SINCE I wrote my last article on Pakistan’s deteriorating relations with Afghanistan which was published in this space on January 9, a number of new developments have occurred. These require some discussion before I go on to present my views on how economics could lead the two countries to live like amicable neighbours rather than sworn enemies.

Islamabad — and also Kabul — needs to rethink its strategy towards the Pashtun tribes that straddle the Afghan-Pakistan border. This is where economics enters the picture. But before using economics to suggest a new approach towards the Afghan-Pakistan rift, let me recount what has happened in the last few weeks.

Pakistan’s prime minister has visited Kabul, the second high-level mission by a Pakistani official in a few weeks. The prime minister followed his foreign minister, presumably to advance further whatever was achieved by the earlier visit. If there was an expectation of a breakthrough, it does not seem to have occurred, at least not according to the reports that have appeared in the western press. If anything, the relations between the two countries seem to have worsened.

“Unfortunately, the gulf between Afghanistan and Pakistan is getting wider, and it is not getting narrower,” President Hamid Karzai said after his meeting with the Pakistani prime minister. The Afghans seem particularly perturbed by Pakistan’s decision to fortify the common border with a fence, a wall and by laying landmines.

The Afghans, in opposing the Pakistani move, point to the terrible human suffering that landmines have already caused their people. Hundreds of thousands of landmines were laid during 25 years of conflict, first by the Soviet troops in the 1980s and then the warring Mujahideen factions after the departure of the Soviets. According to one member of the Afghan parliament who represents the troubled province of Helmand, “this cannot possibly stop the terrorists, and it is not even clear where the border is.”

It now seems clear that the Pakistani decision to fortify the border was born out of frustration and was not the result of a well thought out strategic approach. The announcement that Pakistan intended to use landmines along its border resulted in an outcry since the use of landmines is opposed by a number of non-government groups who campaigned hard to get an international treaty in place to stop this practice. On January 8, soon after the Pakistani prime minister had returned home, the deputy chief of the UN mission in Afghanistan issued a statement saying that this way of handling the dispute “would not contribute to better security,” but cause further hardship to the people on either side of the border. The following day Islamabad indicated that it was rethinking its plans.

There was another surprise from Islamabad. The Pakistani prime minister is reported to have told the Afghan leader that his country wanted to repatriate the three million refugees from Afghanistan who had arrived in several waves since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “It is the first time Pakistan has been so blunt in demanding that the Afghans, to whom it has served as host for more than 20 years since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, leave” wrote The New York Times in its coverage of the visit to Kabul by the Pakistani official.

Why is Pakistan taking that position? “Refugee camps on our side of the border sometimes are safe havens for elements who are from Afghanistan and take safe haven there after conducting activities there,” explained a Pakistani visitor. This was, of course, a debating point. It would be hard — if not impossible — to return the Afghan refugees who have become part of the Pakistani economic fabric since they arrived a quarter of a century ago.

Pakistan is obviously raising this issue in order to indicate that the Afghans are responsible for their problems and need to find solutions to them themselves rather than shifting the blame on Islamabad. President Karzai’s repeated finger-pointing at Islamabad has resonated well in Washington’s policymaking and policy-influencing circles. It is right for Pakistan to counter those assertions but I doubt whether raising the refugee issue or announcing the intention to fortify the common border by fencing and mining it are the right approaches. As was expected, the Afghan president was not thrilled. He apparently agreed to study the matter of receiving the refugees from Pakistan.

Another area of contention between the two sides is the Afghan desire and Pakistan’s cool response to the idea of convening a tribal jirga to discuss the deteriorating situation along their common border. President Karzai wants to hold the meeting so people can speak their minds. Pakistan has said that it will study the matter but is not prepared to commit to a meeting anytime soon.

There are obvious reasons for the differences between the two sides on this issue. Kabul and Islamabad have different constituencies in mind when they look at the usefulness of a gathering of tribal chiefs. The Afghan president has assiduously cultivated the tribal chiefs, handing over to them enormous political and economic powers. Most of them go by the epithet of warlords and most of them function as such.

Pakistan’s constituency is very different. It looks to the ordinary Pashtuns as the people it can work with. A jirga of tribal chiefs will obviously favour Kabul’s stance and point the accusatory finger at Islamabad for the growing problems in the areas under their influence. This would further complicate Pakistan’s position with respect to the US and other Nato countries involved in bringing peace to Afghanistan.

