The Taliban forces have finally seized Mazar-i-Sharif, the headquarters of General Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord of north-west Afghanistan. Now they are aiming to crush the Tajik forces of Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Masoud in north Afghanistan and of the Shia-Hazaras in Bamian. If they succeed, the Taliban will consolidate the establishment of the first orthodox Sunni Islamic state in the region. How has this come about? What are the implications for Pakistan’s national security?
Since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s national security establishment, in alliance with the Saudi Arabian establishment, has made no bones about hosting favourites in Afghanistan. For a long time it was Sunni Pushtoon leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Then, when Mr Hekmatyar proved to be an ineffective and mercurial stooge, Islamabad tried to negotiate a deal with Mr Rabbani which would enable the Pushtoon forces led by Mr Hekmatyar to manoeuvre into a central position in a so-called consensus government. When that failed, the Taliban were launched by Islamabad to seize Kabul and push out Gen Dostum and Mr Rabbani to the periphery.
General Naseerullah Babar, who was Benazir Bhutto’s interior minister, has staked a claim to the formation of the Afghan Taliban. He admits that he actively encouraged thousands of Pakistani Taliban in Sunni-Deobandi madrassas controlled by Maulana Fazlur Rahman’s Jamiat i Ulema i Pakistan (JUI) in Pakistan’s northern borderlands to provide the backbone of the Afghan-Pushtoon resistance against the Afghan-Tajik regime of Mr Rabbani in Kabul. The idea was to create an effective countervailing force to the Kabul regime and force it to relinquish power to a Sunni Pushtoon group dependent on Pakistan. Pakistan’s national security establishment has justified its financial, military and logistics support to the Afghan Taliban on the basis of the strategic theory that Sunni Pakistan and Shia Iran are bound to be strategic adversaries in the scramble for Central Asian resources, gas pipelines and markets. It is therefore necessary, they say, to have a strong, pro-Pakistan, Sunni government in Kabul which can become a stepping stone in linking Sunni Pakistan to Sunni Central Asia.
But this strategic vision has turned out to be cock-eyed. Imbued with the spirit of pan-Islamic jehad, the Afghan Taliban have proved immune to important considerations of modern nation-statehood. Indeed, in the flush of one military victory after another, the Taliban have become increasingly independent of their Pakistani “handlers”. The end result is that instead of becoming Pakistan’s stepping stone to Central Asia, the Afghan regime has alienated the Central Asian republics and Iran from Pakistan and diminished the chances of any significant Pakistani role in Central Asia.
Despite avowing Islam, the Central Asian regimes are largely secular. They abhor the idea of an extremist Islamic regime on their borders which could become a centre for the export of militant Islamic philosophies and undermine their states. The Northern Alliance against the Taliban is supported by Iran, Uzbekistan and Russia. Uzbekistan and its ally government in Tajikistan were originally friendly towards Pakistan because they were suspicious of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s Russian links. But Uzbekistan’s fear of the Taliban has now led it to change its stance. The Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, is worried about the Saudi/Pakistan support to religious groups who are challenging his government in the region of Ferghana. (This concern is shared by Tajikistan and China). Mr Karimov is therefore inclined to seek help from an increasingly moderate Iran against the extremist Sunni version of Taliban Islam which threatens to make inroads into his population. This has compelled him to talk not only of cooperation with Iran but also with Russia from whom he was trying to distance himself in the past.
Pakistan’s relations with Iran have also suffered considerably as a result of Islamabad’s support to the Taliban. A Sunni fundamentalist state on its borders is anathema to Shia Iran. Indeed, as the Islamic leadership in Iran has become more moderate under President Mohammad Khatemi, Iran’s relations with the Central Asians have become warmer. So we now confront a united front of Iran, Central Asia and Russia against the Taliban, and by proxy, against Pakistan.
