Pakistan-Afghan ties: a critical appraisal

AT a round-table conference on Pakistan-Afghan relations organized by the Area Study Centre of the Peshawar University recently, the subject came in for some lively and useful discussion. The focus of the various presentations was, by and large, on the pressing need to placing relations on an enduring, friendly level.

A former Pakistan ambassador to Kabul, Rustam Shah Mohmand, viewed the two neighbours as “natural allies”, suggesting a ‘symbiotic relationship’ between them. He conceded, however, that such a relationship could be realised only when the US-led coalition forces departed from Afghanistan and when rule of law under institutional control was established in Pakistan — a visibly distant goal.

Afghanistan’s neighbourly and religious bond with Pakistan notwithstanding, it has been acutely sensitive about any perceived interference in matters impinging on its territorial integrity and national sovereignty. Despite recognizing Pakistan diplomatically as an independent sovereign state, Afghanistan kept the Durand Line issue alive and used it as a pressure point against Pakistan whenever it suited its interest. In 1961, Afghanistan intruded into parts of the Bajaur agency to bring Pakistan’s artillery into action and silence the Afghan guns.

Whether it would still be realistic to call Afghanistan ‘a natural ally’ is scarcely borne out by history. Pakistan-Afghan relations have been marked by a curious mix of fraternal advances from Pakistan, on the basis of good-neighbourliness and Islamic brotherhood, and a deliberate, cultivated standoffishness, if not exactly hostility, from the other side. The idea of a triple entente, even a confederation of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, kept tickling the fancy of some of our top rulers from the very outset. Two generals, Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan, were specially hooked on the idea and articulated it frequently. Ayub Khan masterminded the Regional Cooperation for Development —- RCD —- With Iran and Turkey and called it the ‘miracle of the century’.

It was hoped that over time Afghanistan, too, would join the club. But turmoil in Pakistan led to the collapse of Ayub’s rule in 1969. Ten years later the Khameinite revolution in Iran snuffed out the torch of the Shahinshah’s rule in Iran and signalled the demise of the RCD.

Pakistan’s propensity for going overboard in stressing the Islamic bond based on a ‘symbiotic’ relationship did create the impression of a veiled attempt at impinging on Afghanistan’s national sovereignty. The Afghan perception of Pakistan as a rival, meddlesome neighbour, came into evidence pointedly after Sardar Daud’s coup d’etat in 1973.

Sardar Daud’s republican zeal and the evolving democratic system under him threatened an aggressive resurgence of Afghan nationalism and revival of the Pakhtoonistan movement. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, already confronting an insurgency in Balochistan, sought to pre-empt any adventurism by Sardar Daud. Two young Afghan activists, Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Masood, and religious leaders like Burhanuddin Rabbani and Sibghatullah Mujeddidi escaped to Pakistan to create an insurgent base against Daud’s secular regime.

Daud was murdered in a bloody coup, the so-called Saur Revolution of April 1976, by the ‘Khaliqi’ (radical/communist) faction of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) to bring Nuruddin Tarakai and Hafizullah Amin to power and pave the way for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan three years later.

The Afghan jihad in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in December 1979 embroiled Pakistan too deeply for it to keep its hands off the internal affairs of Afghanistan. The jihad provided a working alibi for such intervention all the way through the next decade. But Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan did not end with the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in February 1989.

The ISI-aided abortive Jalalabad campaign followed by the Mujahideen forays into Kabul until the advent of the Taliban and the fall of Najibullah in 1992 and subsequently his assassination in 1996 makes a long tally of such aberrations on our part, no matter how well-intentional, under the Taliban. Afghanistan was viewed, more or less, as the fifth province of Pakistan. Let alone the political leadership, even hard-boiled military commanders would talk of Afghanistan providing ‘strategic depth’ to Pakistan. One army chief bluntly spoke of switching over one or two army formations under the Peshawar based 11 Corps west to east since they would be no longer required there after the virtual disappearance or diminution of the Afghan threat.

There is all the more need today therefore to exercise maximum caution and restraint in hypothesizing about the future shape of Pakistan-Afghan ties. Pakistan must guard against creating the slightest impression or semblance of undue interest in the internal affairs of Afghanistan. There is little or nothing more offensive to Afghanistan’s tribal mindset than unsolicited help and gratuitous advice from our side. Both are viewed as undue interference in one form or anther. Pakistan’s should be a hands-off rather than a hands-on attitude toward Afghanistan.

It needs to be realised and accepted as a fact of life, no matter how bitter, that today Pakistan has hardly any friends in Afghanistan. The Taliban, overwhelmingly Pakhtoon, once our favoured protégé and now all but disowned by us, can hardly be said to be on our side. The non-Pakhtoon Northern Alliance, now in office in Kabul, is yet to forget and forgive us for our sustained support to the ‘enemy’, the Taliban, all the way through the bitter struggle against their draconian regime in 1996-2001.

As Ambassador Rustam Mohmand (now a research associate at the Area Study Centre) would put it, Pakistan-Afghan relations affected ‘inevitably’, first, the non-Pukhtoon (Northern Alliance) and subsequently the Pakhtoons (Taliban) to make both view Pakistan with ‘suspicion bordering on hostility.’

Pakistan’s role through nearly a whole decade of the Afghan jihad (1979-89) and subsequently under President Najibullah (1989-1992) and the Mujahideen interregnum (1992-1996) until the advent of the Taliban has been one of a wartime ally rather than one of an honest broker. It made no serious effort to unite the seven recognized Mujahideen Tanzimat — warring groups — and let them fight the Soviet invaders each under its own party banner. Furthermore, Pakistan’s role through the jihad showed a marked pro-radical and sectarian tilt more than a pro-moderate preference. It favoured radicals like Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Abdur Rasool Sayyaf rather than moderates like Gilani, Rabbani and Mujeddadi.

Post-9/11 Afghanistan has come to have a geopolitical landscape without precedent in its history. For the first time ever, it stays under the hold of foreign military forces with the consent of its government. More than a watershed it marks a total break with its long history of fierce independence and resistance to foreign occupation even in the form of peace-keeping forces.

Most importantly, while its natural geography remains unaltered, its strategic geography has changed materially. In June this year, Afghanistan will join Saarc as a full member to bring it out of the confines of Central Asia into the wider world of South Asia. The Peshawar hypothesis of viewing and dealing with Afghanistan in isolation from India and South-Asian fellow members will be valid no longer. The peace process with Afghanistan and India must proceed in tandem to bear fruit. The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.