HAVE Pakistan-US relations reached the breaking point? Will future transactions be marked by greater hostility and even war? A dispassionate analysis of the recent acrimony is required to answer these questions.

In essence, Mullen accused the ISI of maintaining the Haqqanis as its veritable arm. In retaliation, Pakistan arranged a nine-hour marathon session for politicians to criticise the American stance.

With the speeches done, the White House has distanced itself from Mullen while Pakistani generals have spoken of defusing tensions. America has not suspended aid further or threatened specific military action. Pakistan has not choked off Nato supplies. A complete break-off hurts both parties incalculably. Thus, so far, the bark has been worse than the bite.

Meanwhile, the Afghan imbroglio remains intractable, with both sides continually trading blame for the mess. In reality, both are culpable through blunders committed over 20-plus years. The ‘original sin’ was supporting the insurgency against the Soviets, couched provocatively as a global jihad.

The cost that Afghanistan has incurred from almost constant war since then is certainly higher than what unchallenged Soviet occupation would have imposed. Collapsing under the dead weight of communism, it would have eventually withdrawn from Afghanistan as it did from the other ‘stans’.

Both countries added to the initial blunder through their post-Soviet policies. The US became completely disengaged from Afghanistan, not even funding reconstruction work or the demobilisation of radicalised combatants. Pakistan became overly engaged with its un-strategic, shallow policy called ‘strategic depth’.

These blunders ultimately culminated in 9/11. However, even that huge wake-up call did not end the mutual blunders. While there was moral justification and UN backing for time-bound military action to punish the 9/11 culprits, there was none for an open-ended, 10-year war with unclear aims and insufficient resources.

Pakistan contributed to this mission drift by not capturing incoming militants after the Nato invasion. The US made things worse by soon starting the completely senseless, immoral and illegal war in Iraq, essentially half-forgetting Afghanistan.

Pakistan subsequently let the militants spread their tentacles throughout Pakistan given Musharraf’s political compulsion to retain the MMA as a counterweight to the PPP and PML-N. Selective action was only launched in the mid-2000s, when the militants increasingly imposed their brand of Islam on Pakistan’s streets. This action infuriated the militants into launching suicide attacks in Pakistan, which continue till today.

Many argue that suicide attacks spread in Pakistan due to its support for America. While the mission drift in Afghanistan made some contribution, the militant decision to use widespread suicide attacks in Pakistan related primarily to the efforts to curb their bid to control Pakistan. Thus suicide attacks mushroomed only in 2007 after the Lal Masjid attack and not in 2001.

The US subsequently made matters worse by resorting to drone attacks and CIA operations of dubious legality within Pakistan. Thus, neither side can feign innocence today. Nor are the blunders a thing of the past for either, given their maximalist aims in Afghanistan.

Pakistan seems interested in helping the Taliban become predominant again in Afghanistan. The US seems interested in marginalising the Taliban and retaining long-term military bases in Afghanistan probably to checkmate China. Neither aim will allow durable peace in the region.

What is the way forward then? There are essentially two unappetising options — war or peace. Peace means bringing the mercurial Taliban into Afghanistan’s power structure along with their extremist goals. Would they be content sharing power and respecting human rights or look to re-establish their lost ‘khilafat’?

Would they even be content with being masters of landlocked Afghanistan or subsequently target the bigger prize, nuclear-armed Pakistan, whom they consider already half-conquered?

Neither is war an easier option. War would require Pakistan to target the Taliban/Haqqanis, as the US demands. However, unilateral Pakistani action will merely chase the militants into eastern Afghanistan, from where the US has partially withdrawn even during the peak of its short-term surge. Thus, the US too will have to commit more troops and money into Afghanistan for war to succeed.

Neither country has the political or economic strength presently for escalating war. Victory is not ensured even if they did, for the militants could just melt into the populace in wait for the two-sided surge to recede. Eliminating indigenous Taliban will be much more difficult than eliminating Al Qaeda. Thus, both face the horns of a dilemma — prolonged, costly and unpopular war or messy, tenuous and risky peace.

Unless both sides soon develop the stomach for war, peace will eventually become the default mode. A decentralised and neutral Afghanistan may have some chance of achieving peace. However, for this to happen, Pakistan and the US must abandon their maximalist positions and let the Afghans lead.

Pakistan must accept an independent though neutral Afghanistan. It must also influence the Taliban to accept a bounded role and abandon their extremist goals. However, their word will not be enough initially and some peace-enforcement mechanism would be required in Afghanistan. This should not be in the shape of American bases though, which attract so much suspicion and hatred, but consist of forces from neutral countries as done in several war-recovering African countries.

As the behemoth in this conflict, America must take the initiative by publicly abandoning its aims to retain bases in Afghanistan and committing itself to the vision above, in contrast to its current opaque plans. This may encourage the Taliban and Pakistan to accept it too.

In the interim, Pakistan must not let its territory be used by militants to attack other countries. It may be reluctant to attack the Haqqanis. However, it can seal its borders tightly to control infiltration into Afghanistan. This will also make its own territory safer from infiltration from within Afghanistan. As probably the wisest policymaker on both sides of the aisle, Richard Holbrooke, advised through his last words on his deathbed: end this war.

The writer is a research associate on political economy issues at the University of California, Berkeley.

murtazaniaz@yahoo.com