Another major development in recent days is the release in the American press of a statement by Mulla Omar, the Taliban leader, who was driven from power in December 2001 by the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. “The fugitive Taliban leader, who claims to be at large in Afghanistan, is widely thought to have taken sanctuary in Pakistan,” said The New York Times in a detailed report on the growing tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In his response to the questions posed to him in writing by some representatives of the press, Mulla Omar said he was not enthusiastic about the convening of a tribal jirga. “Only those people who have sold out to foreign forces will participate,” he said. “Our participation is absolutely out of question.” He also insisted that the Taliban movement, including him, was based entirely in Afghanistan. It was not receiving any foreign assistance.

Pakistan’s position is further complicated by the strong feeling in Washington that a military solution should be sought in Afghanistan even though it had not worked and was not likely to work in Iraq. In the US Congress, now under the control of the Democratic Party, pressure is being exerted on President George W. Bush to orchestrate a phase-out of the American military presence in Iraq. Instead, it is being suggested, that the focus of the military should be on Afghanistan.

Senator Joe Biden, the new head of the Foreign Relations Committee, would like this to happen. “If we’re surging troops anywhere, it should in Afghanistan,” he said, adding that troops there would give “the moral high ground” in the quest for more forces from Nato allies. In other words, while a political solution is the only way to resolve the conflict in Iraq, a military solution is the one that has the chance to succeed in Afghanistan.

This stance goes against the verdict of history. Those who have looked at controlling insurrections through military force have come to the conclusion that it takes a lot of soldiers to bring about success. “There is, however, this sobering arithmetic: based on experience in the Balkans, an assumption among experts is that to maintain order in a context of sectarian strife requires one competent soldier or police officer for every 50 people.”

Applying this calculation to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Pakistan and its allies will need to position a quarter of a million active troops to force peace and order on the tribal populations. Pakistan has already tried this approach. It had 80,000 troops in place trying to enforce the will of the central government on a small segment of the tribal belt on its side of the border.

Because of this experience, Pakistan seems to be resisting the move to depend entirely on the use of force to bring stability to the tribal belt and in this it is on the right track. It cannot afford to have on its borders the kind of mess that has been created in Iraq.

There is much reflection in Washington and in other parts of the world in trying to understand what went wrong in Iraq; why, what was thought to be cake walk for American troops, turned out to be a graveyard for so many of them. Apart from the well documented mistakes the United States made — the ban on the Baathists and the decision to disband the entire Iraqi army — there were some other, more subtle, missteps. President Bush, while he was campaigning for the presidency in 2000, showed great disdain for nation-building as a strategy that the United States should pursue in the world’s troubled spots.

As Fareed Zakaria says in a column written recently for The Washington Post, what Washington ended up doing was not nation-building but “nation busting”. He writes: “The administration has never fully understood the sectarian nature of its policies, which were less ‘nation building’, in their effects.

It kept insisting that it was building a national army and police force when it was blatantly obvious (even to columnists) that the forces were overwhelmingly Shiite and Kurdish, mostly drawn from the militias with stronger loyalties to political parties than to the state. We did not give them a republic. We gave them a civil war.”

The reaction to the use of force turns resistance into an ideology. This is what happened in Iraq and will occur in the southern parts of Afghanistan if the United States persuades Pakistan and other allies to use that option. There are other approaches and those are the ones that Pakistan should be focusing on. I will start discussing those next week.

THE US Congress, led in the House by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is about to make its first decision regarding how America’s money should be spent — a decision that leaves millions of lives hanging in the balance.

Congress’s choice to bypass 2007 appropriations legislation and extend fiscal 2006 funding levels into the new year will mean, in effect, cuts of almost $1billion in funding for programmes to combat Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. If not reversed, the lack of funds will force hundreds of thousands of people to forgo prevention, treatment, care and support for the three most deadly infectious diseases in the world.

Many of the people most affected by Congress’s decision will be my fellow Africans. Around the world, the most poor and marginalised men, women and children will suffer the consequences of flat-lined funding. Aids, TB and malaria are diseases of poverty; to truly address them, sufficient aid must be reliably and properly channelled in solidarity with the people who will receive it.

