Zalmay Khalilzad’s appointment last September as US President Donald Trump’s Special Advisor on Afghanistan heralds the Mother of All U-Turns in American foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan. The big question is whether this will finally bring long term peace and stability to Afghanistan and prosperity for Pakistan.
Since 2001 when the US bombed the Taliban out of Afghanistan and installed puppet regimes in Kabul, it has been leaning on Pakistan to help it degrade and eliminate the Taliban threat from safe havens in Pakistan’s borderlands. By its own reckoning, the US has paid Pakistan about $20b to “do more” to help finish off the Taliban. When this policy didn’t yield the required dividends under two previous US Presidents, the frustration of the third, Donald Trump, culminated in a complete ban on all US economic and military aid to Pakistan, expressed via a series of tweets last year blasting Pakistan for playing a “double game” – taking US money to help it fight the Taliban but in fact propping them up in one manner or another.
Now the US has appointed Mr Khalilzad to oversee a peaceful reconciliation with the “terrorist” Taliban under the stewardship of none other than the “double-dealing” Pakistanis. Is this about turn a manifestation of the failure of US strategy, and by corollary a success of Pakistan, in Afghanistan?
Interestingly, both the US and Pakistan are playing it cool. The US has not offered any mea culpa for two decades of misplaced concreteness and the Pakistanis are not crowing about being center stage again. Instead, both are working hand in hand to protect their respective national security interests. For its help in bringing the Taliban to the table and leaning on them to facilitate a respectable and orderly exit from Afghanistan in the next 18 months, the US has now channeled $12b to Pakistan via its strategic partners in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Indeed, the main reason for Pakistan’s new government’s delay in clutching at an IMF program was to clinch such a strategic “deal” with the US first so that the IMF would eventually soften its conditions for a bail out.
For their part, the Pakistanis are repeating the mantra of an “Afghan-led Afghan-owned” peace process when the opposite is in fact happening – the Pakistanis and Americans are talking to the Taliban about the future of Afghanistan while the Afghan government in Kabul representing Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and anti-Taliban Pakhtun stakeholders is completely absent from the scene.
Months of negotiations between the Taliban and Americans in diverse spots and conferences have yielded only two points of agreement: the Americans will fully withdraw from Afghanistan in 18 months and the Taliban will not in future allow Al-Qaeda, Daesh or any such terrorist footprint in their country to threaten US/Western interests anywhere. It may be recalled that precisely such an agreement was spurned by the Americans in 2001 before the bombing when they insisted that Osama bin Laden be handed over to them by the Taliban government instead of being given safe passage to a third country as proposed by Pakistan.
If the US withdrawal is a certainty now only because President Trump has announced it as a matter of irrevocable policy before the next US elections and not because of any agreement or quid pro quo with the Taliban, the path to peace and stability in Afghanistan is murky. The Taliban are refusing to talk to and acknowledge the Kabul regime as a legitimate actor in the future of Afghanistan. They refuse to accept a “constitutional” dispensation for representing other politico-ethnic stakeholders. They refuse to concede a ceasefire for any length of time at any stage in the run-up to the US departure. Having successfully warred with the US and its puppet regimes in Afghanistan for seventeen years and grown stronger with each passing year, the Taliban are not about to negotiate their gains at the table only to see the back of the occupation forces when President Trump has already announced a unilateral withdrawal. Indeed, the only strategy worth pursuing for them in the next 18 months is “talk-talk, fight-fight” so that they can extend their outreach and power for the ultimate showdown when the Kabul regime begins to crumble as the US withdrawal starts to take shape. Indeed, any further “concessions” by the Taliban – ceasefire, talks on transitional, constitutional and power-sharing matters – are only going to be tactical devices to hasten a face-saving US exit rather than any serious commitment to other than a full-fledged Taliban takeover of Afghanistan by force.
Afghanistan’s neighbours have already recognized the emerging reality and opened talks directly with the Taliban. India is wringing its hands in despair at the prospect of Pakistan being in the saddle once again. The big question now is whether Pakistan’s pro-Taliban policy will result in boom or bust for us. This will depend upon whether the policy leads to an opening up of profitable trade and energy routes in the region, or results in blowback extremism to devastate us all over again.
