[Pakistan has reason to feel desperate. Faced with the threat of unprecedented U.S. sanctions and fresh accusations that it has not done enough to stop cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, its military has responded with a variety of tactics: indignant denials, aid offers, history lessons, helicopter tours of pacified border zones, condolence messages to Afghan bombing victims and high-profile efforts to build a wall along their 1,800-mile border.]
By
Pamela Constable
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Pakistani
Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, shown at his accession ceremony
in Rawalpindi last November, visited
Afghanistan on Oct. 1. But his overtures
were
met with broad skepticism. (Inter Services Public Relations/AP)
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KABUL — When Pakistan’s army chief visited
the Afghan capital last Sunday, he did his best to disarm his hosts. He offered
to train and equip Afghan troops, and he promised to cooperate in peace and
counterterrorism efforts. Afghan officials, in turn, received him with a
military honor guard and issued an upbeat statement heralding “a new season” in
the troubled relationship.
But behind the diplomatic gestures, there was
little to indicate that anything had changed. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani,
humiliated in previous attempts to mend fences and take Pakistani officials at
their word, demanded coolly that monitoring teams and mechanisms be established
to ensure all promises and deadlines were implemented.
And even before Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa’s
plane departed, the barrage of criticism had begun. Afghan analysts,
politicians and former officials pronounced his visit another attempt by
Pakistan to “deceive” their country while secretly supporting anti-Afghan
militants. Bajwa had come calling only out of desperation, they said, because
of intense pressure from the Trump administration.
“Pakistan is trying to pretend it is
changing, but after 16 years of double games, these are only tactical moves,”
said Rahmatullah Nabil, a former Afghan intelligence chief. “Pakistan has been
using terrorism as a tool of state policy for decades, and Afghanistan has been
the victim of terrorism for decades. As long as Pakistan does not change this
policy, no equilibrium can be established.”
Pakistan has reason to feel desperate. Faced
with the threat of unprecedented U.S. sanctions and fresh accusations that it
has not done enough to stop cross-border attacks into Afghanistan, its military
has responded with a variety of tactics: indignant denials, aid offers, history
lessons, helicopter tours of pacified border zones, condolence messages to
Afghan bombing victims and high-profile efforts to build a wall along their
1,800-mile border.
[Trump’s new Afghanistan policy has Pakistan
angry and alarmed ]
But nothing seems to be working.
Last week in Washington, senior U.S.
officials repeated charges that Pakistan is providing sanctuary for an
aggressive Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network. Marine Corps Gen.
James Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional
panel it was “clear” that Pakistan’s intelligence agency “has connections with
terrorist groups.”
At a separate hearing, Defense Secretary Jim
Mattis said the Trump administration would try “one more time” to work with
Pakistan on the Taliban issue, but that if it failed, “the president is
prepared to take whatever steps are necessary.” He said that could include
revoking Pakistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally, a harsh blow to the former
Cold War partner.
Pakistan has consistently denied providing
shelter to anti-Afghan militants. Its prime minister told the U.N. General
Assembly recently it was “especially galling” to hear such criticism when
Pakistan has suffered from years of terrorist attacks. Its foreign minister
told another audience in New York this week that Washington had no right to
condemn Pakistan for supporting militant leaders it had “wined and dined”
during past conflicts.
Asked
Thursday about the latest U.S. comments, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman
said that Pakistan has “successfully erased the footprint of terrorists from
our soil” and that most insurgent activities, including attacks on Pakistan,
emanate from “ungoverned spaces inside Afghanistan” rather than from Pakistani
havens.
Despite their doubts, some Afghan officials
say they believe Pakistan’s security establishment is being forced to pivot in
its thinking on Afghanistan. They see Bajwa’s visit to Kabul as a sign of this
shift — especially his one-on-one meeting with Ghani, which one Afghan diplomat
described as unusually candid, “constructive and encouraging.”
Pakistan once backed Taliban rule in Kabul,
and it has long sought to keep Afghanistan weak and dependent as a
counterweight to India, its powerful neighbor and rival to the east. But now,
Pakistan’s regional partners and investors are echoing new U.S. demands that it
help end the 16-year Afghan conflict, which they see as a threat to stability.
“From our past experience, no Afghan should
be optimistic about Pakistan supporting our cause. But the new American
strategy has created an opportunity that it should explore,” said Javed Faisal,
a senior aide to Afghanistan’s chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah. He said
Pakistan’s support for militants abroad had backfired.
“If they don’t change, they will face
isolation from the world,” Faisal said. “We should work with them to build
trust and tackle terrorism together.”
Skeptical Afghans point to years of broken
promises, failed meetings and peace initiatives that went nowhere. Former
president Hamid Karzai made an unprecedented trip to Islamabad a decade ago,
carrying a list of Taliban hideouts, and came back empty-handed. Ghani praised
Pakistan in 2015 for hosting peace talks, only to be mortified when Pakistan
suddenly revealed the death of former Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and canceled
the talks.
Within Pakistan, there is also resistance to
rapprochement or concessions. Last week, the new interior minister was
reprimanded by Parliament for suggesting that the country should “put its own
house in order” before seeking foreign support. Even Bajwa, the most powerful
official in Pakistan, faced some pushback for his diplomatic foray. The
military spokesman, while touting the initiative, noted that “there was some
discomfort in security and civil quarters” about it.
[In Pakistan, once-fringe Islamist radicals
are making their way into mainstream politics]
Munir Akram, a former Pakistani diplomat with
strong nationalist views, wrote recently that efforts to engage with the United
States will prove fruitless and that President Trump’s new policy of sending
more troops and putting pressure on Islamabad is not aimed at pacifying
Afghanistan but at imposing a broad “Pax Indo-Americana” on the region.
“Pakistan should prepare itself to bear the
pain of threatened U.S. sanctions. It should draw its own red lines,” Munir
wrote in Dawn, a major daily newspaper in Pakistan. “Any sign of weakness will
intensify, not ameliorate, US coercion.”
Even if it is in Pakistan’s urgent interest
to smooth its relations with Afghanistan, some analysts said, the most
intractable obstacle is the gulf between Afghan and Pakistani perceptions of
regional reality. Afghans see the Taliban insurgency as the main threat to
their security and Pakistan as its backer; Pakistan sees India as a permanent
threat to its existence and its friendship with Afghanistan as an extension of
that threat.
“For all the complimentary rhetoric on both
sides now, there is a total disconnect between how they define the problem,”
said Davood Moradian, president of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies.
“They both face the threat of terrorism, and they have to come to an
understanding, but it is not happening. At this point, I can see no positive
outcome.”
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