The facts of the situation in Afghanistan are clear enough. (1) Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were quick to recognise the Taleban government last year. However, Iran and the rest of the world are definitely in no mood to do so. (2) Iran and Afghanistan are at daggers drawn. Passions in Iran against the Taleban are running so high that a spill over into armed conflict between the two countries cannot be ruled out. (3) The Pakistan army chief is worried about the fallout of such a conflict between two Islamic countries on Pakistan’s western borders and has urged Muslim statesmen to help defuse the situation immediately. (4) Pakistan’s attempt to cool down Iran has not borne much fruit. (5) In the absence of any concrete initiative from the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), the United Nations has launched efforts to find a way out of the crisis. This initiative is based on the 6+2 formula in which the regional states bordering Afghanistan (Iran, Pakistan, China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan) plus Russia and the USA are expected to put their heads together and try to find a solution. Given these facts, what are the chances that an enduring solution to the civil war in Afghanistan can be found quickly?
Bleak, we fear. Iran and the rest of the world will not settle for anything less than a significant political and military rollback by the Taleban so that a broad-based consensus government comprising the major ethnic and religious elements of Afghanistan can be installed in Kabul. But the Taleban are bound to resist any move in this direction. They control 90% of the territory of Afghanistan and are exerting themselves to conquer the rest of the country. Worse, from the point of view of all their neighbours except perhaps Pakistan, they insist on installing and consolidating an exclusivist Sunni Pashtun government in Kabul.
Pakistan’s position has, unfortunately, become problematic over time. In 1992 and 1993, before the Taleban appeared on the scene, Islamabad definitely made efforts to help install a broad-based consensus government in Kabul. But these were unsuccessful, partly because of Pakistan’s rigid bias towards certain Pastun elements like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami and partly because of stubborn intransigence on the part of the Tajik government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Commander Ahmad Shah Masood in Kabul. Then, in November 1994, the Taleban entered the equation quite suddenly, partly as a result of local factors and partly due to the Pakistan’s government’s overt and covert support. The Taleban quickly took Kandahar in south Afghanistan and, in 1995, seized Herat province bordering Iran, forcing Ismail Khan, the Governor of Herat, to flee to Teheran. Then they began their long march to encircle and seize Kabul, which finally fell in September 1996. By 1997, the Taleban were ready to confront Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum in north Afghanistan. A successful coup against Dostum in May 1997 enabled the Taleban to March on to Mazar-i-Sharif and occupy it. Although the Taleban were thrown out from the city three days later, they were able to seize it again in August 1998. This was followed by the conquest of the Shia province of Bamiyan in recent times, leaving only one outpost to be conquered — Masood’s Tajik stronghold in the northern Panjshir valley.
If the Taleban’s resounding military successes are to be attributed to their own unity and determination and the lack of these in their opponents, there is also no doubt about the fact that the Taleban have received significant logistical and military support from elements in Pakistan. The Interservices Intelligence Agency (ISI), in particular, has been singled out by Teheran as the “driving force” behind the Taleban. But the facts are more complex and confusing.
When the Taleban appeared on the scene in November 1994, the Pakistanis sought to use the Teleban to pressure the Rabbani regime into agreeing on a consensus government in Kabul. Therefore they advised the Taleban to work with Ismail Khan and Rashid Dostum in order to isolate Rabbani. But the Taleban disregarded Islamabad and seized Herat. Islamabad’s attempts to rein them in and initiate a UN-sponsored dialogue with Rabbani on the eve of the fall of Kabul also failed. But Pakistan didn’t give up its attempts to influence the Taleban in the right direction even after Kabul fell to them — that is why Islamabad did not accord them formal recognition after they seized Kabul.
