Managing Afghanistan

Afghanistan is a sore, but it has been so for all the years of Pakistan’s existence. More importantly, we have lived through it and kept a decent face. The Soviets and the Americans came and occupied it, and we lived through it despite the hostility that came from it. And, now under the Taliban, the animosity continues, betraying a long-held dislike, if not venom. The history of Afghan animus is well established. Zahir Shah and his cabal knew how to hold their sentiment; the latter guys are far more cavalier and exhibitionist. There is a growing feeling within Pakistan that we have been playing the nice guy far too often, and it is time to pay back in a way that the Afghans will understand better.

When nations turned states at various times in history, they defined their territories. Czarist Russia and Iran, for example, established their own defensible territorial limits, and hence their borders. Much later, the British in India demarcated the limit of their dominion and control. What remained became Afghanistan over time through various internal struggles between the strongmen of the era.

Afghanistan began to be recognised as a state somewhere in the 19th century. It was and is a default state composed of varying ethnicities that link across recognised borders of Afghanistan, with communities such as the Pashtuns, which exist on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border.

Indefensible territories left over by adjoining states as no-man’s land were unified under Dost Mohammad Khan, who is considered the founder of the modern Afghan state. It thus became a buffer state to its neighbouring regions, helping avoid direct clash between the empires of the time. Disparate groups, ethnicities, languages and loyalties have, however, kept Afghanistan in a state of constant agitation within and without. If Zahir Shah’s rule seemed benign and stable, it was because he negotiated the doctrine of live and let live with other tribes and ethnicities without interference in their affairs.

The others bartered their contest for subservience at a cost. This defines the Afghan mindset. Every time a new King assumed power in Kabul, he would renegotiate his terms for observing the treaties that his predecessor had made. This has been the Afghan character for over a century; or they will sell to the highest bidder.

The current turmoil between Pakistan and Afghanistan is more a consequence of the Afghan Taliban finding themselves unoccupied. Purveyors of death, destruction, conflict and strife, they have been out of work for four years now. To live and survive, they seek another frontier. The Afghan economy has subsisted on aid from the US of tens of millions of USD, which stands suspended under Trump.

Also, tighter border control by Pakistan means the pervasive smuggling that sustained Afghanistan’s informal economy, too, is now threatened. All that is left of the Afghans to peddle as a ware is the nuisance of conflict through terror. Unfortunately, ethnic nationalism provides it a perfect cover to hide its malevolence.

Facilitations signed between the British and Afghans were kept by Pakistan when it became an independent state. These have included ‘Ease of Facilitation’ rights, and sixty to eighty per cent of Afghan trade that plies through Pakistan with the outside world. Around four million Afghans were housed, raised, nourished and occupied in jobs by Pakistan in the last four decades of the ‘forever’ wars in Afghanistan.

The Afghans hold a certain incumbency in arrogating the brotherhood and neighbourly niceness into an inherent right, to which Pakistan has politely acquiesced. Pakistan remains the most convenient resort for medical treatment of most Afghans. Most edibles budgeted by the neighbouring Pakistani provinces include the estimates that will need to be provided to Afghanistan. While the world has mostly lost interest in a country that serves little good or favour, Pakistan has continued to sustain the burden of its existence. With that kind of leverage, Pakistan is never out of options to manage its relations with a difficult neighbour.

Because of competitive and interlocking interests between the three major and contiguous neighbours, China, India and Pakistan, this region remains buffeted by interests both external and internal. That these three are also nuclear-capable nations makes this interrelation complicated and complex. India is a declared proxy for the US against China, and currently blames the US for relegating its centrality vis-à-vis Pakistan. That she also has serious bilateral disputes with China and Pakistan underwrites its belligerence and open enmity with both these nations. Pakistan has a burgeoning relationship with China which remains vibrant and potent. Historically, China had to remind India in the 1950s not to play the American poodle, or life could turn difficult for it on multiple borders.

Three fronts hounded India: Pakistan on the two sides and China in the north, except that the Pak-US fraternity of those times held Pakistan back when India went to war with China in 1962. India despite having neutralised one front in its east by creating Bangladesh now sees the re-emergence of the same strategic dilemma that she, in her genius, had resolved. Bangladesh isn’t as affable a neighbour as it has been over the decades.

India has attempted to use the same ploy against Pakistan, imposing on it a second front from Afghanistan. Only, Zahir Shah’s strict neutrality to not upset his domestic applecart for foreign agendas kept Afghanistan neutral in Pakistan’s wars with India. Post Zahir Shah, Afghanistan itself turned into a war zone. The new rulers, the Taliban, sans a strategic vision, have taken the easy route to being the proxy for India. At a cost, of course, to the highest bidder. Ajit Doval’s famous pronouncements vouch for it.

Pakistan has five levers of modifying Afghan behaviour towards it: cross border and transit trade which can hurt Afghan economy and leadership no end; facilitation that Pakistan enables Afghans in goodwill to find educational, health and occupational support; the three million or over Afghans that continue to reside in Pakistan remain a dilemma for Afghanistan unable to decide where lie their loyalties; Afghanistan remains beholden to Gulf states for its existence in terms of remittances and for diplomatic and other support as a Muslim nation — this can be activated at the diplomatic level to keep mindless Afghan belligerence in check.

The final arbiter of any Afghan adventurism remains Pakistan’s kinetic response, which is lethal and dominant. It would, though, realise the Indian design to actualise the second front on Pakistan with its attendant consequence of shifting focus, attention and resources to what will always be a futile end.

A blend of political, diplomatic and economic options remains Pakistan’s most pragmatic, strategically prudent and workable option. This is where most of our attention must lie in managing Afghanistan as we have so successfully done over the years. TTP in Afghanistan, however, remains a valid target of choice for Pakistan to engage and eliminate in situ, this or that side of the border. Conflating TTA with TTP as a strategic choice will be a misstep.