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The Heart of Asia conference has produced some promising results. Perhaps of most immediate value is the Afghan and Pakistani leadership’s agreement to revive constructive engagement on Afghanistan’s peace process.
Quite a diplomatic victory, this is. The backchannel had worked overtime for months — led primarily by the US and UK — to get Kabul and Islamabad to engage again. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan were reluctant till the last minute. And if one is to go by the public statements of their leaders, neither side seems too hopeful that coming together again will produce much to cheer about.
They may be right; the mutual mistrust may prove too deep to overcome. And yet, there is the undeniable reality that makes it incumbent upon them to give this their best shot: neither side can afford a collapsed Afghanistan and forward movement on the peace process is impossible unless they work together — read, unless Pakistan is on board.
To do so, they’ll need to learn and apply the right lessons from the peace talks earlier this year.
Pak-Afghan mistrust may prove too deep to overcome.
The basics first: both sides need to own up to the respective tasks. Pakistan must recognise that President Ashraf Ghani’s primary interest is not in talking to the Afghan Taliban. He needs a reduction in insurgent-led violence in his country to sustain his engagement with Pakistan. For this to happen, the discussion needs to move beyond finger-pointing. Both sides ought to agree on a very specific strategy targeted at recalcitrant elements within the insurgency, and Pakistan should pursue this in a demonstrable manner.
On the Afghan side, the direct link between Pakistan’s concern about TTP sanctuaries on Afghan territory and its approach to Afghanistan must not be overlooked. Acquiring Afghan help in tackling TTP sanctuaries is probably the single-most potent incentive for Pakistan to work the reconciliation peace with Kabul. Meanwhile, Afghanistan must demonstrate sincerity on its part — of the kind it did immediately after the December 2014 Army Public School attack in Peshawar. Its ability to do so would also allay Pakistani concerns that Ghani is unable to control his security establishment.
Then, timelines are going to be absolutely crucial in the next iteration of reconciliation talks. Both sides must focus on trying to frontload a few successes, however minor, that can be used to rally support behind their engagement. This will be especially important for Ghani, given the pressure he is facing for his positive overtures towards Pakistan at the recent conference. These successes could entail quick initiation of Taliban talks, action against specific targets of interest to either side, concessions in the broader bilateral Pak-Afghan relationship, even if unrelated to reconciliation, etc.
Related, I am not sure there is space any longer for a spread-out process to re-engage the Taliban. In retrospect, the attempt at reconciliation talks earlier this year took too long to move from talks about talks to icebreakers. Such a dragged-out process will be open invitation to throw a spanner in the works.
We need a greater sense of urgency and a more focused approach. The first order of business is to get to a ceasefire deal between Kabul and the Taliban. Achieving this is the only way to buy enough time to be able to sustain the talks till they reach their logical conclusion. All sides need to jump right into discussions on a ceasefire and hold continuous sessions with a firm time limit set on achieving a deal. This implies that both the Afghan government and the Taliban must come to the table with realistic plans. Kabul and Islamabad should consider agreeing beforehand on the minimum concessions they must get from the Taliban. Pakistan would exert whatever pressure it can to push the Taliban to agree.
Finally, the importance of controlling the narratives can’t be stressed enough. Even in the best-case scenario, violence in Afghanistan will continue for some time. If the Afghan narrative that blames Pakistan for every major attack goes unchallenged by Kabul, Ghani’s own space to manoeuvre will shrink further. Similarly, ‘spoilers’ are not about to disappear, even if their salience can be reduced. Pakistan would therefore have to temper its expectations. It will also be important not to allow space to those who wish to paint every anti-Pakistan statement as part of a conspiracy or evidence of Ghani’s weakness.
Both sides could adopt a policy of public praise and private rebuke. Publicly highlighting successes achieved as a result of engagement and keeping hard talk behind closed doors would convey candour when needed but also restrict the space for the naysayers to manipulate the narrative.
None of this is going to be easy. But neither can win unless they work at this together. There just isn’t another way.
The writer is a foreign policy expert based in Washington, DC.
Published in Dawn, December 15th, 2015
