Daily Times

By the time we go to press, the president of Afghanistan, Dr Ashraf Ghani, would have addressed the US Congress to many standing ovations there. The Afghan leadership duo of President Ghani and Chief Executive Dr Abdullah Abdullah arrived in Washington DC on the Nowruz — the Afghan new year — trying to turn a new page in the relations between the two countries. President Barack Obama and his administration, who have sought to get past the rancorous relationship he had with the former Afghan president Hamid Karzai, already seems to be breathing a sigh of relief. The maverick, Mr Karzai, however, apparently was still on Mr Obama’s nerves to the extent that the US president addressed Dr Ghani, who was standing with him at the White House joint press conference, as President Karzai. Nonetheless, if Dr Ghani was out on a charm offensive, he appeared to have succeeded for the most part. The problem is that sweet-talking and bonhomie on both sides — with Mr Obama even invoking his and Dr Ghani’s mutual alma mater, Columbia University — could not banish those bitter realities that Mr Karzai had highlighted.
President Ashraf Ghani clearly knows his way around Washington and certainly has a way with words too. He knows what US officials like to hear as well as the language laced with buzzwords they are really fond of. Dr Abdullah remained to the stage right, correctly ceding centre-stage to Dr Ghani throughout the visit but his presence did go a long way to silence those who salivate at the mere thought of a Pashtun-Tajik rift in Afghanistan. The two leaders quite deftly gave themselves a head start with a neat op-ed in the Washington Post, published the day before their arrival, which not only enumerated their visit’s objectives but also subtly alluded to their concerns. The Afghan leaders did not veer much from that agenda. Highlighting the US’s contribution in treasure and blood to Afghanistan over the past 14 years remained Dr Ghani’s most common refrain, and rightly so. He had come to the US with a wish list — not the other way around — and he did get pretty much what he wanted at this time.
While the catchiest sound bite out of the US capital was that Mr Obama has agreed to maintain the US troops level in Afghanistan at the current 9,800 without changing the ultimate withdrawal date of end 2016, decidedly more significant were the monetary commitments made by US officials. Secretary of State Mr John Kerry announced $ 800 million aid as part of a new US-Afghan strategic initiative for the development of the Ghani-Abdullah government’s reform agenda, which the two leaders described in their op-ed as focus on self-reliance, ending corruption and mismanagement, and empowering women, youth and the poor. Dr Ghani framed his country’s political stability as a function of economic stability. Dr Ghani’s self-reliance theme also included the Afghans taking all responsibility for their defence. He rightly took great pride in the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) taking over the combat operations from NATO and the US troops.
The ANSF’s capability is where the second major US pledge, which announced to fund at its present numerical strength of roughly 350,000 troops through 2017, would make a huge difference. Supporting the ANSF is likely to have more impact on the ground than just extending the foreign troops’ presence beyond 2016. No overt pledges were made about arming and training the ANSF but the continued US troops’ presence in an advisory role makes it almost certain those will ensue as well. President Obama stands to gain the boasting rights to a tidy and “responsible withdrawal” from Afghanistan for his Democratic Party’s candidate in the next year’s US presidential elections while Dr Ghani has effectively secured a crucial three-year window to hash out the terms and firm up the timing of the talks — if there will be any — with the Taliban. President Ghani appears to be an incredibly patient man but whether he is patient enough to wear out the Taliban and their backers, who in all likelihood would opt to wait the three years out, remains to be seen. More importantly, can the Afghan people endure another three years like 2014 in which 3,699 civilians were killed and 6,849 injured — the highest toll since the UN started tracking these losses in 2009 — in Taliban attacks? Sadly, throughout the year 2014, while Afghans were being killed and maimed, the new Pakistani civil and military leadership kept pledging peace in Afghanistan.
President Ashraf Ghani is on the dot when he says that economic stability is the sheet anchor of political stability. The exception to this principle remains the war zones, especially stoked by foreign interference, just like Afghanistan. In their op-ed, Drs Ghani and Abdullah have noted, “To the east, Pakistan’s military operations are pushing a number of terrorist networks into our territory”, implying at the very least a lack of containment policy on the part of Pakistan. As the talk about talks with the Taliban lingers on, which it most likely will, Dr Ghani will be forced to ask the same questions, something that landed Mr Karzai in the US’s bad books. Mr Karzai, after all, was once the darling of Washington with praise flowing profusely for his colourful robes and a ‘rough around the edges’ charm. The former Afghan president’s principal faults were not acquiescing to the Pakistani diktat on how to run his foreign policy and telling the US that the terror hornet’s nest was west of the Durand Line about which the US had done precious little.
In fact, President Ghani’s position on the principal border dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan is not an inch different from that of all Afghan heads of state before him, including Mr Karzai. When asked by the Voice of America whether he had discussed the Durand Line border with Pakistan, Dr Ghani said: “No. Durand is not an issue in our discussions with Pakistan. The issue of Durand (Line) is beyond my authority. That belongs to the Afghan Grand Council (Loya Jirga).” President Ghani’s leadership style may be markedly different from his predecessor but he faces the exact same problems that Mr Karzai did. The Afghan leadership duo did not induce any tectonic shifts in Washington’s policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan but Drs Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah have certainly made some tangible gains that could be the building blocks for reviewing and redrawing it in the short to mid-term.

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com and he tweets @mazdaki