Daily Times

Recently appointed US Defence Secretary Ash Carter on his first visit to Kabul has revealed that the Obama administration is reconsidering the US’s timeline for the withdrawal of its remaining troops in Afghanistan. Under the current plan, the residual force of 10,000 US troops is to be reduced during 2015 to 5,000 and then gradually to a ‘normal’ embassy presence by 2016. The rethink is motivated by the desire to ensure the progress made in the last 14 years of the US presence in Afghanistan “sticks”. The review has been prompted by a number of factors. Republicans in Congress have been highly critical of the planned withdrawal. They have argued that the plan risks losing the hard-won gains of the US intervention, as happened in Iraq when a premature withdrawal led to the re-emergence of bloody sectarian strife and arguably paved the way for the rise of Islamic State in that country (and Syria, it could be said, albeit for the opposite reason: the intervention in support of Islamist groups fighting against Bashar al-Assad’s regime). Carter’s visit is expected to set the stage for Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Washington in March. The Afghan President has added his voice to those arguing for revisiting the withdrawal timeline. The backdrop to the critics’ concerns is the intensification of the fighting in Afghanistan during 2014. Afghan military and civilian casualties have risen exponentially through the year. Although US-Pakistan-Afghanistan convergence on the struggle against terrorism and the Afghan Taliban insurgency has opened the door to hopes for reviving the peace process through talks between Kabul and the Taliban and between the latter and the US, it is as well to remind ourselves that until and unless the Taliban are approached for talks from a position of strength, they would see no incentive for entering into negotiations. Only if they can be persuaded that they cannot win on the battlefield (despite their recent successes in expanding the territory they ‘control’) will they see some purchase in exploring the option of a negotiated political settlement as against an open-ended, indefinite protracted war continuing. As it is, the wisdom in hindsight of announcing plans for withdrawal in the middle of a continuing insurgency made little sense and may have convinced the Taliban that they had the enemy on the run and could exploit the widely believed weaknesses of the Afghan army to reconquer the country. Nevertheless, if wisdom has dawned, albeit belatedly, this can only be welcomed, both to pre-empt another long civil war as well as to pave the path to peace through negotiations. Of course the change in Pakistan’s stance has helped immeasurably, since it is now believed to be pressing the Taliban to come to the negotiating table. Pakistan’s change of heart is directly linked to its concerns regarding combating its own Taliban and terrorism in general.

If there is a discordant note in this hopeful emerging scenario, it is the all-too-familiar chorus accusing India of being behind the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP’s) activities in Pakistan. This argument has been repeated by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar in Washington after attending the ant-terrorism summit. Since there is no convincing evidence to back up this claim, it will be treated at home and abroad with a healthy dose of scepticism. This kind of India-centric misleading theory can only serve to weaken Pakistan’s case internationally, and may even blind us (as usual) to our own doings in the past and responsibility for the emergence of a homegrown Taliban movement out of the womb of first the Afghan mujahideen and later the Taliban proxies our security establishment has nourished over the years. Let us have the courage at this critical juncture of our country’s existence to face squarely the unintended consequences of our past policies in Afghanistan and not attempt to absolve ourselves through convenient and tired blinkers. If the government has proof of its assertions, let it present it and we will stand corrected. If not, and all that is available is diversionary scapegoating in our usual style, the argument is inescapable that to firmly grasp the nettle of terrorism in Pakistan and defeat it requires unflinching integrity, truth, and courageous conviction. Let us not be found wanting on this score. Too much is at stake for such games any more. *