But then something quite inexplicable happened. When Mazar-i-Sharif briefly fell to the Taleban in 1997, Islamabad’s swift recognition of the Taleban regime stunned everyone. In fact, it seemed to confirm the worst suspicions about the role allegedly played by Pakistan’s ISI in supporting and propping up the Taleban and put paid to Islamabad’s long-standing official position that Pakistan remained keen on a broad-based consensus government in Kabul. The seizure of Mazar-i-Sharif and Bamiyan province in recent months by the Taleban, and Islamabad’s dogged attempts to lobby worldwide for the recognition of the Taleban government, has merely served to harden the view that Islamabad is hand in glove with the Taleban’s attempt to rule exclusively over all of Afghanistan. It is this perception which has alienated Afghanistan’s neighbours from Pakistan, especially Iran, and created a worrying situation on Pakistan’s western borders.
The fact of the matter is that, despite supporting the Taleban, Islamabad has not been able to develop strategic leverage with them. This may be partly due to the fact that the Taleban are assisted by Deobandi jihadi forces based in Pakistan which are not altogether in the control of the Pakistan government or intelligence agencies and which have Islamic agendas of their own. It is said, for example, that the centre of gravity of the Taleban movement is not Kabul but in Akora Khattak, the headquarters of the Jamiat i Ulema i Islam (Sami ul Haq) which runs the Madrassa Uloom al Haqqania, which is one of the most significant recruiting ideological grounds of the Taleban (Mullah Umar, the leader of the Taleban, was a student at this madrassa). But it is also conceivable that certain cliques within the intelligence apparatus of Pakistan have agendas of their own and are working at cross purposes.
Whatever the causes for the lack of an effective Pakistani leverage on the Taleban, the fact however remains that Islamabad has painted itself into a corner in Afghanistan and aroused the hostility of its neighbours in the region. The zero-sum game with India on Pakistan’s eastern flank has now been repeated into a zero-sum game with an old ally like Iran and potential friends in Central Asia. This is an unacceptable situation from Pakistan’s national security view point. It must be addressed quickly. How can this be done?
The Pakistani civilian government and the Pakistani armed forces must first acknowledge that it is not in Pakistan’s national security interests to allow the consolidation of a fundamentalist, jihadi, Sunni Deobandi, Pashtun regime in Kabul which excludes all other ethnic and religious groups. There are many reasons for this, not least because (a) Afghanistan’s neighbours will never accept this state of affairs, therefore foreign intervention and interference in Afghanistan is likely to increase rather than decrease if the Taleban are allowed to become the de facto and de jure rulers of Afghanistan (b) the political, religious and ethnic fallout of such an Afghan regime can prove extremely dangerous for civil society in Pakistan. In other words, the Pakistani establishment must recognise the long term wisdom of helping establish a multi-ethnic, multi-religious federal governmental system in Afghanistan in which Kabul allows maximum political and economic autonomy to the provinces. Second, the Pakistani establishment must get its act together and ruthlessly exercise leverage on the Taleban in order to bring about an Afghan state which poses no threat to any country in the region. This would mean forcing the Taleban to accept the legitimate political, religious and ethnic concerns of Afghanistan’s significant minorities and agreeing to share power with them. How can such leverage be brought into play?
Given a proper assessment of the dangerous situation in the region and given the will to redeem it in a satisfactory manner, it is not difficult to imagine how effective Pakistani leverage can be developed inside Afghanistan. First, ideological jihadi cliques and groups with agendas of their own must be confronted ruthlessly, whether within the Pakistani establishment or within civil society. Second, the official pipeline of Pakistani assistance to the Taleban must be exploited to calibrate Islamabad’s influence over the Taleban. Third, Islamabad must lay its cards on the table with its friends in the region, win their confidence, ask them to do the same, and jointly undertake efforts to achieve the objective of a broad-based federal arrangement in Afghanistan. In the meanwhile, Pakistan must stop championing the dubious cause of the Taleban, stop explaining away their shortcomings and excesses and stop lobbying for their recognition as the true government of Afghanistan. Finally, the Nawaz Sharif government must desist from trying to change the nature of Pakistan’s law and constitution in any manner which gives sustenance to the jihadi groups within Pakistan and destabilises the foundations of civil society and armed forces.