AFGHAN President Hamid Karzai’s talks with President George Bush at Camp David on Monday yielded just what was expected — a reaffirmation of American support and the placing of the battle in Afghanistan in the context of the battle against extremism.

Bush called Karzai an ally of whom he was proud. He recalled that some 23,500 American troops were fighting alongside 26,000 troops from other nations and 110,000 Afghan troops to defend Afghanistan against the Taliban. He claimed that it was these coalition troops, rather than the Taliban, that launched an offensive this spring. He also spoke of the $23 billion that the US has committed to Afghanistan since 2001 to rebuild the country. In carefully chosen words, he called on Karzai to fight the menace of corruption.

From Pakistan’s perspective there were two important elements. First, both Bush and Karzai referred optimistically to the Pak-Afghan jirga and to how this was designed to achieve reconciliation and resolve common problems. But there was no reference to the fact that the tribal leaders from North and South Waziristan had refused to be part of the Pakistan delegation.

The second was the question of action against Al Qaeda whose leaders the Americans believe have found a safe haven in Pakistan. Bush was asked whether American troops would wait for Pakistan’s permission to take out Al Qaeda operatives on Pakistan soil if there was actionable intelligence. It was clear from his response that he was not eliminating the option of unilateral military action on Pakistani soil.

At the press conference, Karzai stated that while the Taliban posed a danger to the Afghan people, they could not affect the country’s government or institutions and were a “defeated force”. Earlier, however, in a pre-visit interview, Karzai had sounded much more pessimistic, acknowledging that the security situation in Afghanistan had deteriorated over the past two years and that the coalition forces were no closer to capturing Osama bin Laden than they had been two years ago.

The Democrats seized upon these admissions to reiterate their charge that Afghanistan was the “forgotten war” and President Bush had “dropped the ball on the real front in the war on terror.” Speaking for the Democrats, Senator Reid said that “It is clearer than ever that we must redeploy our forces in Iraq so we can refocus our efforts on the war on terror.”

Senator Reid’s statement was an effort to bolster the Democratic case for troop withdrawals from Iraq but it also indicated that they will be demanding more action in Afghanistan and its environs to tackle Al Qaeda.

The Democrats are right in saying that President Bush and his neo-conservative advisers “dropped the ball” by diverting attention and resources from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003, permitting the resurgence of the Taliban and the revitalisation of Al Qaeda. This compounded the earlier error flowing from the Rumsfeld doctrine of minimising the use of troops on the ground.

Had the Americans chosen to deploy their own soldiers to shut off escape routes from Tora Bora when they launched air attacks on Al Qaeda hideouts during the Afghan campaign, Al Qaeda could have been decapitated with both Bin Laden and Zawahiri being captured or killed.

Instead, they relied on Afghan warlords who on being offered suitable inducements provided safe passage for the Al Qaeda leaders to escape into the mountain fastnesses along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas. This provided the basis for the current charges that Pakistan’s tribal areas are a “safe haven” for a resurgent Al Qaeda.

Had the Americans learnt a lesson from this earlier debacle they would perhaps have stopped teaming up with the warlords. They did not. As a result, they lost the trust of the common Afghan and permitted opium cultivation to be resumed under the protection of the warlords they were patronising. Once the Iraq war started, time and money were no longer available to correct the situation in Afghanistan. The warlords flourished as did poppy cultivation and the Taliban.

Now it appears clear that there will be an effort by Washington to refocus attention on Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the situation in Afghanistan and in the areas of Pakistan bordering on Afghanistan has deteriorated to a point where a far more determined effort and clearer strategy will take at least a decade to rid the region of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is far from evident, however, that the necessary wisdom, resolve and, above all, the patience exist in Kabul, Islamabad and Washington.

A recent report in the Washington Post, based on detailed briefings by US officials, gives information regarding the efforts of a stream of high-level US dignitaries to convince Musharraf that last year’s agreement with the tribals had not worked and that more decisive action was needed against Al Qaeda.

It professed some satisfaction with the level of action into which Musharraf had been prodded — the deployment of an additional two brigades in the tribal areas bringing the total number of troops there to 100,000 — and acknowledged that the insurgency level had declined but warned that this could be only a lull.

