THE Chicago summit held in May has ratified the road map which President Obama has been evolving since 2010, to convince his voters in the 2012 presidential elections that US goals in Afghanistan have been largely achieved and that all Nato troops will depart from Afghanistan by December 2014, and all combat operations will be terminated by July 2013. France, of course, is withdrawing its forces by the end of 2012.

The US has also signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Karzai government in Kabul to assist in expanding the Afghan National Security Forces to 350,000 to take responsibility for Afghan security. The agreement also allows the US to station an unidentified number of its troops in Afghanistan after 2014 (possibly till 2024) for training and support to Afghan forces. The target for Afghan security forces was reduced to 230,000 at Chicago with an annual price tag of $4bn to be provided by the US and other Nato countries, in addition to $6bn a year that Afghanistan will apparently require for reconstruction and development.

What are the prospects and the obstacles in the successful implementation of this road map for the endgame in Afghanistan?

The first major question mark springs from the capacity of Afghan National Security Forces and the Afghan Special Operations Forces to control the insurgency, a task that much better trained and equipped 130,000 Isaf troops have not been able to accomplish in the past 10 years.

A related question is that of availability of the required financial resources. At Chicago no firm commitments were made for providing $4bn a year. Only $390m were announced by Germany, UK and Australia. The US, it seems, will have to provide at least half or $2bn a year for security forces, but this will not be adequate to equip and maintain the security forces at the level projected.

The third and more serious obstacle is, however, the very difficult ground situation and limited prospects for the success of any dialogue with the Taliban. The US policy of ‘fight, talk and build’ has not worked. The military pressure on the Taliban, despite various surges, has not weakened them as many gruesome incidents have clearly demonstrated. So the Taliban would wait for further reduction in Isaf forces before launching major attacks to capture additional territory in different parts of the country.

The US policy on this subject suffers from several contradictions: Taliban would be ready to talk if they see total withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. But that is not likely to happen even after 2014. Their hostile attitude will therefore become stiffer. The US is also much more dependent on the Northern Alliance leadership in Afghanistan who are averse to any deal with the hardline Taliban. Serious dialogue is not therefore likely to begin.

This ill-fated endgame in Afghanistan will, however, create formidable challenges and endless difficulties for Pakistan. Ashley Tellis of Carnegie Endowment wrote in a recent article that “Irrespective of how the coming security transition in Afghanistan pans out, one country is on a surprising course to a major strategic defeat: Pakistan.” But in my view, properly handled, this transition can also become a new beginning for peace and stability in the region.

The first major step in evolving this difficult road map will be a clearer understanding of the ground situation and the anatomy of the power structure in Afghanistan. This is where Pakistan’s real strength lies since no other country has as much firsthand experience of this power structure as Pakistan.

The power structure in Afghanistan is in fact very complicated. Basically it is divided between the Taliban, who control most of the southern Afghan belt and the Northern Alliance who dominate the northern provinces with Isaf’s active support. Some of the tribal maliks who were exiled or sidelined in the 1980s are also back in different pockets of Afghanistan. Most independent observers are apprehensive that the present low level civil war in Afghanistan will intensify as soon as the US forces begin to withdraw.

The Afghan security forces unfortunately are not ethnically balanced and about three fourth are non-Pakhtuns. These forces could split along ethnic lines and further inflame the civil war. In such a chaotic situation, the Northern Alliance elements will naturally blame Pakistan for supporting the Taliban and might use this excuse to intensify cross-border raids into Pakistan’s tribal areas on the pretext of destroying sanctuaries. The Afghan Taliban appear to be pro-Pakistan but at the same time ironically they also support the Pakistani Taliban who pose an existential threat to Pakistan and are out to weaken the security forces of Pakistan to gain control of the tribal areas.

There is no visible indication so far that Pakistan’s present political leadership fully understands the very serious difficulties which this American endgame in Afghanistan will create for Pakistan. Our weak economy and overdependence on outside help also make it difficult to chalk out an independent foreign policy. At the same time, new regional alignments are emerging between the US and India, the US and Afghanistan and India and Afghanistan, signalling further isolation of Pakistan.

Pakistan must quickly evolve its own coherent strategy to meet these challenges and counter its growing isolation by demonstrating its ability to deal with post-2014 Afghanistan through a fair and balanced approach:

First, all Afghan stakeholders have to recognise that none of them can rule Afghanistan alone to the exclusion of others.

Second, the Taliban have to be convinced that unless they work out a power-sharing formula with the Northern Alliance, the civil war would continue and the US would be forced to keep enough troops in Afghanistan after 2014 to prevent the Taliban from taking over Uzbek, Tajik or Hazara areas.

Third, if Iran and Pakistan can persuade each other to work together and actively broker a power-sharing formula between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance based on the concept of a federation with maximum autonomy to different provinces, then other regional Central Asian neighbours can also be invited to participate in the evolution of such a formula. A framework similar to the Six plus Two forum of the late 1990s can be created for this purpose.

This approach will work only if all stakeholders, especially the US, Pakistan and Iran, give first priority to the objective of durable peace and stability in Afghanistan, relegating their own narrow agendas to second place. The US should also draw a clear distinction between the Taliban and Al Qaeda and also recognise that all Pakhtuns are not Taliban. Similarly, instead of pursuing its longstanding objective of ‘a friendly western border’, Pakistan should treat Afghanistan as a sovereign neighbour and in view of its landlocked position offer maximum assistance in trade and reconstruction.

The writer is a former foreign minister of Pakistan.