Indian Defence Review

President Karzai, having reached the conclusion that a solution to the Afghan imbroglio cannot be found through external intervention, has leaned towards finding an internal way out through an intra-Afghan reconciliation process. US will and finances to sustain its Afghan engagement have been visibly depleting. America has already publicly conceded that a military solution in Afghanistan is not realisable; its allies are suffering from political exhaustion there. This is hardly propitious for a successful outcome of the Afghan war from the western perspective.

President Karzai’s relationship with the Americans is tense and distrustful even though his survival depends on them. The US has a low opinion of Karzai because of his perceived inadequacies and failings, but sticks with him for lack of a viable alternative. To survive as the end game in Afghanistan nears, Karzai has tried to explore some entente with the Taliban—his fellow Pashtuns.

The US now realizes that the military defeat of the Taliban would require a heavy commitment of manpower and resources over too long a period of time.

Some success in the reconciliation process would transfer the political initiative to Karzai and make him less dependent on the Americans. But his freedom of manoeuvre is limited so long as US/NATO forces occupy Afghanistan, conduct military operations there and train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces. Karzai’s bargaining power with the Taliban, in fact, derives from US military deployment in Afghanistan.

If reconciliation serves Karzai’s interests, it serves that of the US and NATO too as they are looking for a political way out of the Afghanistan conflict, and this would require talking to their principal adversary, the Taliban. For them, reconciliation is a political tool with multiple functions: it signals a scope for power sharing with the adversary, it can serve to divide the Taliban by persuading those willing to compromise to respond to western overtures, it can keep the negotiating track open even if progress is slow, and it provides a platform for some important Islamic countries to intervene as intermediaries.

Rabbani’s assassination is a powerful rebuff to the reconciliation strategy. The 79-member strong High Peace Council that Rabbani presided was Karzai’s conspicuous investment in this strategy. Rabbani as a Tajik and a former head the Northern Alliance gave the reconciliation strategy an ostensible intra-Afghan rather than an intra-Pashtun stamp. With several powerful non-Pashtuns elements within the Afghan polity opposing reconciliation this was important. With his assassination, President Karzai has been weakened politically. It would also be difficult to find an adequate replacement for Rabbani.

While it is not clear how much breadth and depth the reconciliation process had developed in reality, the outlook now has become heavily clouded. The reconciliation process cannot proceed with any great sense of hope in the face of Taliban elements stepping up their attacks against key regime figures and penetrating well protected areas to demonstrate their reach and daring, probably in collusion with elements within the regime’s security apparatus. President Karzai’s half-brother has been killed, a NATO base has been truck-bombed, the British Council office has come under attack, and, much more provocatively, the US Embassy and the NATO HQs in Kabul have been struck. These acts of defiance not only call into question the premises of the reconciliation policy, they also expose the weakness of the western strategy of a controlled and graduated withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rabbanis assassination and the attack on the US Embassy magnify the resilience and the determination of the Taliban.

The US now realizes that the military defeat of the Taliban would require a heavy commitment of manpower and resources over too long a period of time. It is aware that this option is not only no longer available politically, exercising it to protect any non-negotiable US national interest is no longer necessary. The aim is to degrade the fighting capacity of the Taliban sufficiently either to induce it to negotiate a political settlement that respects certain botttom-lines, or allow the US/NATO to reduce the level of their engagement to politically and financially manageable proportions through a policy of Afghanisation of the conflict.

The psychological aspect of the war being conducted in Afghanistan is important too. Public perceptions can be shaped by some dramatic acts that may not be militarily too significant but which may highlight the problems on the ground, with political repercussions. In the asymmetrical war being fought, the Taliban do not have to match the tally of US/NATO successes on the ground. A few spectacular actions by them can have a political and psychological resonance far beyond their actual import. Rabbani’s assassination and the attack on the US Embassy magnify the resilience and the determination of the Taliban. Even if the person of Rabbani is replaced, the promise of the reconciliation process has already been etiolated.

The core problem is Pakistan as the safe-havens of the Taliban are located there. Those who sheltered Osama bin Laden for years will not deny shelter to those who are seen as kith and kin by some and strategic assets by others within the Pakistan establishment. The US is now openly accusing the ISI of complicity in the attack on the US Embassy in Kabul, which also removes any remaining doubt that the ISI instigated the earlier assault on the Indian Embassy there. The outgoing US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman has in his Congressional testimony called the Haqqani group a veritable extension of the arm of the ISI, which he has moreover indicted for using militant groups as an instrument of policy. The US wants Pakistan to delink itself from the Haqqani group, a demand Pakistan has rejected as it would mean giving up a crucial leverage vis-a-vis the US as also an instrument for securing its future interests in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has weighed the balance between its need of the US and vice-versa and concluded that the limited options available to the US give Pakistan room to persevere in what to outsiders would seem to be dangerous, self-destructive policies.

Despite mounting public pressure on Pakistan by the US and Congressional threat on aid cuts, the Pakistani political and military leadership has closed ranks in defiance. Pakistan has weighed the balance between its need of the US and vice-versa and concluded that the limited options available to the US give Pakistan room to persevere in what to outsiders would seem to be dangerous, self-destructive policies. After the Osama bin Laden episode which deeply hurt the image of the Pakistan Army, the Army reacted by stoking nationalist feelings against the US in order to recover its standing with the public. In these circumstances, it can hardly be seen to be doing the US bidding in North Waziristan. The deteriorating state of US-Pakistan relations is, in fact, problematic for immediate US interests in Afghanistan and will make the transition process there that much more difficult.

Pakistan sees itself as the country most vitally interested in shaping Afghanistan’s future. For 30 years it has intervened in that country politically and militarily. It was the staging ground for the mujahideen offensive against the Soviets in Afghanistan and after the Soviets departed it was entangled in the civil war there. It then was complicit in unleashing the Taliban into Afghanistan and has been host to the Taliban after their ejection from Afghanistan by the Americans. With the US neglect of Afghanistan after the Taliban ouster, lack of development in the country, the backward and obscurantist mentality of the Afghan tribes, the uncontrolled tribal areas across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the inexorable rise of religious extremism in Pakistan itself, the country is now deeply embroiled in Taliban’s resurgence within Afghanistan. It is unable to reconcile its ambitions in Afghanistan and the demands the US makes on it to combat those very Afghan elements that are the instruments of its ambitions there. Pakistan’s aversion to any reconciliation process in which it is denied a central role may account for the acts that are undermining it. We need to recall the Baradar episode.