There is impatience in Washington and a genuine fear that Al Qaeda in the tribal areas has acquired the resources to execute another attack on the US. This is pushing leaders there to look for a “quick fix” if the Pakistani effort is seen to be faltering or facing setbacks because of the armed resistance or because of political problems. At this point, the officials in Washington are probably thinking along these lines:

• The Al Qaeda leaders are in Pakistan’s tribal areas. They are being sheltered and protected by local tribals because the code of “Pashtunwali” requires it and because they regard Bin Laden as a hero. The fact that Bin Laden has lots of cash at his disposal also helps.

• Changing the tribal people’s mindset, developed by two decades of skilful indoctrination first by the CIA, the ISI and Saudi intelligence and then by the ISI alone, will take time and just throwing dollars at the problem will not reduce the time required by very much. The presence of the Al Qaeda and any success that it achieves will further retard the process. If the ham-handed approach of the past is any guide, the Pakistanis that we (Americans) are working with will not succeed. It is likely, given the ambivalence in Islamabad, that the political forces which could be effective in the region will not be allowed to operate there.

• In the meanwhile, our intelligence people are convinced partly on the basis of the attacks in the UK that the Al Qaeda is training people for another spectacular attack on the US, and this cannot be tolerated. If we locate the Al Qaeda in Pakistan and take them out ourselves because we cannot trust the Pakistanis to do so, there will be outrage in Pakistan.

• We have, however, weathered the storm caused by past such efforts. During some of these, we agreed that the Pakistanis could claim that it was action on their part. Perhaps we could do the same now but even if we cannot, we can’t hold back because of the anticipated Pakistani reaction. Let us face it. Our popularity in Pakistan is even lower than it is in the other Muslim countries. It is not going to register any dramatic improvement given the policies we must perforce follow in the Middle East in this election season and given the fact that we will in all probability retreat ignominiously from Iraq.

• We should be given pause by the high probability that this will give a fillip to extremism in Pakistan. Some alarmists may say that this will bring an extremist Islamist government to power and give them control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. These fears are exaggerated. The Pakistan establishment, meaning Musharraf and company or whoever else, will not let this happen. They have too much at stake and we will help them financially and militarily to overcome the challenge. Pakistan may be thrown into chaos for a while but ultimately this may sound the death knell for extremism in Pakistan.

If this is the reasoning in Washington, we have in every sense come to a defining moment in our history. The Afghan chickens have come home to roost.

For almost half our existence, the principal determinant of Pakistan’s relations with the West and with much of the rest of the world has been Afghanistan. Our own domestic polity and our internal security situation have both been affected even more deeply by Afghanistan. We can blame the Americans. We can blame the situation created in the Muslim world. But we should recognise that much of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of those decision-makers who took charge of our Afghan policy and who projected misguided notions of Pakistan’s national interest and ambitions as a camouflage for regime perpetuation.If we are genuinely going to put Pakistan first, we have to abandon the ambivalence of the past and act as though we really believe that the greatest danger we face is from extremism. Military action to stave off American impatience is essential but only one part of what we need to do. We have to open up the tribal areas to “liberal” political parties and get the right administrators to work on development activity for which the government has allocated six billion rupees and the Americans have pledged $150 million annually.

The farce of the Pak-Afghan jirga must be gone through. It was never going to be more than a public relations exercise. Now even that will be difficult given the refusal of the tribes of North and South Waziristan to participate but we should start work seriously on genuine tribal jirgas bringing together representatives of each of the tribes that straddle the border to get them to agree in return for substantial economic incentives to deny the use of their territory to the Taliban.

It will be a hard task. I have no doubt that many tribal maliks have refused to participate in the Kabul jamboree because of Taliban pressure but this will have to be overcome if we are to make genuine progress towards eliminating the Taliban who more than anything else are now the source of extremism in Pakistan.

All this can come only after there is a political government which can take these actions with the full support of the armed forces and the “agencies” and which is prepared to take the hard political knocks that putting ‘Pakistan first’ will require.

The wrier is a former foreign secretary.

PAKISTAN faces a serious constitutional crisis which has been compounded by the problems spawned by extremism and violence that threaten the country’s security, territorial integrity and social cohesion.

On the one hand, there is the question of who should govern the country. In the absence of a stable and generally accepted political system that provides a mechanism for a smooth transition to a new ruler periodically, a political vacuum looms large over the horizon.General Musharraf has exploited the situation cleverly to entrench himself in office even if this required him to distort the Constitution of 1973 beyond recognition and violate it blatantly. On the other hand are the jihadi and fanatic forces who feel they just have to give the final shove to see the country fall in their lap.