Since 2001 when the US bombed the Taliban out of Afghanistan and installed puppet regimes in Kabul, it has been leaning on Pakistan to help it degrade and eliminate the Taliban threat from safe havens in Pakistan’s borderlands. By its own reckoning, the US has paid Pakistan about $20b to “do more” to help finish off the Taliban. When this policy didn’t yield the required dividends under two previous US Presidents, the frustration of the third, Donald Trump, culminated in a complete ban on all US economic and military aid to Pakistan, expressed via a series of tweets last year blasting Pakistan for playing a “double game” – taking US money to help it fight the Taliban but in fact propping them up in one manner or another.
Now the US has appointed Mr Khalilzad to oversee a peaceful reconciliation with the “terrorist” Taliban under the stewardship of none other than the “double-dealing” Pakistanis. Is this about turn a manifestation of the failure of US strategy, and by corollary a success of Pakistan, in Afghanistan?
Interestingly, both the US and Pakistan are playing it cool. The US has not offered any mea culpa for two decades of misplaced concreteness and the Pakistanis are not crowing about being center stage again. Instead, both are working hand in hand to protect their respective national security interests. For its help in bringing the Taliban to the table and leaning on them to facilitate a respectable and orderly exit from Afghanistan in the next 18 months, the US has now channeled $12b to Pakistan via its strategic partners in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Indeed, the main reason for Pakistan’s new government’s delay in clutching at an IMF program was to clinch such a strategic “deal” with the US first so that the IMF would eventually soften its conditions for a bail out.
For their part, the Pakistanis are repeating the mantra of an “Afghan-led Afghan-owned” peace process when the opposite is in fact happening – the Pakistanis and Americans are talking to the Taliban about the future of Afghanistan while the Afghan government in Kabul representing Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and anti-Taliban Pakhtun stakeholders is completely absent from the scene.
Months of negotiations between the Taliban and Americans in diverse spots and conferences have yielded only two points of agreement: the Americans will fully withdraw from Afghanistan in 18 months and the Taliban will not in future allow Al-Qaeda, Daesh or any such terrorist footprint in their country to threaten US/Western interests anywhere. It may be recalled that precisely such an agreement was spurned by the Americans in 2001 before the bombing when they insisted that Osama bin Laden be handed over to them by the Taliban government instead of being given safe passage to a third country as proposed by Pakistan.
If the US withdrawal is a certainty now only because President Trump has announced it as a matter of irrevocable policy before the next US elections and not because of any agreement or quid pro quo with the Taliban, the path to peace and stability in Afghanistan is murky. The Taliban are refusing to talk to and acknowledge the Kabul regime as a legitimate actor in the future of Afghanistan. They refuse to accept a “constitutional” dispensation for representing other politico-ethnic stakeholders. They refuse to concede a ceasefire for any length of time at any stage in the run-up to the US departure. Having successfully warred with the US and its puppet regimes in Afghanistan for seventeen years and grown stronger with each passing year, the Taliban are not about to negotiate their gains at the table only to see the back of the occupation forces when President Trump has already announced a unilateral withdrawal. Indeed, the only strategy worth pursuing for them in the next 18 months is “talk-talk, fight-fight” so that they can extend their outreach and power for the ultimate showdown when the Kabul regime begins to crumble as the US withdrawal starts to take shape. Indeed, any further “concessions” by the Taliban – ceasefire, talks on transitional, constitutional and power-sharing matters – are only going to be tactical devices to hasten a face-saving US exit rather than any serious commitment to other than a full-fledged Taliban takeover of Afghanistan by force.
Afghanistan’s neighbours have already recognized the emerging reality and opened talks directly with the Taliban. India is wringing its hands in despair at the prospect of Pakistan being in the saddle once again. The big question now is whether Pakistan’s pro-Taliban policy will result in boom or bust for us. This will depend upon whether the policy leads to an opening up of profitable trade and energy routes in the region, or results in blowback extremism to devastate us all over again.