The doctrine of greater provincial autonomy is also being promoted through the sub-nationalists who are in the first phase demanding total control of resources (which means the elements within provincial governments can blackmail and bypass Islamabad regarding important strategic issues in the future) as well as doing away with the concurrent list which will empower the sub-nationalists to post own trusted people on key posts who will in future carry on the agenda.

Many eyebrows were raised when, immediate after the oath taking by Yousaf Raza Gilani, he announced the abolishment of the Frontier Crimes Regulations (40-FCR) without any planning. The decision was criticized both by the tribesmen as well as intellectuals and it people were wondering on whose behest did the prime minister take such an immediate decision barely hours after assuming office.

The game is exposed and now it is time that Pakistan develops some serious response to the challenge. Indeed, Pakistan needs to “do more” to check the sinister game plan against the homeland.

So let’s do more.

1. To start with, Pakistan should immediately initiate three steps:

2. Revive Pak-Afghan Jirga held in Kabul in August 2007 which had concluded with the agreement that Pakistan and Afghanistan governments will initiate talks with Afghan Taliban and bring them onboard the peace process. The process was abandoned later on after strong U.S. objections to the idea.

3. Fence/mine the border to check any unwanted crossings and infiltrations. Install biometric system at border at selected crossings as being done in Chaman border crossing in Balochistan.

4. Pakistan needs to redefine its Afghan Policy, ideally declaring neutrality in the conflict and offering to act as mediator between Afghan parties to the conflict. Pakistan still does not have a defined anti-terrorism policy either.

5. Pakistan should immediate debate and discuss the Afghan and anti-terror policies in parliament and develop a national mandate through the political parties, elected representatives and the cabinet.

6. A high power parliamentary or judicial commission should be constituted to know and identify the causes, perpetrators, ideology, groups and militants behind the suicide bombings in the country against State and people. The crisis is huge enough to demand a public inquiry and expose of the phenomenon. 

Reviving the jirga:

Last year in 2007, on the suggestion of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a joint Pak-Afghan Jirga – a commission for peace in the region was formed. The Pak-Afghan Jirga having full backing of NATO and U.S. engaged about 700 tribal leaders and other influential elders from both sides held two meetings one each in both the countries. The meeting held in Kabul in August 2007 participated by tribesmen and other influential persons from both sides presented valuable suggestions to fight terrorism and bring peace in the region.

The ensuing Pak-Afghan Jirga was being viewed with great expectations to bring peace in the region particularly to deal with the violence in Afghanistan. The participating representatives of tribesmen from both sides suggested bringing Taliban onboard the peace talks for bringing stability in the region. However to utter dismay of the people of both the countries, the jirga the brain child of Afghan President Karzai, who was the main architect of the structure and mechanism of this jirga, was put on backburner due to reasons that a peace in Afghanistan clashed head-on with the U.S. objectives in the region. Pakistani President Musharraf at he concluding session of the jirga meeting had declared Taliban as legitimate entity in the war and one of the delegates even went as far as demanding total withdrawal of the U.S. forces! Obviously, U.S. was not amused and decided to shelve the idea. Now it is the time that the concept be revived once again and brought in the limelight.

It is not some strange or alien idea as in the past during pre-Soviet invasion period tribal elders from Pakistan used to be invited to Kabul as official guests and also used to attend the proceedings of Loya Jirga of Afghanistan.

Fence/mine the border & install biometric system

Karzai’s ludicrous demands:

• Pakistan should stop Taliban from crossing.

• Pakistan should keep the refugee camps in Pakistan which act as safe areas for Taliban.

• Pakistan should allow more people to people contact between tribes across the border.

• Pakistan should not fence the border.

• Pakistan should not install biometric system to identity refugees from among the militants.

• Pakistan should do more to stop Taliban.

Now what do we make out of this confused set of ridiculous demands?