They also include the religious parties in the MMA who seemingly differ in their strategy — they have entered the political system — but their ideology and nuanced idioms are, in effect, not very different.

This pushes the so-called pro-democracy and liberal forces such as the PPP, PML -N, ANP, PML-Q, MQM and so forth into making choices that some of them find distasteful. The option of remaining neutral no longer exists now in the aftermath of Lal Masjid and the president’s decision to proceed with his plan to seek re-election in his uniform from the incumbent assemblies.

Some of them, such as the PPP, understandably feel they cannot support the religious parties because they do not subscribe to their ideology or their strategy. But for others, such as the PML-N, the military ruler is the worse evil. He is not a democrat and has shown scant respect for constitutional norms. For that reason, Benazir Bhutto has shied away from giving out the details of her meeting with the general in Abu Dhabi. This has only added to the confusion.

There is yet another element in the political spectrum which is technically the most important but has been largely ignored in policymaking while it receives the loudest mention in political and religious circles. This element is termed the ‘common man’ in political parlance. He is the one who is most affected by the shenanigans of the key actors in politics.

Paradoxically, he is also the least interested in who comes into office and how. Depoliticised over the years by the paralysis of the political parties and his daily grind of earning a living to sustain himself and his family, the common man has despaired of the events in the country to such an extent that he perceives things to be beyond redemption.

He feels he does not stand to gain anything from whoever wins the election. His lack of interest in politics and elections is a matter of grave concern since it has serious implications for the working of democracy. Yet he can hardly be blamed for it.This would explain the confusion you witness today in Pakistan’s politics.

There is confrontation between various sections of opinion. But there are also cross currents running counter to these fault lines.

In this situation of crisis it is being made out that fair and free elections (as the International Crisis Group suggests in its latest report) would resolve all dilemmas. Had it been simply a case of the country being fragmented socially, politically and ethnically, or polarised between the extremists and the moderates, elections would certainly have clarified the picture.

No major problem would have arisen even if any political party had failed to win a clear majority. One of the bigger parties could have entered into a coalition with other groups — after all politics is the art of the impossible and coalitions are formed among the strangest of bedfellows.

The problem is that matters are much more complicated than that. What actually calls for serious thought is whether these alignments and groupings, presuming they will lead to the establishment of a constitutional government, will rid the country of the curse of terrorism and the threat of military intervention in politics again.

Also to be addressed are the hazards of a threatened American attack to destroy Al Qaeda safe havens that are believed to be in our tribal areas. The two issues are interrelated and one feeds on the other. Will elections — even if they are fair and free — resolve these problems?

Besides, the incident of terrorism provides the army with an excuse to stay on at the helm to act as the saviour of the country. If this is conventional wisdom, the army will be reluctant to see President Musharraf go and the possibility of another coup to tighten the army’s grip on the government should not be ruled out.

The only modus operandi one can suggest is that all the parties should negotiate with President Musharraf on the formation of a national government to ensure that all shades of opinion in the country find representation in the policymaking process. A national government could attempt to reach a truce with the jihadis which may not be impossible if the assumption is correct that the high visibility of the army and the Americans is the key provocation for them.

This national government should work towards holding free and fair elections. Even after the elections are held, power should not be handed over to one or two parties that win the most votes. It should result in the constitution of a grand coalition of all parties that should find representation in the proportion in which they have won votes. It should hold office for the normal term of five years.

In this interim period it must set itself some goals. The most significant should be:

— Work out a compact for provincial autonomy;

— Introduce democracy in the working of political parties;

— Trim the size of the army and the defence budget, while bringing it under civil control;

— Adopt a two-pronged approach vis-à-vis the extremists to persuade them to abandon their strategy of terror. Negotiations and force should be resorted to as necessary to isolate the terrorists. Concurrently, the government should focus on the social and economic development of all backward areas;

— Focus on the education sector to empower people economically, politically and socially and widen the worldview of the people;

— Distance ourselves from America not by resorting to confrontationist tactics but through discreet diplomacy. The expected change in the administration in Washington might make this possible.

If we fail to find a political focus in the present chaos, we may soon find it impossible to pull ourselves out of this morass. Ironically, as the power brokers dither in search of a solution, the lot of the common man will continue to be neglected.

True, he himself has abdicated his right to decide his own future by not asserting himself. But can one blame him for that? In the absence of empowerment brought about by education, he has yet to discover his own political strength.