No time for complacency

The latest in a series of allegations by Afghan President Hamid Karzai regarding the presence of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar in Quetta should not come as a surprise. Citing reports, Karzai told the Sunday Times in an interview that appeared on Saturday that the reclusive Taliban leader was seen offering prayers in a Quetta mosque.

President Karzai’s latest remarks follow recent statements and counter-statements between Kabul and Islamabad over the alleged presence of Taliban and their activities on Pakistani soil.

Only last week, President Karzai asked Pakistan to “to do more” to curb Taliban-linked activities in Pakistan. “We cannot stop (Taliban) terrorism so long as Pakistan does not cooperate”, Mr Karzai told German weekly Der Spiegel.

This drew a rather angry reaction from Islamabad. “What the Afghan leaders can and must do is to talk less and do more in putting (their own) house in order”, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman, Masood Khan told a news agency. Islamabad, he said, was already doing “more than enough on the ground at exorbitant costs.”

The strong-worded reaction betrayed Islamabad’s frustration over persistent charges both by President Karzai and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah regarding the alleged presence of Taliban leaders and their purported re-alignment in Pakistan.

Mr Karzai had repeated the allegation during his recent meeting with a delegation of the Awami National Party in Kabul.

How come, wonders President Karzai, that most of the hit-and- run, guerrilla-style fights between the Taliban/Al Qaeda fighters and coalition forces are taking place in areas bordering Pakistan’s tribal areas.

By their own reckoning, Afghanistan’s northern and eastern borders are “quite” and it is only its eastern borders with Pakistan, which have remained volatile.

Pakistan on its part not only denied the presence of Taliban leaders on its soil, it has also deployed troops along its western borders in an effort to plug possible cross-border incursions by Taliban and Al-Qaeda suspects. In a bid to allay Afghan apprehensions, it recently took steps to fence a stretch on the Chaman side of its border with Afghanistan.

The tripartite commission that groups together Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States besides resolving border disputes is also aimed at working as a hotline between Islamabad and Kabul to work closely on other issues involving Taliban’s alleged incursion into Afghanistan from Pakistan.

These steps apparently have fallen short of expectations as far as the government in Afghanistan is concerned and hence the statement that Islamabad should “do more.” It is also evident that no matter what, Kabul will continue to look at Islamabad with suspicion as along as there are troubles on its side of the border.

Quite recently, the international press had also reported the presence of Taliban in Quetta and Chaman, reports vehemently denied by the Pakistan government. President Gen Pervez Musharraf challenged journalists to produce evidence.

If anything, Mr Karzai’s statement shows his government’s inability to fight suspected Taliban fighters in the south and southwest of the country and its growing doubt vis-a-vis Pakistan’s intentions — that is it is playing some sort of a double game. It also shows a slide in relations between the two countries.

To look at it, Afghanistan’s suspicion that Pakistan is playing a double game and is supporting the Taliban is rooted in the very emergence of the puritanical militia on the Afghan scene. The Taliban movement, as it came to be known then, had drawn its strength and force from the students majority of whom had studied or graduated from religious seminaries in Pakistan. The same goes for most of the senior Taliban leaders, including its supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Pakistan’s support for the Taliban then was obvious. It was one of the three countries in the world to have recognized the Taliban regime. And just when the whole world had ostracized the Taliban regime for its hard-line policies, Pakistan was attempting, albeit vainly, to impress upon the international community, to accept the ‘ground reality’ in Afghanistan. It was only grudgingly, therefore, that Pakistan had to make a U-turn and abandon the Taliban.

Afghans suspect that Pakistan continues to provide sanctuary to the Taliban leaders. In fact, Kabul had provided to Islamabad early this year a list of Taliban leaders, it says, are hiding in Pakistan. This list had been updated ostensibly, to include possible whereabouts of the Taliban leaders in Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Quetta, Chaman and Karachi etc.

Pakistani officials on their part claim the list lacked specific intelligence and addresses are too general and vague to track-down any Taliban leader believed to be hiding here. Coupled with this and with the obvious distrust in Pakistani intelligence agencies, Afghanistan and the United States are also believed to be doing their own ground check through hordes of informers let lose on Pakistani soil. So far, the result has been zero.

