There are two narratives that define Pakistan’s national security. One is the anti-India paradigm that underpins the powerful anti-civilian corporatization of the Pakistani military. The other is the Af-Pak paradigm. This is a consequence of an-ethno-Islamist civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s that culminated in the establishment of a Pakistan-backed Taliban-Al Qaeda regime in Kabul in 1997. The overlapping of these two narratives since 9/11 has created a politico-military crisis in the region that is taking a heavy toll of Afghan, Pakistani and American lives and threatening to spill over into India and China.
Significantly, though, both narratives are riddled with holes and propaganda. That is why we have so many problems and so few solutions. Consider.
India does not pose a security threat to Pakistan. All Indo-Pak military conflicts were triggered or provoked by Pakistan. And each was used by the military to manufacture layers of domestic consent about a perpetual and heightened “security threat” from India in order to confirm the military as the pre-eminent political player and corporate entity of Pakistan.
The second narrative led to the theory of “strategic depth”. It enabled Pakistan to set up training bases in Afghanistan for Pakistani jihadis for the liberation of Kashmir. Inevitably, the two narratives merged seamlessly in Kargil in 1999.
But 9/11 put paid to this grand anti-India, strategic depth narrative. The ISI miscalculated when it ignored the developing regional and international threat from Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, despite the American Cruise Missile attacks in 1998. The ISI miscalculated again when it actually encouraged Mullah Umar to defy the USA and provoked an American invasion of Afghanistan and the installation of an anti-Pakistan, secular regime in Kabul dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks. It miscalculated a third time when it decided to allow “safe havens” in North Waziristan for its fleeing Taliban “assets” and Al-Qaeda in the expectation of re-launching them after the US left Afghanistan sooner than later. But the US has dug its heels in Afghanistan and spent a trillion dollars in the process. All these mistakes have added up to the creation of the Tehreek I Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that is aggressively waging war with Pakistan and threatening to overrun the NWFP.
It is the introduction of this new factor of the Pakistani Taliban that has made for a desperate and dramatic paradigm change in Af-Pak from Pakistan’s point of view. From the soft notion of an anti-India “strategic depth” based on a limited and dependent Talibanisation of Afghanistan, the paradigm has been transformed into a desperate, existential struggle to save Pakistan itself from the powerful virus of Al-Qaeda infected Talibanisation in the area.
At this juncture, the Pakistani military had two options. It could have unequivocally joined forces with America to crush all Taliban-Al-Qaeda networks, especially in FATA. But it hasn’t done this for several reasons. It fears that such a course of action would eventually lead to the strengthening and consolidation of the pro-India Karzai regime. This could renew Afghan encroachments upon Pakistan’s Pashtun areas. It could also become a launching pad for Indian proxies seeking to destabilize Balochistan. It could translate into hard strategic gains for India, given the budding strategic relationship between India and America in South Asia and the increasing Indian footprint in Afghanistan, by stressing economic markets, trade, gateways and pipelines, thereby integrating Pakistan’s economy into that of India and reducing the military’s corporate stranglehold over civil society and politics in Pakistan.
Therefore the military has chosen a two-track policy. This is aimed at eliminating the TTP while protecting the Afghan Taliban from NATO/ISAF so that the conflict in Afghanistan is extended and America is pressurized to devise an exit strategy that takes into account Pakistan’s true fears about an Al-Qaeda infected Taliban leftover in Pakistan without making it subservient to, or dependent upon, India. The composite idea is to compel America to give a ringside seat to the pro-Pakistan Afghan Taliban in any future dispensation in Kabul that fulfils a number of conditions: first, it should encourage the Afghan Taliban to disconnect from Al-Qaeda and redeem their original sin of 2001 when Mulla Umar refused to abandon Osama Bin Laden; second, it “balances” the ethnic factor in Afghanistan without endangering Pakistan by claiming its Pashtun areas across the Durand Line; third, it promises an Afghanistan that is not hostile to Pakistan; fifth, it cuts off the ideological, physical and financial lifeline to the TTP and Al Qaeda; and sixth, it enables Pakistan to fashion a “live and let live” policy with India which helps to build trust and resolve outstanding disputes.
America’s “exit strategy” from Afghanistan therefore assumes critical importance. If America insists on looking at the Taliban and Al Qaeda as the joint problem, then the war in Afghanistan will drag on, exhaust and demoralize America and even conceivably spill over at any time into an Indo-Pakistan conflict. But if America and Pakistan were to join hands in prying apart the Afghan Taliban from al-Qaeda by giving the Afghan Taliban a hot seat in Kabul and then going after Al-Qaeda and the TTP, there may be light at the end of the tunnel for everyone.