It is obvious that Mr. Karzai is only interested in creating crisis and confusion for Islamabad and not in genuinely finding solutions to the problems of cross border movements. There is no way Mr. Karzai or his government can accept fencing of the border as that affects their drug trade as well and they are then not able to support the BLA as well as some terrorists in tribal regions. But it is time that Pakistan should ‘do more’.

Mr. Karzai has been instrumental in worsening Pak-Afghan relations as the relations between the two countries witnessed a steep downtrend following a continuing vitriol from Karzai regarding the alleged “cross-border” infiltration of the Taliban from Pakistan.

To interdict the so-called movement of militants across the border, besides conducting military operations in FATA, Pakistan also proposed to fence and mines the Pak-Afghan border which was turned down by the Kabul Administration. It is ridiculous that Mr. Karzai constantly accuses Pakistan of ‘cross-border infiltration’ while at the same time advocates open borders between the two countries. During his visit to Pakistan in February 2006, Karzai opposed the fencing of the border and said he favored passport-free movement of people along the Pak-Afghan border.

Fencing and mining the border can be very effective in checking infiltration of unwanted elements into either of the two countries. If the Afghan president refuses to accept this fencing and mining idea, then Pakistan has no responsibility of any sort to check any cross- border movement. Enough is enough!

Many refugee camps were closed down in tribal agencies of Pakistan owing to the accusation by Kabul that these are being used as sanctuaries by militants but the action did not sit well with Afghan government unable to provide security and livelihood to own citizens. The strange dichotomy is that Kabul is reluctant to accept the remedial steps for controlling unwanted cross-border movement. It is nearly impossible to check every person crossing without putting a mechanism in place at the border hence either the border has to be fenced/ mined or biometric system has to be installed at Western border with Afghanistan as has been done in Balochistan.

Pakistan has installed the system in Balochistan at Chaman at Pak-Afghan friendship gate but again to utter disappointment some Afghans backed by some hidden hands repeatedly damage the gate and even a high official of Karzai government took part in one such attack aimed at damaging the system recently.

It dose not require rocket science to understand that some vested elements in Karzai government have some sinister motives behind such acts.  The number of those who daily cross over at only two crossing points of Chaman and Torkham is stated to be about 30, 000 with about 20,000 only at Chaman so put together with number of those crossing the porous border points could go much higher.

Hence fencing/mining is necessary in the first place while installing biometric system is equally important.

Needs for redefining Pakistan’s Afghan policy:

Since U.S. attack on Afghanistan Pakistan has been carrying out a directionless Afghan policy. It is time Pakistan declares neutrality in someone else’s war. Pakistan has already done great damage to her security by supporting unequivocally and whole- hoggedly the U.S. on its War-on-Terror.

 We had used every possible mean to destroy our assets and good will in Afghanistan but despite damaging our presence in Afghanistan we get the blame for harboring Taliban and relations with Afghanistan remain sour.

 The bad relations between the two important neighbors would only contribute to the instability of the region. It is, therefore, highly imperative for Pakistan to take an in-depth stock of its future relationship with Afghanistan, assets and presence there.

What is most disappointing that despite taking a complete U-turn against Taliban even then it did not win us the favor of the ungrateful Americans?

We must, therefore, in the best interest of Pakistan and its posterity realize that we can no longer continue with this state of affairs at the cost and expense of our own national security.

It is time that we adopted a more neutral policy towards Afghan conflict and could play the role of a mediator between the Afghan government and the anti-coalition forces including Taliban and Hizb-e-Islami. Pakistan can play the role it was playing in the post-Soviet invasion in Afghanistan by brining all those party to the conflict on a single platform to bring peace to the war-torn country.

It is time that Karzai should accept ground realities and stop opposing fencing and mining of border or installation of biometric system if he really is interested in effective checking of cross-border infiltration. It is time that Taliban are accepted as a reality and brought on board as agreed in Pak-Afghan jirga otherwise in plane diplomatic decent language borrowed from the Queen’s English - Pakistan should ask Karzai to “put up or shut up.”

Ms. Shah is a BrassTacks associate analyst based in Peshawar. She can be reached through www.brasstacks.pk

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