[Pakistan’s military stayed allied to both the Americans and Taliban. But now the country may face intensified extremism at home as a result of a perceived Taliban victory.]
By Mujib Mashal, Salman Masood and Zia
ur-Rehman
“When history is written,”
declared Gen.
Hamid Gul, who led the feared spy service known as the I.S.I. during the
last stretch of the Cold War in the 1980s, “it will be stated that the I.S.I.
defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan with the help of America.”
“Then there will be another
sentence,” General Gul added after a brief pause, delivering his punchline to
loud applause. “The I.S.I., with the help of America, defeated America.”
In President Biden’s
decision to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan by
September, Pakistan’s powerful military establishment finally gets its wish
after decades of bloody intrigue: the exit of a disruptive superpower from a
backyard where the I.S.I. had established strong influence through a friendly
Taliban regime before the U.S. invaded in 2001.
A return of the Taliban to some
form of power would dial the clock back to a time when Pakistan’s military
played gatekeeper to Afghanistan, perpetually working to block the influence of
its archenemy, India.
But the Pakistani military’s
sheltering of the Taliban insurgency over the past two decades — doggedly
pursuing a narrowly defined geopolitical victory next door — risks another wave
of disruption at home. Pakistan is a fragile, nuclear-armed state already
reeling from a crashed economy, waves of social
unrest, agitation by oppressed minorities and a percolating Islamic
militancy of its own that it is struggling to contain.
If Afghanistan descends into chaos,
Pakistanis are bound to feel the burden again just as they did after
Afghanistan disintegrated in the 1990s following the Soviet withdrawal.
Millions of Afghan refugees crossed the porous border to seek relative safety
in Pakistan’s cities and towns.
And more: A Taliban return to
power, either through a civil war or through a peace deal that gives them a
share of power, would embolden the extremist movements in Pakistan that share
the same source of ideological mentorship in the thousands
of religious seminaries spread across Pakistan. Those groups have
shown no hesitation in antagonizing
the country’s government.
While Pakistan’s military played a
dangerous game of supporting militants abroad and containing extremists at
home, the country’s Islamist movements found a rallying cause in the presence
of an invading foreign force next door, openly fund-raising for and cheering on
their Afghan classmates. New extremist groups kept shrinking the civil society
space in Pakistan — often targeting intellectuals and professionals for abuse
or attack — and even found sympathizers in the ranks of Pakistan’s security
forces.
Pakistani generals have resorted to
a mix of force and appeasement in tackling the country’s own growing militancy
problem, said Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, a research associate at the School of
Oriental and African Studies in London. But a strategy for countering the
spread of extremism has been elusive.
“It scares me, it scares me,” Dr.
Siddiqa said. “Once the Taliban come back, that should trouble the Pakistani
government, or any government. It will be inspiring for all the other groups.”
Said Nazir, a retired brigadier and
defense analyst in Islamabad, said Pakistan had “learned some lessons” from the
blowback of past support to jihadist groups. The country would need to tread
more cautiously in the endgame of the Afghan war.
“Victory will not be claimed by
Pakistan, but tacitly the Taliban will owe it to Pakistan,” Mr. Nazir said.
“Pakistan does fear the replay of past events and fears a bloody civil war and
violence if hasty withdrawal and no political solution occur simultaneously.”
Seth Jones of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington said that although Pakistan’s
military and intelligence establishment are “undoubtedly celebrating” the Biden
announcement, greater control in Afghanistan is far from assured.
“It will be difficult, if not
impossible, for Pakistan to control the Taliban and other militant groups in
Afghanistan as the country spirals into a civil war,” he said. “Al Qaeda, the
Islamic State, and other groups are already operating in Afghanistan. There is
no way Pakistan can control this hodgepodge of groups, which have different
interests, leaders, and goals.”
From the moment of its birth as a
country in 1947, Pakistan found itself surrounded by enemies. The new borders
drawn up by British officials instantly mired Pakistan in a host of territorial
disputes, including a serious one with Afghanistan, which still lays claim to
what most of the world sees as Pakistan’s northwestern regions.
