Daily Times

Relentless cacophony about sovereignty of the country can be heard once again. Killing of Mullah Mansoor Akhtar, the amir of the Afghan Taliban, in a drone attack in Balochistan has signalled that the US and Afghanistan’s government have changed their policy of coaxing Pakistan to stop sheltering terrorists who have been hitting their people for the last 15 years. This policy apparently did not move the Pakistani establishment to stop the Taliban using our territory for launching their attacks in Afghanistan. The new policy seems to be that the US would take out members of Taliban’s leadership who do not come to the table for negotiations.

The Afghan Taliban have stepped up their attacks on Afghanistan in the last one year. One could understand their strategy as in all such conflicts warring parties step up the attack before reaching to some settlement on the negotiation table. Now the other side also wants to establish their position of power, and make the Taliban understand that they cannot continue from the ‘safe haven’ of Pakistan.

Mullah Mansoor had hardened his position after he was selected as the amir in a controversial process. Although before that he gave positive signals to the Pakistani establishment about the quadrilateral negotiation process, but once selected as the amir, he wanted to prove himself to the rank and file as a militant leader who was willing to fight it out.

As it is Pakistan has been saying that it has have only some influence on the Afghan Taliban but it does not control them. But then the question arises, if the leadership was not listening to their ‘benefactors’ to sit on the negotiating table, which is in the interest of Pakistan, why did we still ‘support’ them? Pakistan should have used a pressure tactic to make it clear to the Taliban that it cannot continue to risk its people because of its adventurism in Afghanistan. Pakistan should have restricted their movement if they could not be pushed back into Afghanistan. Pakistan should have choked their funding pipeline, so on and so forth.

But apparently Pakistan has done nothing to that effect. Why? It is because our establishment continues to believe in the dangerous, failed policy that it can further its influence in Afghanistan with the help of these non-state actors. Even though it is at the cost of isolating the country from the world, and tarnishing Pakistan’s image as a country that harbours terrorists to further its extraversion foreign security.

Now the problem is that instead of finding a solution to the problem remaining within the norms of international laws that govern sovereign states, our governments have been sponsoring non-state actors’ intrusions in Afghanistan. Dictated by a sense of insecurity and a myopic view our establishment has got itself stuck in the quagmire of Afghanistan. The desire to have a client state in Afghanistan that shuns Indian overtures has made us pushy to the extent that most governments in Kabul have remained unhappy with Islamabad.

Pakistani establishment has not been able to win any war against India, but has been successful in engineering resistance against the Afghan and Soviet army. And it has the Indian army bogged down in Kashmir. At the face of it this looks like a great victory that our shortsighted nationalists love to celebrate. But the fact is that such a policy has given an opportunity to the US and NATO forces to violate our sovereignty, and to Indians to fuel the nationalist upsurge in Balochistan. If we want the drone attacks to stop, we should stop our land from being used by militants who wishes to grab power in Afghanistan.

Those who support establishment’s national security policy argue that Pakistan can only checkmate Indian influence in this region by keeping these troublemakers alive. They forget that the best recourse for smaller and weaker sides in any conflict is to invoke laws that are made to protect their interest. These laws are needed by smaller countries, and if they violate them the other side gets the chance to use power.

Our demand that drone attacks should be stopped is legitimate, but then what should be done with local and Afghan terrorists who openly claim that they are using Pakistan’s territory to launch attacks inside Afghanistan. But the world is not convinced that we are fighting the real Taliban who are interfering in Afghanistan. They know it well that we are upset about the growing influence of India in Afghanistan, and their activities close to our northern borders. We have never tried to hide it. And to check this growing Indian influence we keep our own ‘favourite’ Taliban pacified.

That Indians are making roads close to our borders is worrying our war strategy planners. What they do not realise is that these roads look dangerous to us because we only think in war terms. We have never bothered to think about peacetime relations, in which we can use the same roads to connect Pakistan with the central Asian market. We have never realised that if we allow Indian goods to pass through Pakistan by road how much money we can make. But then it is only possible when we stop thinking in military perspective, and start thinking about building regional economic cooperation in this region. One thing is certain that we cannot fight our way through; we can only take advantage of peace and subsequent economic development.

At the same time the US, Afghanistan and India, it appears, have also started supporting terrorists groups in Pakistan. It is a lesson for Pakistan that we cannot support terrorists operating in our neighbouring countries and expect that they would not respond in the same coin. That is why all future negotiations with our neighbours will be around the issue of terrorism. Maybe it’s time to have bilateral agreements with our neighbours on the specific issue of terrorism with a pledge that the signing states will cooperate with each other in fighting terrorism, instead of listening to their intelligence agencies and promoting terrorism in each other’s countries covertly.

The moral of the story is that our sovereignty would only be respected if we start respecting the sovereignty of our neighbours.

The writer is freelance journalist and author. He can be reached at ayazbabar@gmail.com