One negative fallout of this united front of Central Asia and Iran against Pakistan could be a postponement of a major proposed oil pipeline project aimed at bringing Central Asian gas to Pakistan. Turkmenistan, which was neutral in the Taliban-Northern Alliance stand-off, has also now begun to lean in favour of Iran since Teheran abandoned its aggressive-revolutionary policy in favour of one which stresses economic cooperation. Iran now provides a peaceful environment for the construction of pipelines through its territory. It has also developed a cooperative policy towards the Central Asian states that abut on the oil-rich Caspian Sea and offers Central Asia an alternative to Russia as an international transit connection. The Turkmen pipeline project in Iran is making quick progress even as the Turkmen-Pakistan gas pipeline project languishes because the Taliban are busy pursuing other priorities in Afghanistan where a paranoid environment favours war and not economic development.
Much the same may be said of China’s interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia. Beijing’s Xinjiang province is also vulnerable to Islamic subversion from Afghanistan. The last thing China wants is an unstable province bordering Afghanistan. China is also making substantial economic inroads in Central Asia. It is therefore in its interest to ensure that Central Asia remains ideologically secular and politically stable. Under the circumstances, the prospect of a strong Taliban regime in Afghanistan is an unsettling one for China.
But it is the potential political fallout of an Afghan Taliban regime on Pakistan which should worry our national security establishment. The Afghan Taliban are organically interlinked with three fundamentalist Sunni-Deobandi groups in Pakistan the JUI, the Sipah i Sahaba (SSP) and the Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA). The SSP is a violent sectarian organisation which receives military training in Afghanistan and kills Shias in Pakistan. The HUA is a militant organisation which also receives military training in Afghanistan and carries the brunt of the jihad in Kashmir. Both are heavily armed Punjab-based outfits which are outside the control of Pakistan’s law and order agencies. Coupled with the JUI, both are fertile recruiting grounds for Pakistan’s indigenous and budding version of Talibanism.
Pakistan is therefore gradually falling under the puritanical faith of the Deobandi-Wahabi forces that are allied to the Taliban. In the past two years, for example, Pakistani judges are increasingly falling prey to Islamic extremism. The same is true of our state organisations involved in minding the Kashmir mujahideen. Meanwhile, the Shias in Pakistan are coming under increasing pressure from these fundamentalist Sunni organisations to hit back through counter-terrorism tactics. (Mr Nawaz Sharif himself is on the Deobandi hit-list).
There is one other destabilising factor. Afghanistan has always nursed irredentist thoughts about Pakistan. But governments in Kabul have never been strong enough to assert themselves on the question of the Durand Line. However, things could change once the Pushtoon Taliban emerge as the most powerful government in Kabul in a hundred years. This time the cause of conflict with Pakistan would acquire an economic dimension as well. The Afghan regime is likely to insist on traditional transit trade rights along with its corollary of smuggling which the Afghans consider to be their birthright. This will hurt Pakistan enormously and stall attempts by the CBR to undertake necessary reforms of the tariff structure. In addition, the Pakistani state will become hostage to the Taliban’s Deobandi brand of Islam by continuing to give succor to the JUI, SSP and HUA. Furthermore, the rise of Pakhtun-driven nationalism in Afghanistan could impact on Pakhtun nationalism in the NWFP. The Taliban could therefore eventually become a threat to the internal security and stability of Pakistan. Compared to other ‘frontline’ states (Iran, Uzbekistan, Russia) Pakistan is ‘soft’ to penetration from across the border because the Pakhtun nation lives on both sides of the Durand Line and professes a faith that is closer to the Taliban than to the dominant schools of religious thought in Pakistan.
As the Afghan Taliban move towards the total conquest of Afghanistan, they are becoming the most despised fighting group in the world. The United States, first seen as favouring them, has joined the European parliament in labelling them as the “most savage government” in the world. How will the Pakistani state cope when the Taliban are visible on the streets of Pakistan, and Afghanistan becomes a centre for the export of fundamentalist Sunni Islam to the rest of the world?