In bipartisan action last year, Congress approved as much as $4.37 billion for programmes to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria in 2007. This increase would have given much-needed hope and opportunity to those at risk of and suffering from these diseases. However, the joint funding resolution (or “continuing resolution”) the new Congress is expected to pass would keep spending at 2006 levels, which would mean only $3.43 billion for Aids, TB and malaria efforts - $940 million less. My heart aches to think of the lives that could be saved with nearly $1 billion — but there is still time for Speaker Pelosi, a long-time leader in the fight against HIV-Aids, to do something about it.

The US government has repeatedly promised to combat HIV-Aids, tuberculosis and malaria: At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000 and as a member of the Group of Eight the United States committed to the goal of universal access for HIV-Aids prevention and treatment by 2010. However, the funding resolution Congress is considering would shortchange and potentially sabotage every American programme to address these diseases, leaving innocent people in its wake.

The President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), for example, is designed to have its funding increase each year in order to meet its goals.

If funding for 2007 is not increased from 2006 levels, it may be impossible for the United States to continue making headway on the human catastrophe that is HIV-Aids. Staying at 2006 funding levels would result in a loss of up to $700 million for the 15 PEPFAR focus countries. As a result, 280,000 fewer people will be put on Aids treatment. That is 280,000 lives needlessly lost. In addition, 10 per cent of all PEPFAR money goes to support orphans and other vulnerable children. Children depend upon us to protect them. But without enough money to continue expanding, PEPFAR will be another programme that leaves behind a generation of kids.

Multilateral programmes will suffer as well. The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a unique multilateral partnership based on the needs expressed by affected countries, stands to lose out on enough money for 555,000 HIV tests, 120,000 treatments for TB, and 945,000 bed nets to prevent malaria. That’s more lives lost.

HIV-Aids, tuberculosis, malaria, and the tens of thousands of orphaned and vulnerable children are symptoms of our collective failure to protect each other, to ensure that all people’s basic needs and rights are met, and to guarantee everyone a life of dignity. This failure is very troubling to me.

It is a sign of our breakdown as one human family. Worldwide, we have made stops and starts at healing this rift and keeping our promises to one another. But if Congress does not act to restore that $1 billion for global health, poverty alleviation and foreign aid, the rift will only grow wider and healing will be further beyond our reach.

The United States has the potential to be a global leader. Congress has the opportunity to remind the world of the good that can be done in the name of the American people, to help people around the world build better lives and restore our brotherhood and sisterhood. The promises made to poor countries are not just words on paper. They concern the lives of people who, in different circumstances, could be you or me.

As we honour the life and vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., I hope and pray that Congress will choose the righteous path, the path that will save tens of thousands of lives and give countless children opportunities and hope they have never before imagined. I join the world in watching, and waiting for its decision.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer, an archbishop emeritus, is honorary chairperson of the Global Aids Alliance.

FROM a moral point of view any policy which leads to death, injury, trauma, destruction and displacement is a bad policy. Seen in this light, increasing the number of troops in Iraq is a terrible, reprehensible and indefensible policy. But decision-makers, misleadingly called statesmen, do not care about humanism. They are devotees of nationalism. They evaluate policies with reference to the perceived interest of their nation-state.

This is not moral but they believe it serves to make their nation-state richer, more secure, dominant over others and so on. The trouble is that their perception of national interest may be mistaken. Thus, instead of making the nation-state stronger or more secure, it could actually make it weaker and less secure. This is what is wrong with George Bush’s perception of national interest. He thinks he should send in more troops to Iraq (the surge option) but this, it seems, is just the very thing he should not do in America’s national interest.

In fact, all those decision-makers who chose to follow aggressive policies in the modern era have come to grief unless the group they tried to dominate was too small to retaliate. Look at the two world wars. The Germans started both wars with the confidence that they would win. They did not. The price was a butchered population, cities turned to rubble and international odium.

Then look at Iraq’s adventure against Iran and Kuwait. Millions of people dead; thousands of children orphaned; billions worth of property destroyed; innumerable people descending into the dungeons of their own minds — and nothing gained for Iraq. And look at the former Soviet Union’s triumphant march into Afghanistan — the world is reaping the whirlwind!

