Pak-Afghan peace initiative kicks off

The Pakistani and Afghan governments both feel slighted by the Americans. (In a candid commentary in measured tone, Xinhua used the word ‘ignored’.) Obviously, the Americans are keen on retaining their leadership role, while professing that the talks will be ‘Afghan-led’ and that Pakistan will play a key role. Neither Kabul nor Islamabad accepts that. 

Nor would they allow the US to get away with its monopoly over the peace process. In short, they have a congruence of interests in inserting themselves into the locomotive of the peace process as co-pilots alongside Uncle Sam. With the American diplomats and their ‘good Taliban’ counterparts in Qatar making haste, Kabul and Islamabad sense the urgency of moving in tandem.

Pakistani FM Hina Rabbani Khar’s mission to Kabul on Wednesday can be expected to do the groundwork for the revival of the Pak-Afghan joint commission for reconciling the Taliban talks. Needless to say, Khar will carry with her to Kabul the assurance that the Pakistani military leadership is on board. Indeed, Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and ISI chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha can be expected to participate in the Pak-Afghan joint commission in Islamabad. Presumably, ISI would have got through to the Quetta Shura and the Haqqani network as well by now about the gravitas of the joint commission. 

Saudi Arabia, of course, would have far more compelling credentials than Qatar (which is new to the Afghan problem) to be the facilitator of talks with the Taliban. The Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal was virtually the Taliban’s mentor in the 1990s almost up until the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks in 2001. Saudi Arabia was one of the 3 countries that accorded diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1996. The Saudis also have varied relationships with the Afghan Mujahideen as well as the religious parties in Pakistan. Thus, the Saudi peace track is destined to gain traction in no time, unlike the Qatar track that is struggling to take shape. 

Yet, how far all this is going to lead to a substantive peace process remains far from clear. Kabul and Islamabad happen to have a common grouse at present against the Americans. But then, they also have longstanding mutual antipathies, which are waiting to erupt again. Two, unless the US-Pakistan tensions ease significantly, the peace talks won’t get very far and the Pakistani public mood is quite “anti-US”. Three, if there is a conflagration in the Persian Gulf involving the US and Iran in the coming months, all bets are off. There could be adverse fallouts in all Muslim countries as anti-American sentiments would cascade. 

Four, Tehran is highly unlikely to torpedo the Afghan-Pakistani track, but having said that, it also has its legitimate interests to safeguard. Again, at the moment, the climate of Saudi-Iranian ties is very poor. 

Amidst all this gloom, however, the good thing is that the US’s game plan to prescribe the trajectory of the peace talks and to retain its monopoly of conflict resolution in Afghanistan is coming under serious challenge. The crux of the matter is that the US military presence in Afghanistan is increasingly becoming untenable. 

Interestingly, while on a visit to Paris on Friday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy made a joint appeal to the NATO and the US to bring forward the troop drawdown schedule by an year and to end the combat mission by end-2013 instead of end-2014 (as declared by President Barack Obama). Karzai demanded that the western alliance should leave Afghanistan by end-2013. Brussels refused to react to the demand. 

Conceivably, Pakistan would concur with Karzai’s stance. That would give impetus to speed up the commencement of talks in Saudi Arabia. Read the AFP report featured in Dawn newspaper.