Pakistani officials acknowledge increase in pressure and the slight shift in focus from the hunt for Al Qaeda to Taliban remnants in Pakistan that may lead to a new crackdown on their hideouts in the tribal areas in days to come.

Officials, privy to high-level meetings, admit having been told in clear terms President Musharraf’s own frustration over his inability to convince the world leaders of Pakistan’s efforts in hunting down Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. While Kabul can certainly help Islamabad by providing good and credible intelligence regarding the whereabouts of Taliban leaders, Pakistan on its part also needs to look seriously into such reports. The time for complacency may just be running out.

In search of an exit strategy

LONDON: Everyone has views on military strategy these days. As the Iraq invasion began, we all agreed that no plan survives contact with the enemy. This generalization proved less than accurate. The fighting phase from March 20 until May 1 was completed without any serious setback to the American, British and Australian invading forces. What has been less impressive is the absence of any serious planning options for what to do after the battle was won. Now the universal cry is for an exit strategy.

The strategic aim is clear. The US wants an Iraq that is governed by a friendly government, and one that can act as a stabilizing force on potentially difficult neighbours. From such an arrangement they expect benefits for their war on terror, security of oil supplies, forward basing for other military operations, constraints on proliferation, and also improved security for Israel. While the rest of the world had mixed views on the wisdom of the Iraq intervention, most would now sign up to the importance of making post-Saddam Iraq a successful independent stable country, if not necessarily to the American master plan.

Looking at post-cold war interventions, we have not had that much successful experience in building nations from scratch. The Afghanistan approach suggests a useful template. When the major fighting stopped, and the Taliban government had fled, a system and timetable for interim government, constitutional development and eventual elections were agreed with international help. The interim leadership had legitimacy and Hamid Karzai provided a charismatic focus. The process has largely been seen as equitable and participation in the development of a new constitution has been broadly representative. Where Afghanistan has failed has been in the lack of security arrangements beyond Kabul. As a result, warlords have reasserted their power, and they will make the implementation of an agreed constitution far more difficult, and perhaps ultimately less than democratic.

In Iraq, the scale of the security forces has been significantly greater than in Afghanistan. While the situation is not yet satisfactory, local despots cannot yet rule their areas unhindered. What is lacking is the sense of direction towards a new democratic Iraq. The Iraqi governing council is widely seen as an ineffectual creature of the US. While prudence means that the US has tried to include representatives of significant factions, they lack universal legitimacy. Now the US is set to hand power over to this council next July without fussing about a constitution or an election first.

A theoretical task list is not difficult to assemble. The overriding strategic aim must be to return control of Iraq to an Iraqi government which has both internal and international legitimacy. To achieve this aim, a number of enabling requirements will have to be met. Providing adequate security on the ground is important, but not an end in itself. We can regret the blunders of allowing looting in the early days, of changing the coalition leadership, of disbanding the Iraqi army, of inadequate intelligence resources, and of reversals of political timetables. Nevertheless, the insurgency is not so out of control that it needs to delay the key political process. The problem is the trend in violence. Attacks on US forces, international organizations and Iraqi leadership figures are rising. Unless this is reversed, the maintenance of law and order will displace the building of the new Iraq constitution and government as a priority. The new accelerated timetable favoured by the US suggests that time is now running out.

How can the coalition provisional authority hold the security situation? Large increases in troops from outside the country are not available. The US has shown how surprisingly ill equipped it is to sustain even 120,000 troops for more than a year. A transfer from the curious coalition to a Nato-led force would have advantages, but is impractical. Clearly transfer of security tasks to Iraqis is the way ahead. The US will find it uncomfortable to give greater responsibility to its new Iraqi army. There will also be dangers that the new Iraqi security force could become part of a power struggle, if it is not trained and structured to answer to an elected government. As one regional specialist said to me last year: “If you want to keep Iraq together, you will need to find a new Saddam Hussein to run it.”

The real danger of either allowing Iraq to fail and break up, or handing control over to an unrepresentative leadership, makes moving the political process forward the most urgent task. There is no longer time to do much about the way the council has been created. It needs to share responsibility for day-to-day management, but it must have a limited time in power.

—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.

Sir Tim Garden is a former air marshal.