For once, President Trump’s twitter happy fingers sent a message about the Afghan Taliban talks which may be considered as positive although there are many who have criticised him for it.
By cancelling to go ahead with the Camp David meeting to announce the accord with the Afghan Taliban, Trump took a bold stand. It would have otherwise been a stamp of approval for Khalilzad and a complete surrender to the Taliban.
It’s not only the American forces who laid their lives to give Afghanistan a democratic and progressive system of governance, but the Afghan people also paid a heavier price.
The Afghan women must have taken a sigh of relief because the Khalilzad-led agreement with the Islamic emirates of Afghanistan bargained for its soul with the anti-women elements who hadthe track record of destroying women schools and education centres. They also made it compulsory for the women to wear burkas.
In the first place, Americans shouldn’t have attacked and sent their forces to Afghanistan in a knee-jerk reaction. They could have brought down the Afghan Taliban government with the help of the Northern Alliance and at the same time by pressing Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and UAE, the only three governments who recognised the Taliban to completely disassociate with and stop helping& financing the Taliban.
The refusal of the Taliban to talk to the elected government of Afghanistan and Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive of Afghanistan, who is a popular leader of Northern Alliance, is turning the clock back as the presidential elections are due
As explained by the Steve Coll in his well researched book, Directorate S, Pakistan created a separate clandestine wing to support the Taliban whose link could not be traced back to the government of Pakistan. It is only now that the US acknowledges that Pakistan has facilitated dialogue with the Americans and Afghan Taliban. Pakistan’s connections with the Afghan Taliban may have given the Pakistani establishment some leverage against the growing influence of India in Afghanistan.
All along, much to the resentment of Pakistan’s milt-establishment, the Americans were after Pakistan to do more and we were saying that we don’t have much influence on the Taliban.
But earlier, Pakistan’s attempt to arrange quadrilateral talks between Afghan-Taliban, the US, China and Russia had failed because the Afghan intelligence leaked the story that Mullah Omar, the supreme leader of Taliban, had died months ago in a Pakistan hospital while a fake letter of Mullah Omar in favour of the talks was circulated anonymously. This forced the Afghan-Taliban to announce the new Ameer of their movement, Akhtar Mansour who was killed in May, 2016 by an American drone attack in Pakistan after crossing the border from Iran. It was generally believed that he was not in favour of peace talks with the US and that was the reason that Americans bumped him out.
Consequently, the Taliban selected Hibatullah Akhundzada as the Ameer of Afghan Taliban. He was running a madrassah in a village in Pakistan near the Afghan border. The fact that Mullah Omar died in a Pakistan hospital, his successor Mullah Mansour was killed in a drone attack in a border city in Pakistan and was also carrying a Pakistani passport on which he had travelled to UAE several times and that the new leader of Afghan-Taliban was residing in Pakistan and running a camp all gave credence to the accusations by the US and the Afghan government that Pakistan is giving shelter to the leaders of the Afghan-Taliban. But this was always denied by the Pakistan Foreign Office.
On the other side, the presence of the Haqqani group leaders in the tribal areas was also denied by the Pakistani establishment, knowing full well that Afghan and the US do not believe in our denials.
So whenever the US and the Afghan government insisted that Pakistan should do more, the Pakistani government detracted the whole discussion to the operation against Pakistani-Taliban and maintained that Pakistan had suffered the killing of 70,000 people, including members of the armed forces personnel and innocent civilians, in the war against terrorism. It may be noted that the Pakistan-Taliban were initially the creation of our own establishment. However, the establishment only went against them when they revolted against their masters and became Frankenstein.
The refusal of the Taliban to talk to the elected government of Afghanistan and Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive of Afghanistan, who isa popular leader of Northern Alliance, is turning the clock back as the presidential elections are due.
The Taliban, who don’t believe in democracy, should have been pushed to accept to participate in the upcoming elections and if they win that, instead of killing people in terrorist attacks, they are most welcome to establish their rule in Afghanistan, but not by just relying on terrorist attacks.
The Islamists are one-time democrats and once elected, they show their fascist colours under the garb of implementing a medieval set of values. Don’t we have the example of Muslim brotherhood’s Morsi?
Pakistan has finally changed its strategy to not use non-state actors for promoting its national security policy. This has been done more because of international pressure and the fear of economic sanctions from IMF and FATF. This policy was under change from the time Pakistan had to fight the Pakistani-Taliban. And Gen Kayani declared that Pakistan’s biggest threat was from within. Pakistani army has fought bravely against the Pakistani-Taliban and also eventually after 70 years merged FATA with KP. A bold step which was long overdue.
The writer is the author of What’s wrong with Pakistan?