Daily Times

Within two years, from 2015 to 2017, the situation for the Afghan government has gone from bad to worse. It has lost control over 40 percent of Afghanistan in 2017, as opposed to 28 percent in 2015. According to a report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) based on the data provided by US Forces Afghanistan (USFA) and Resolute Support, NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the Afghan government has control and influence over 60% of Afghanistan.

According to an estimate from the Long War Journal, issued on 20th September 2017, the Taliban currently controls 45 districts and contest an additional 118. Out of these districts, all except four are far away from Pakistan’s border. During 2016 Taliban had seized control of important cities like Sangin in Helmand province, Kunduz and Nawa district.

These statistics are in agreement with recent statements from Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, in that the Taliban and Haqqani’s control substantial Afghan territory and therefore wouldn’t risk crossing the treacherous Pak-Afghan border and travel to far-flung Afghan provinces to fight. They are operating from their strongholds within Afghanistan and hence they are not based in Miran Shah or other parts of Pakistan any longer.

Pakistan must speed up the process of returning two million Afghan refugees back to their homes lest any Taliban and Haqqani elements assimilate into the unmanageable number of Afghan refugees settled in Pakistan. Iran has done the right thing by restricting the Afghan refugees to fenced quarantines whereas Pakistan made a grave error by letting them have the freedom of living wherever they liked.

Ironically it seems to be a matter of satisfaction for some US military strategists that the Taliban control and contest rural regions, which are ‘less vital areas’ and that, have ‘less strategic value’. These strategists should not forget the rural insurgencies of Latin America, which caused considerable unrest and used guerrilla tactics to create instability in urban centres.

The war in Afghanistan is quite similar to the civil wars of Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia in which rural insurgency took over a significant part of national territory while demonstrating a capacity to disrupt daily life everywhere. Mao Zedong himself used a tactic which involved surrounding major cities from the countryside. He and Zhou Enlai were of the opinion that in Asia it was important to concentrate on the countryside rather than the towns, in order to create revolutionary elite.

Statistics are in agreement with recent statements from Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, in that the Taliban and Haqqani’s control substantial Afghan territory and therefore wouldn’t risk crossing the treacherous Pak-Afghan border and travel to far-flung Afghan provinces to fight. They are operating from their strongholds within Afghanistan and hence they are not based in Miran Shah or other parts of Pakistan any longer

The American strategists ignore another strategic aspect, which is that historically these areas have a xenophobic disposition and abhor foreign invaders and thus they side with local resistance forces. The rural areas, which are being played down as less strategic areas, are in fact fertile recruitment grounds.

The rural insurgency by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is a recent example that shook urban centres across Pakistan with the TTP’s lethal terrorist acts. Pakistan too did not take the TTP insurgency seriously, considering it to be an insurgency in far-flung areas. It soon became an existential threat to the very existence of Pakistan. Its brutality across Pakistan compelled the government to wipe the TTP from its soil. It was done quite successfully, but at present they have had to relocate themselves to the ‘strategic depth’ of Afghanistan.

The strategists of the forces fighting against the Afghan Taliban are guilty of three noticeable errors in understanding the Afghan situation that have led to faulty conclusions and flawed plans. Firstly they think or have been made to think that the Afghan Taliban are surviving due to Pakistan’s support, that the Haqqanis are sheltered in Pakistan and are supported by it and that the Afghan Taliban are a motley rag-tag gang of insurgents.

Factually, the Afghan Taliban and Haqqanis are standing on their own feet in their own areas as elaborated above. More importantly, considering the Afghan Taliban as insurgents, who had been rulers of Afghanistan, restricts the strategists to adopting an overly militaristic approach of against them.

The Taliban have massive support in Afghanistan. They are also striving to establish their legitimacy as a political entity. It would be a better option to recognize them as such and engage them constructively, in the same manner as the erstwhile warlord Gulbadin Hykmatyar has been taken off the terrorists list after two decades and now he can be seen negotiating with President Ashraf Ghani.

It is quite alarming that the Islamic State (IS) is making inroads into Nangarhar, Kunduz, Ghazni and Kandahar. Recently IS news agency, Amaq, claimed that it’s fighters had fired rockets at the Kabul airport on the visit by the US Secretary of Defence James Mattis to the country. The Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid also stated, “ Military section of Kabul airport hit with missiles, target was plane of US Defence Secretary; losses caused, details later.” We all knew that the Afghan Taliban and IS were at loggerheads. But do these concurring claims reflect collaboration between the two? If both join hands in Afghanistan, which seems to have begun, it would be the ugliest possible situation for Afghanistan, Pakistan, the region and the world.

Ideally Pakistan should stay away from the quagmire in Afghanistan. Many sane voices say let’s fence and forget them, let the Afghans settle their disputes among themselves. Only the Afghans living at the border’s adjacent areas may be allowed through for food, health facilities and visiting their relatives across the border. This is the ideal solution. But India’s intrusion into Afghanistan is an aberration, which axiomatically earns a reaction from Pakistan to safeguard its interests and sovereignty. This factor plays a vital role in undermining the peace process in Afghanistan. All players should sit together, if they genuinely want peace in Afghanistan, and take these aspects into consideration instead of unwittingly falling prey to hawkish recommendations by ill-informed, ill-intentioned and estranged advisors.

The writer is Honorary Director Centre for Peace and Security Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore. MA International Security, War Studies Department, King’s College London His twitter account: N Elahi @Aaibak

Published in Daily Times, October 3^rd 2017.