It was at the peak of the Cold War
in the 1970s, as the Soviet Union pushed to expand its influence in South and
Central Asia, that Pakistani leaders found a formula of deploying Islamist
proxies they have stuck to ever since. The United States armed and financed the
training of the mujahedeen insurgency that would defeat the Soviet Army in
Afghanistan and topple the government it propped up. Pakistan’s army,
particularly its intelligence wing, would serve as the handler, host, and
trainer.
Through the ensuing civil war in
the 1990s, Pakistani generals helped a younger group of fundamentalist Afghan
fighters known as the Taliban sweep the fighting factions and establish a
government with control over more than 90 percent of Afghanistan.
But when the United States invaded
in 2001 to chase Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda after their terrorist attacks on
American soil, the Americans also turned their sights on Pakistan’s allies in
Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban. Pakistan found itself in a difficult position.
In the face of President George Bush’s “with us or against us” ultimatum,
Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, reluctantly went along.
The decision had an immediate
blowback: Pakistan began facing attacks from the Pakistani Taliban for siding
with the U.S. military campaign against their ideological brothers in
Afghanistan. It took years of military operations that cost the lives of
thousands of Pakistani forces, and displaced countless people in Pakistan’s
northwest, to quell the group.
At the same time, Pakistan’s
military kept working to help the Afghan Taliban regroup as an insurgency to
keep the United States in check. Even as American officials relied on Pakistani
help to conduct the war and intelligence operations, some were bitter
about the double role played by the I.S.I. The killing of Bin
Laden in Pakistan by U.S. forces in 2011 was one rare moment when
those tensions played out in public.
But Pakistan’s generals were also
successful in making themselves indispensable to the United States — offering a
nuclear-armed ally in a region where China, Russia and Islamist militants all
had interests. Effectively, it meant that the United States chose to turn a
blind eye as its Pakistani allies helped the Taliban wear down American and
allied forces in Afghanistan.
Afghan government officials,
meanwhile, were becoming increasingly distraught that their American allies
were not coming down harder on Pakistan.
On one trip to Afghanistan soon
after being elected vice president in 2008, Mr. Biden was urged by President
Hamid Karzai to pressure Pakistan into rooting out Taliban sanctuaries on its
soil. Mr. Biden was reported to respond by saying that Pakistan was 50 times more important to the United States than
Afghanistan was.
In recent years, as American
officials sought a way to leave Afghanistan, they again had to turn to Pakistan
— to pressure the Taliban to come to peace talks, and to lend help when the
United States needed to move against Al Qaeda or the Islamic State affiliate in
the region.
With the U.S. intention to leave
publicly declared, Pakistan did away with any semblance of denial that the
Taliban leadership was sheltering there. Taliban leaders flew from Pakistani
cities to engage in peace talks in Qatar. When negotiations reached delicate
moments that required consultations with field commanders, they flew back to
Pakistan.
When the United States finally
signed a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban in February last year, the mood
in some circles in Pakistan was one of open celebration.
Pakistan’s former defense minister,
Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who had repeatedly visited the halls of power in
Washington as a U.S. ally, tweeted a photo of U.S. Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo meeting Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban deputy at the talks in
Qatar.
“You might have might on your side,
but God is with us,” Mr. Asif said in the tweet, ending with a cry of victory.
“Allah u Akbar!”
But there are signs that extremist
groups within Pakistan have already felt emboldened by the Taliban’s perceived
victory, giving a glimpse of the trouble likely to be in store for Pakistani
officials.
The once-defeated Pakistani Taliban
have increased their activities in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Ambushes
against security forces have become more frequent.
Just how wide the problem of
extremism might stretch has been on display in recent days on the streets of
two of Pakistan’s main cities, Lahore and Karachi.
Supporters of Tehreek-e-Labbaik
Pakistan, a movement that sees itself as protecting Islam against blasphemy,
thrashed uniformed members of Pakistani forces and took dozens hostage for
hours. Videos emerged of Pakistani army officers trying to reason with the
violent protesters. Officials said two policemen had been killed, and 300
wounded. The showdown continues, as the government moved to ban the group as a
terrorist outfit.
“The state was not able to control
the stick-wielding and stone-hurling members of the T.L.P. that paralyzed most
parts of the country for two days,” said Afrasiab Khattak, a former chairman of
Pakistan’s human rights commission. “How will they handle trained,
guns-carrying Taliban militants?”
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt
contributed reporting.
