Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban Hope springs
The chances are growing that the Afghan Taliban will be brought to the negotiating table
ANYWHERE else, the delivery of food, tents and blankets to victims of avalanches in a neighbouring country would be seen as a welcome but unremarkable humanitarian act. Not, given their history of poisonous bilateral relations, when Afghanistan is the recipient and the donor is Pakistan. The arrival of Pakistani help in the stricken Panjshir valley, where snowfalls have killed more than 280 people, is a sign of how markedly relations between the two countries have improved of late. Now Pakistan may be poised to help broker talks between the Afghan government and the Afghan Taliban who have long fought a bloody insurgency against it. Even an uncertain prospect of negotiations is significant.
Much credit for the improvement goes to Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president since September. In an early speech Mr Ghani declared Pakistan to be his priority and consigned India, once a tight ally of Afghanistan’s, to the outer rings of a “five circle” foreign policy. Whereas his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, made frequent forays to India, Mr Ghani has yet to visit. When he went to Pakistan in November, he broke protocol by calling on General Raheel Sharif, the army chief who, more than his (unrelated) namesake and prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, holds real power in Pakistan. That courtesy caused dismay among those back home for whom the Pakistani army is a source of all evil, most notably as the Taliban’s historical backer. “Nothing he has done has caused more dishonour to Afghanistan,” a former foreign minister, Rangin Dadfar Spanta, fumes.
General Sharif has since made many reciprocal visits to Kabul. Mr Ghani has ordered his security forces to work with their Pakistani counterparts on managing a volatile border. He has also sent cadets to enroll in Pakistan’s military academy in Abbottabad, in contrast to Mr Karzai’s preference for training officers in India rather than in Pakistan. This counters Pakistani anxiety over the Afghan army’s future leaders being indoctrinated by a mortal enemy.
Perhaps most strikingly, Mr Ghani is diverting soldiers away from the fight against the Afghan Taliban—on March 3rd a suicide-bomber killed nine soldiers in Helmand province—to deal instead with Pakistan’s own version of the Taliban, Tehreeke-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), whose militants have taken refuge in Dangam in eastern Afghanistan. After TTP men in December attacked a school for army families in Peshawar in north-west Pakistan, killing 132 children, Mr Ghani’s is a notable gesture.
He now needs to win a big prize in return if he is not to be written off as a stooge of Pakistan. The Pakistani army must help lure the Afghan Taliban into early peace talks. Mid-ranking officers in the Pakistani army and its spy agencies have traditionally opposed that. In private they say that the Afghan Taliban poses no threat to Pakistan itself, while providing a useful channel for Pakistan to influence events over the border.
The good news is that General Sharif is clear-eyed about how negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban could help bring wider stability to the region. Pakistan has its own chronic problems with terrorists—the December massacre in Peshawar brought that painfully home.
The Pakistani authorities have influence over the Afghan Taliban, whose leaders enjoy broad protection in the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Karachi, Peshawar and elsewhere. Many Taliban own property in Pakistan, and their children attend local schools. The Quetta Shura, their ruling council, remains intact. A senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, believes that the Pakistanis are actively pushing the Afghan Taliban into negotiations. He judges that among the Taliban are “reasonable people” ready to be guided by instructions from their leader, Mullah Omar, should he sue for peace. - Read More at The Economist
posted by Fakhria @ 3/08/2015
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