Daily Times

President Hamid Karzai has recently shown a new tactical subtlety in his interviews with western journalists. He believes that he has persuaded the international community that the epicentre of Islamist extremism is in Pakistan. He reinforces this thesis by making a selective and instrumental use of the history of the last three decades. At the same time he says politically correct things about the shared destiny of the two neighbouring nations. Now he has told Global Viewpoint’s Nathan Gardel that they should follow the model of cooperation adopted by “former enemies, France and Germany”.
This was a curious model to invoke as Pakistan and Afghanistan have never known anything like the epic struggle between the two major European powers spread over centuries. Historically, there was the ebb and flow of imperial borders prior to the advent of the nation state in the region; parts of present day Afghanistan were a Mogul province and Afghan migrants to India often acted as the sword arm of the empire. As the empire withered away, Ahmad Shah Abdali bought precious time for his co-religionists by routing the rising Marhatta power. Later, as the Afghans fought the British, the Muslims of the sub-continent were always on their side. Frankly, President Karzai needs to go back to his history books.
Admittedly, the post-colonial times have left an uneasier legacy. Most Pakistanis speak sadly about Afghanistan’s irredentist claim to some territories on this side of the Durand Line. There is a sense of regret about this period when Kabul teamed up with the Indian intelligence services to foment insurgency in Pakistan’s borderland and Pakistan, unfortunately, tried to break this nexus by exploiting Afghanistan’s limitations as a landlocked state.
This short-sighted tussle was an important factor in Kabul turning to the Soviet Union, a policy choice that led to a long chain of unintended consequences: Soviet influence in the Afghan armed forces, the rise of Parcham, Khalq and assorted pro-Moscow or pro-Beijing groups, the Saur revolution, the Soviet military intervention and the Great Jihad that ended it. Ironically, this chain of consequences welded the peoples of the two countries a trifle too closely and raised unrealistic expectations.
This brings us to the “strategic depth” which Mr Karzai frequently cites to put Pakistan on the defensive. It was a shallow military doctrine in the best of times. But no less relevant was the drift of idealistic thought that created it. History is replete with examples of misplaced idealism degenerating into irrational impulses. The Afghan jihad rolled back Soviet power but also left behind heady thoughts of transforming the world of Islam. Then there was the Pakistani delusion that Islamabad knew what was good for Afghanistan. The Jihadis were equally convinced that they alone knew what was good for Pakistan.
This fallacy was not restricted to the Islamist zealots. The secular foreign policy establishment of Pakistan claims with only perfunctory evidence that it had decided to disengage from the followers of Mullah Omar well before the Americans invaded Afghanistan. When Washington asked it to play a supportive role it saw a fresh opportunity to reconstruct Afghanistan albeit this time in an inverse image.
The new forward policy developed under the same old American umbrella provoked two powerful counter-movements. The dominant Northern Alliance began a campaign of vilifying Pakistan to pre-empt putative ambitions of Islamabad’s new power elite. At the same time, the dispossessed Taliban and their allies concluded that their chances of overturning the Karzai regime installed by the West with the help of 90,000 Pakistani troops deployed along the international border would improve if they would take the war into Pakistani territory.
They were able to do so beyond the worst apprehensions of the people of Pakistan and Pakistani troops are still trying to put down a ruthless insurgency. Musharraf conceded the other day that more than a thousand Pakistani soldiers have already lost their lives while no more than 412 Americans have died in Afghanistan since 2001.
In his valedictory State of the Union address on January 28, US President Bush relied more on carefully selected images than on arguments. Among them was the beguiling snapshot of Afghan boys and girls going to school. Karzai too finds occasional solace in a similar fantasy. It is occasional as he cannot justify frequent civilian losses at the hands of NATO and US troops.
Having failed to make the 41-strong coalition to commit more troops, President Bush will send another 3200 American soldiers to Afghanistan in April. Pakistan should expect this mini surge to aggravate and not ameliorate its problems. The Afghan Taliban, the “local” Taliban and their foreign allies will probably intensify their effort to destabilise Pakistan as part of their long-term strategy. NATO can live with a protracted low intensity war as long as casualties are low but the implications for Pakistan may be dire.
Pakistan has to neutralise the escalating threat from the insurgents in an expanding and fluid battle space. But once it is contained, it must face up to two dimensions of the raging conflict. It must recognise that its capacity to shape the Afghan polity is limited. Karzai’s vision of his country’s future rests largely on an indefinite western military presence and an equally large army of western contractors — a veritable NATO protectorate. It would have to be an Afghan decision that Pakistan can live with by putting its own house in order.
Having blunted the aggression by militant forces at a high cost Pakistan must use that advantageous moment to develop a more comprehensive approach to the insurgency. The emergence of a political government as a result of a free, fair and transparent election may help devise effective and credible political, economic and administrative measures to stabilise the situation. This would be the best tribute to the valour and sacrifices of the armed forces that face a most unenviable task. It can be paid only by recovering independent decision-making and not by compromising it further.

The writer is a former foreign secretary