The recent visit of President Ashraf Ghani, almost three and half year’s interval, is a welcome gesture amidst allegations and counter allegations. The story of Pak-Afghan relations is the story of bad neighborly relations. The scuffle in Leeds cricket stadium among the supporters of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s cricket Teams is the manifestation of a deep pathological malaise. The mistrust started in 1947 when the then Afghan government objected to Pakistan’s membership to United Nations. The negative vote was withdrawn two month later and the founding Father of Pakistan called the two countries as “sister nations”. However, subsequent events and Pakistan’s inadvertent bombardment of Mughlgai village in Nagrahar Province in 1949 provoked Afghanistan and the Loya Jirga declared all treaties including the Durand Line Treaty null and void. The acrimony started in 1947 did not relent and continued to fester with the passage of time. In the years to come Pak-Afghan relations became the victim of or what Dr. Fazal Rahim Marwat as the “Prisoner of Pakhtunistan” issue and Afghan irredentist claims.
In order to counter Afghanistan’s support for Pakhtunistan, an ambiguous concept which has different meaning to different people, like autonomous province within Pakistan, an independent state of Pakhtuns living in the south of the Durand Line or its merger with Afghanistan. Ironically the concept of free Pakhtunistan itself is contradictory to Afghanistan’s irredentism. Nevertheless, the demon of colonialism did not die with its departure from Asia and still the successors of Forward Policy school of thought are unstoppable. The forward Policy exponent believed in force and coercion. Neither the Pan Islamisim of Jamal-u-din Afghani nor his spiritual disciple AllamaMuhmmad Iqbal’s golden words of terming Afghanistan as the heart of Asia are heeded to by both sides. Besides, neither Islam, nor history, geography and culture are of any use.
Both the states are alleging each other of supporting the miscreants against each other. Afghanistan alleges Pakistan of having deep influence over the Taliban insurgents while Pakistan has its own bunch of complaints against Afghanistan. DG ISPR claimed that Afghanistan not only support thePakhtunTahfuz Movement (PTM) but also uses its soil for subversive activities in Baluchistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan both use the card of Nationalism Islamisim as tool in their foreign polcies.
The twin brothers are faced with enormous problems, both political and economic. Terrorism is the bane of both countries. Nobody else can salvage them except they by themselves
Dr. Ghani in his talk to a selected group of people told in the Institution of Strategic Study said that he came to Pakistan as a president of a Sovereign state implicitly alluding to Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s remarks in Bajaur Tribal District where he had advised of an interim government. President Ghani’s speech main thrust was economic linkages between South Asia and Central Asia. He referred to Arnold Toynbee’s saying Afghanistan as being the roundabout of world from where path goes to all sides. He tacitly conveyed the message to Pakistan that Afghanistan should no more be termed as landlocked and dependent on neighboring countries especially Pakistan. He hurled a veiled threat that Afghanistan has never been a colony nor can be colonized. But he directly said that the key of Afghanistan’s conflict resolution lies in Pakistan. He also presented a ready solution to Afghan friendship by quoting an Afghan dictum that you can take an Afghan to hell by love but not to paradise by force.
Once the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto said, “No two countries have so much in common as Pakistan and Afghanistan.” After some three decades later, similar feelings were also expressed by an Afghan President, Hamid Karzai by calling the two countries inseparable “twin brothers.”
The twin brothers are faced with enormous problems, both political and economic. Terrorism is the bane of both countries. Nobody else can salvage them except they by themselves. The great powers Russia and USA have their own axe to grind in the region. Good neighborly relation anchored in economic stakes can benefit the whole region. Afghanistan can be a bridge between the “least connected” South Asia to resource rich Central Asia. All the stake holders including India instead of wasting their energies on securitization and being stuck in “security dilemma” must shift their focus from dirty realism to idealism and peaceful coexistence.
The visit of Dr. Ghani to the mausoleum of Allama Iqbal in Lahore gave a message that Afghanistan be taken as a heart of Asia as per Iqbal’s dream and pave the way for peace and prosperity.
The writer teaches history in the University of Peshawar