FEATURED IMAGE above shows historic Khyber Pass between Pakistan and Afghanistan Photo Credit: By James Mollison via Wikimedia Commons
Once again – after Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s assassination by the drone in Baluchistan — the question has resurfaced as to how terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, Mullah Omer, who are not Pakistani citizens – were found on Pakistani sovereign territories.
Mansour was also traveling to Iran and other parts of the Middle East on a Pakistani passport and as per reports no agency in Pakistan knew about his movements. Is it simply the porous 2600 km Pak-Afghan border, which cannot be watched and monitored or these internationally declared outlaws are allowed to be sheltered by Pakistan’s state?
On the other side of the border, Mullah Fazlullah, the head of Pakistani Taliban (TTP) – which has long fought the Pakistani state – and Omar Khalid Khorasani – whose terror outfit Jamaat ul Ahrar carried out Easter bombing in Lahore March this year – have been hiding in Afghanistan, where they plan attacks against Pakistan. Baloch insurgency leaders have also long been harbored in Afghanistan as revealed by Hamid Karzai’s frank admissions made public by WikiLeaks.
The discomforting state of cross-border militancy and existence of militant sanctuaries on either side of the border speak of two broad points. First Pakistan and Afghanistan have failed to build a trusting relationship, and secondly the US-led international community has not been able to facilitate such cooperative relationship.
Then there is the question of motives by each state to tolerate such sanctuaries that harm the neighboring country. During the 1990s, it was the involvement of all neighboring countries including Iran and India in backing armed proxies in Afghanistan that made matters worse. In the post-2001 years yet gain conflicting regional interests have decimated peace prospects in Afghanistan.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s top advisor on the foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz recently said that Taliban leaders have been living in Pakistan and using medical facilities. General Musharraf as well has said during his regime Pakistani spies secretly supported Taliban after 2001 because the government of President Hamid Karazai had an overwhelming number of non-Pashtuns with close to New Delhi and favoring India.
“Obviously we were looking for some groups to counter this Indian action against Pakistan,” he said while talking to The Guardian. “That is where the intelligence work comes in. Intelligence being in contact with Taliban groups. Definitely they were in contact, and they should be.”
On the Afghan side, according to another report in The Guardian in November of 2010, Karzai had “refused to bend to Pakistani demands to surrender Brahmadagh Bugti,” accusing Islamabad of using the issue to deflect attention from its support of the Taliban. “Fomenting uprising does not make one a terrorist,” Karzai said, according to the newspaper.
The newspaper also reported that in a meeting with a senior UN official in February 2009, Karzai “finally admitted that Brahamdagh Bugti was in Kabul,” according to WikiLeaks.
But what has been the result of these policies? Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have suffered thousands of casualties and wasted a lot of time for economic development of their people.
In Pakistan’s case, the country has also not been able to leverage any influence with the Afghan Taliban in pushing them to Afghan reconciliation and peace talks. It appears that Pakistan overestimated its influence over Taliban and raised hopes of the world that it could force the militant group into the peace talks with the Afghan government.
That raises the question about Pakistan’s foreign policy. Successive civilian governments and military establishments have failed to work on the same page, with the military having an upper hand in the Afghan policy.
As regards the United States, elimination of Taliban top leader demonstrates its frustration over the virtual stalemate in Afghanistan at the time when US is ready to pull out and their belief that Mansour cannot deliver as per the expectation. President Barack Obama said during his visit to Vietnam that the death of Mansour marks an “important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan.” Secretary of State John Kerry said, “Peace is what we want. Mansoor was a threat to that effort. He [Mansour] also was directly opposed to peace negotiations and to the reconciliation process. It is time for Afghans to stop fighting and to start building a real future together.”
Now how the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) — a framework under the Heart of Asia/Istanbul Process of 2011, which included Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States – moves forward remains to be seen.
As per reports, the new Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhondzada is a low-profile conservative. Reports also suggest Akhondzada is a hardliner but he did not participate in any combat operation against the US, Afghan government or against any other Taliban faction. But nothing can be clear at this point about how the new Afghan Taliban leader would behave.
In another development, Hizb-i-Islami leader Gulbadin Hikmatyaar and President Ashraf Ghani are getting closer to a 25-point peace plan which was initiated in 2014 and reportedly encouraged by the US officials — although, Dawa Khan Menapal, the spokesperson of President Ghani, said: “This is a process. There are some minor differences. It may take one day, maybe weeks or even longer.”
The 25-point plan says President Ghani would remove Hikmatyar’s name from terrorists list, and convince US to request UN to remove the Taliban leaders from the list of blacklisted leaders and provide them general amnesty.
Given difficulties in controlling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and a lack of resources to do so, the question of reconciliation and peace comes down to Pakistan-Afghanistan cooperation that not only stops cross-border militancy but also promotes trade and economic partnership.
At the moment it seems neither Pakistan nor Afghanistan has any clear policy towards the Taliban, and if it is, it appears to be full of confusion.
In the upcoming months, the United States and China have important roles to play to nudge the two countries toward a cooperative relationship because without any clear policy by Pakistan and Afghanistan, the QCG cannot serve its purpose. That demands both the United States and China having close relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
