Author: B. Raman
Publication: Outlook
Date: January 29, 2010
URL: http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264031
The question is no longer how to win in Afghanistan.
It is how to avoid a defeat and an embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The growing Afghan fatigue is clearly discernible
among the NATO powers. There is a palpable fear that the NATO forces can't
beat the Afghan Taliban. The question is no longer how to win in Afghanistan.
It is how to avoid a defeat and an embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The search for a face-saving formula is already
on so that the NATO forces can contemplate an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The objective is no longer a modern de-Wahabised Afghanistan. It is an Afghanistan,
which will not once again become the launching pad of Al Qaeda for its attacks
on Western targets.
The various proposals and ideas being aired
at the London conference on Afghanistan, which started on January 28, 2010,
and in its margins reflect a Western willingness to legitimise sections of
the Taliban and give them a role in the governance of Afghanistan provided
their return will not mean the return of Al Qaeda and they are prepared to
share power with President Hamid Karzai and his associates.
The West is prepared to contemplate co-existing
with an Afghanistan half modern-half Talibanised. Mr George Bush and Mr Tony
Blair projected the "war" in Afghanistan not only as a "war"
against the Taliban and Al Qaeda as terrorist organisations, but also against
the medieval ideologies they represented. After the London terrorist attack
of July, 2005, Mr Blair stressed the importance of winning the war ideologically
too--not merely on the ground.
If the West is now prepared to make a deal
with the Afghan Taliban as an organisation or at least with elements in it
which are prepared to make peace with the NATO forces, how about its Wahabised
ideology? Is it prepared to accept the ideology of the Taliban and face the
prospect of its coming in the way of the post-9/11 goal of the modernisation
of Afghanistan? If the Taliban ideology is OK in Afghanistan if it gives up
violence, how can one say that it will not be OK in Pakistan and the rest
of the Islamic world?
If the West is prepared to legitimise the
Taliban or sections of it in Afghanistan, how can it refuse to legitimise
the Pakistani Taliban and give it a role in the administration of the Federally-Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan? If it is prepared to legitimise its ideology
and objectives in the FATA, how can it refuse to do so in the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP)? If it is prepared to legitimise the Afghan and the Pakistani
Talibans, which are essentially a Pashtun phenomenon, how can it refuse to
legitimise the Punjabi Taliban consisting of organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba
(LET), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI), the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ)?
If the West legitimises the Pashtun and the
Punjabi Talibans, will it not weaken the moderate elements in Pakistan and
give a fresh momentum towards the Islamic radicalisation of the Af-Pak region?
The trend towards the Talibanisation of the Pakistani Pashtun belt gathered
force when Pervez Musharraf bought peace with the Islamic fundamentalist organisations
and helped them to win power in the elections of 2002 and rule the NWFP for
five years. The Afghan Taliban staged its spectacular come-back during this
period helped by the fundamentalist parties ruling the NWFP and having a share
of the power in Balochistan. The trouble in the Swat Valley of the NWFP started
during this period.
The 2002-2007 experience in the NWFP showed
how short-sighted ideas to buy peace in the short-term produce long-term damages.
The US deal with the Afghan Taliban post-1994 in the hope of using it for
facilitating the construction of oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan to
Pakistan via Taliban-controlled territory by Unocal, the US oil company, enabled
the Taliban to strengthen its position in the Kandahar and Herat areas. The
Taliban under Mulla Mohammad Omar captured power in Kabul in September 1996,
and became a thorn in the Western flesh. Musharraf bought temporary peace
with the Mehsuds of South Waziristan in 2005-06 when his Army faced difficulties
in countering them. The peace was short-lived. The result: the emergence of
the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after the commando raid in the Lal Masjid
of Islamabad after July, 2007.
What the Taliban wants is not re-integration
into the Afghan mainstream. It wants its re-conquest of power in Kabul so
that it can resume its original mission of setting an Islamic Caliphate in
Afghanistan. If the Taliban succeeds in establishing an Islamic Caliphate
in Afghanistan, will an Islamic Caliphate in the rest of the Islamic world
under the leadership of Al Qaeda be far behind?
There are so many questions which would require
detailed analysis before the question of the re-integration of even sections
of the Taliban into the Afghan mainstream can be considered. Instead of analyzing
these questions and working out a comprehensive strategy, attempts are being
made to work out another half-cooked strategy, which will be counter-productive.
The two Af-Pak strategies worked out by the advisers of Mr Barack Obama during
his first year in office proved to be non-starters. The bleeding stalemate
between the NATO forces and the Afghan Taliban continues. The international
community cannot afford another half-cooked strategy, which may end up returning
power to the Afghan Taliban on a platter.
Any feasible Afghan strategy should start
with the question: how to neutralize the Afghan Taliban's sanctuaries in the
Quetta area of Pakistan. The US is reluctant to act against those sanctuaries.
In the absence of action against sanctuaries, it is not able to make headway
in its counter-insurgency operations in Afghan territory. Instead of finding
some other way of putting an end to those sanctuaries, it has started toying
with the idea of winning over sections of the Taliban, who may not be as radicalised
as the Taliban leadership. This is not going to work.
Either you have a modern, democratic government
in Kabul or you have a Talibanised one. You cannot have a hybrid-- with a
mix of the modern and the medieval.
- B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.
