The death of Taliban’s leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour in a drone strike is being seen as part of a larger design by the US to maintain its presence in Afghanistan to encircle China. For quite some time now the US has been trying to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table so that the former could eventually pack its military presence by bringing at least a semblance of peace to the region. Pakistan has been considered a crucial player in bringing the Taliban around to a peace deal because of its influence on the Afghan Taliban. This influence is believed to have been because of the shelter Pakistan provided to the Taliban leaders. Correspondingly, Pakistan has also been blamed for keeping the Afghan war burning to keep India out of the Afghan loop and to have a friendly government in Afghanistan that does not make the Durand Line more contentious.
The proof of the pudding presented was the failure of some of the world’s strongest armed forces to eliminate the Taliban and its affiliates. If one terrorist was killed, two were born to kill even more US and its allies’ soldiers.
All this happened and went on happening with the result that after every few years,
Pakistan and the US find themselves in a complicated situation.
There have been enormous attempts to start a peace process with the Taliban. Each one of them has failed for one reason or the other. The Doha diplomacy ended in 2013 when Hamid Karzai took exception to the plaque at the front gate of the Taliban house announcing it represented the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — the insurgents’ name for the country when they ruled from Kabul. Another serious effort was ambushed last year with the announcement of Mullah Omar’s death at the second round of the Murree peace process. Now with the killing of Mullah Mansour in a drone strike another effort to keep the peace initiative in process has been sabotaged. Linking the dots, and viewing things from the perspective of what has been called the “great game.” every move aimed at bringing peace in Afghanistan and its subsequent failure brings the role of the US more into question than that of Pakistan’s.
Mullah Mansour has been killed on the pretext that he was reluctant to broker peace with the Afghan government. If that is true, them the entire Taliban leadership has been averse to any peace process negotiated at the back of US-appointed negotiating team. Taliban’s prerequisite to any peace talk has been the expulsion of foreign forces from Afghanistan. Should one believe that the new Taliban leader would give in to the US demand to engage in a dialogue without any prerequisite? Not really. Having failed to eliminate the Taliban even after 15 years of continuous warfare thinking on these lines or thinking Taliban to have been weakened with the killing of one of their leaders could be anything but naive. Therefore, whose purpose does this breakdown of peace serve? Why would Mullah Mansour be killed in a drone strike, that too inside Pakistan, which is clearly a violation of international laws, Pakistan’s sovereignty and human rights? In fact, rationally speaking, killing a primary stakeholder only because he or she negates the idea of peace during an ongoing process of negotiations cast suspicion on the mediating party’s intention of ever truly desiring peace.
Pakistan is feeling a growing sting of betrayal by the US. The US feels the same pain when it questions the support of Pakistan’s government to the Haqqani network. Pakistan, a much weaker state than the US, both in term of military capability and economic power, and still playing a lead role in the region as the US ally, had deserved more support and a more consistent relationship. Conversely, the situation has always been what could be looked at as “one step forward, two steps backward.” It has been a pattern that as soon as Pakistan’s utility to bring benefit to the US diminishes the relationship is made to flounder. Though Pakistan’s foreign policy initiatives in putting Pakistan’s role in perspective may lack a professional vigour, the US ceding more space to the Indian lobby is a reality. But the fact that Pakistan’s assistance has been crucial for the US in the region makes it necessary that this relationship should continue and prosper.
Drones have been a source of evoking anti-US sentiments in Pakistan. The failure to understand the tribal culture and the indiscriminate killing of civilians in the name of collateral damage have led to creation of more terrorists, bringing more annihilation to the US agenda in Afghanistan.
Now that the talk of the great game is making rounds again, and the US is being considered a permanent force to reckon with in the region there is little chance of any peace between the Taliban and the Afghan government. This ambiguity will have a far-reaching effect on the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan, already tearing apart at the seams with the recent fighting at the Torkhum border.
The writer is a journalist. She can be reached at [email protected]