Even the brutalities perpetrated on small, relatively helpless groups of people, have backfired. The Turkish massacre of the Armenians is a skeleton in Turkey’s cupboard. The perpetual war against the Kurds by Iran, Iraq and Turkey is also a shame. Indonesia’s massacre in East Timor is a byword in the annals of infamy. And, of course, the United States has earned notoriety for its proxy wars in Latin America, Africa (the anti-Somalia one is still in progress) and Asia. Vietnam is still not forgotten but Afghanistan and Iraq are waiting to join the roster of infamy.

The effects of such actions are direct as well as indirect, obvious as well as subtle. The direct ones are that the victims strike back and, given modern weapons, they can bring terror to innocent people who do not even know what is going on. For instance, the Israelis persecuted the Palestinians who began to respond through terrorist tactics. The Russians clamped down on the Chechens and, in turn, the Chechens targeted theatre audiences and schoolchildren.

The Pakistan army went for brutal military action against the Bengalis in 1971 and they responded by becoming guerrilla fighters. The Indians used military might in Kashmir and the Kashmiris retaliated violently. The Americans were insensitive to Muslim notions of justice and propriety and some Muslims, of the Osama bin Laden kind, brought terror to the American mainland.

The indirect and subtle effects are even more dangerous. Among these are suppression of freedom. To suppress knowledge of one’s evil deeds the nation-state starts telling lies. Honest journalists and academics are abhorred or persecuted. Sycophants, liars and cowards are honoured and people of integrity are suppressed. The country becomes a prison, courage dies and new ideas stop taking birth.

Secondly, the nation becomes brutalised. It becomes insensitive. It loses its moral high ground. It then becomes a wicked monster — the image of its tormentors. For instance, the Nazis persecuted the Jews. The Jews, or rather their government, now persecutes the Arabs. Evil recycles itself. It perpetuates itself. This is the worst effect of making war on people who cannot fight back. In the long run the ghosts of the dead come back to haunt their murderers. Not all the lies in the world can wash away that guilt.

But war was not always so dangerous, so utterly useless. Empires of yore did flourish and even if some of the children of the conquering forefathers are guilty, most are not. This is true. While morally, wars of aggression were always reprehensible, it is modern warfare which is completely insane. Modern weapons are so terrible and people so aware of their own national or religious identity that the combination makes aggression costly.

Moreover, the world knows what is going on despite the government’s lies because the modern means of communication are many and diverse. Thus the guilt stays longer and the ghosts are not exorcised easily. And yet, the decision-makers of the world live in the fantasy lands of the past. They still spread out their silly maps and carve up the world. They do not understand that aggression does not pay.

So, the new Bush policy must be seen in the light of this history of modern warfare. It will fail because, no matter how many Iraqis are killed, it will produce a fresh crop of indignant people who will take up arms against America some day. All dreams of keeping Iraq united through force will vanish as a new client state set up by the Americans will explode once they finally go home. If, however, the Americans leave behind another ruthless dictator like Saddam they will prolong the misery in the Middle East without bringing about goodwill for the United States.

In any case, one fails to understand why a united Iraq is desirable if it is perpetually under strain or at war. So what if there is another Shia state in the world as well as a free Kurdistan? If that is the way towards peace let it be welcomed. The idea that other Middle Eastern countries will undergo Balkanisation scares only those who want to hold others by force of arms. If there are more states — happy ones — created through peaceful means then that is better than large monoliths.

The idea that if Vietnam succumbed to communism the whole Far East would follow suit was used to perpetuate American aggression. This proved wrong. So, why should this one not be unfounded too?

America’s mishandling of Saddam’s execution has created a hero for the resistance. The increase of troops and intensification of war will harden and sharpen that resistance further. This is in no one’s interest. It is a folly to be condemned and resisted. The American people, who voted the Democrats in for an end to war, surely deserve better.

So far everybody, including the Democrats, seems to be letting them down. But this time it is not Vietnam out there in the swamps and jungles of a country few American children knew about before the body bags came home. This time it is a war to which every airport is susceptible, which produces barbarities like Guantanamo Bay and drives a wedge between the worlds Muslims and Christians and Jews. This is total insanity.

Freedoms, the notion of the rule of law, the idea of trial by jury, the security of habeas corpus, the greatness of human rights and individual dignity are all endangered in this war irrespective of its outcome. Is it time that the world should put up a united front to prevent President Bush from committing moral suicide.