18 Taliban, Pakistan And The Region

Emporium Current Essays 75 :JLl ,C» t-i:*,!-?1*^.::*^,*! The Taliban's triumph in Afghanistan, with the capture of Kabul and the routing of the Rabbani-Hikmatyar forces from the capital, is the single most significant development in the region since the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991. The Taliban's triumph changes the complexion of the region's politics, injects a certain religious militancy that is bound to arouse fears from Ankara to Beijing and from Tehran to Tashkent, plus raising the spectre of a proxy war in Afghanistan between Iran and Pakistan, since the Rabbani-Hikmatyar combine was backed by Tehran" while the Taliban have Pakistan support. It also makes U/.bek strongman, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, which controls ix southern provinces including the city of Mazar-c-Sharif, a key political player with the ability to tilt the current balance of power in Afghanistan. The Taliban's blitzkrieg capture of Kabul was immediately followed by banning all women from going to school or working, and execution of the last Communist ruler, Najibullah, whose body and that of his brother, hung in the capital's main square for a couple of days. I'he Pakistani government apparently feels a three-fold satisfaction over the iatest outcome of the Afghan civil war: first, that "our boys" now control Kabul; second, that the Iranians have been outflanked since they were "intruding in our domain" through, for instance, brokering the Rabbani-Hikmatyar rapprochement plus planning a regional conference on Afghanistan, an 'initiative which now, of course, has been overtaken by events; and third, that the Saudis and the Americans, pleased by Pakistan's role in supporting an anti-Iran regime in Kabul, will probably try to bolster the regime of Nawaz Sharif which is facing economic crises. Notwithstanding the short-sighted policies of the previous government of Benazir, the crude manner in which she tried to promote and project the Taliban victory as a "welcome develo76 Emporium Current Essays Afghanistan, Pakistan would be at odds with three of its long. standing friends with whom it had always shared a common strategic worldvicw, namely, China, Iran and Turkey. These three countries, for their separate reason, would view the Taliban phenomenon as being negative for their national interests. China has a sensitive Muslim majority province, Xinjiang, bordering Afghanistan which Beijing fears could be "infected" by the Taliban "virus".

Turkey, has a close rapport with the Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia, particularly Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, both of whom have expressed their concern and reservation over the Taliban victory. In fact, following the Russian-sponsored summit of Central Asian states in Kazakhstan's capital, Almty, the leaders of the Turkic speaking states of Centra! Asia, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzeshan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan ami Azerbaijan, are scheduled to meet in Tashkent on October 21 to review developments and it is likely that they would adopt a common position on this issue, which would certainly be country to that of Pakistan. In any case, Pakistan's attempt to promote an accord between the Taliban and Dostum has eqded in failure. Iran, of course, has its own reasons to feel uncomfortable at an eastern neighbour whose government, it is convinced, has been installed courtesy the covert collective collaboration of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. And Iran has lost the proxy civil war in Afghanistan. But Iran is as much to be blamed for the Afghan situation as the policies of the Pakistan government, since Iran's own policy has neither been consistent nor has it co-ordinated with Pakistan when Tehran chose to make strategic economic overtures to-India, including offering India access to .Central Asia through Iran. * Iran, for instance, had such a hard-line position on Afghanistan that it even rejected talking indirectly to the Moscowbacked Najibullah regime in Kabul all through the period that Pakistan was engaged in talks under the United Nations auspices at. Geneva. But the moment the Red Army quit Afghanistan, Iran go into the act, sponsoring two international conferences in Tehran on Afghanistan in January and October 1389, the fatter one even including the representation from India, and then in a landmark visit to Moscow in June 1989, the then Speaker who would soon be President Hashemi Rafsanjani made a wide-ranging deal with the Soviet Union. Emporium Current Essays 77 As a result, the Iranian policy shifted on Afghanistan and Tehran developed a comfortable and cosy rapport with the Communist regime in Kabul, which it had derided all along in the oast. Had there been better co-ordination between Islamabad and Tehran on the Afghan issue, such divergent and, indeed, conflicting perspectives on aa issue of common security concern for both neighbours, would perhaps have been avoided. The second danger prosed by the Taliban's triumph is that probably for the first time in Afghan history, there couid be a danger of a de facto division of Afghanistan due to the Taliban's quest for total power. The contours of such a division are already evident in the nine northern'provinces controlled by the new Opposition troika. Afghanistan is today more unstable and more violent than before,1 and the only chance of peace in that strifetorn country is either the Taliban are successful in total military conquest of all of Afghanistan or they compromise with the new Opposition troika representing the Uzbeks, the Taj iks and the Hazaras.

With the new accord signed in Mazar-e-Sharif on October 11 between Uzbek strongman General Dostum, whose Balkh province borders Uzbekistan, former Afghan Defence Minister and prominent Tajik Jeader, Ahmed Shah Masud and Uie major leader of the Hazara community, the Hizb-e-Wahdat Chief, Karim Khalili, battle lines in Afghanistan are clearly drawn along an ethnic and sectarian framework. ' Coupled with these dangers was the hypocrisy of the Benazir government which never tired to talk of "threat from fundamentalism", even going to the extent of presenting Pakistan as a "frontline state against Islamic fundamentalism." Concurrently, in the same breath, Benazir lauded the Taliban as a "welcome development", despite the fact that its policies on women have tarnished the image of Islam to the extent that even the Jama'atiIslami and Iran have expressed strong reservations on this count. * The moot question is: what has Pakistan really gained in pursuit of its long-standing obsession of installing a "friendly government" in Kabul, Pakistan's own leverage on the Taliban, as time would tell, will be extremely limited and they would require deft handling through unconventional diplomacy. Pakistan's obsession with a "friendly government" in Kabul ns>s followed a remarkably predictable and familiar pattern of failure. Some examples: Pakistan welcomed the ouster of Zahir khah since he was perceived to be "pro-India", but when Daud Khan took over and he was perceived to be worse than Zahir Shah, 78 Emporium Current Essays Pakistan under Zulfikar All Bhutto tried to again install Zahir Shah in office in coordination with Amvar Sadaat and the Shah of Iran, and the executor of that.mastcr plan was none other than the then Frontier governor Naseerullah Babar, who is the architect of the Taliban Card; Pakistan opposed Nur Mohammad Tarakai who came to power in a Moscow-backet! coup in April 1978, but when he was ousted and executed by Hafcezullah Amin, Pakistan lamented Taraki's exit since he was considered as "better than Amin"; when Hafeczullah Amin was ousted by Babrak Karmal following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan felt sorry for Amin since he was now perceived "better than Karmal" and a "lesser evil" who was trying to free himself of Moscow's stranglehold; when Najib was in power, Pakistan tried very hard to install a "friendly government'* in Kabul through its Mujahideen friends whom it had supported for almost 20 years, namely, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbadin Hikmatyar, but when they came to power, Pakistan worked overtime for their removal since now they too had somehow become "pro-India." In fact, as the track record of Pakistan's policy on Afghanistan demonstrates, Pakistan has made three strategic mistakes in the last decade. First, during 1986, wasting almost a year

by erroneously insisting on a date of exit of the Soviet Red Army rather than the more sensible option of accord on an interim government in Kabul first, which was what the Soviets had been demanding all along. Having wasted a year on this issue, the result was that Moscow and Washington decided to have their own bilateral deal on the withdrawal of the Soviet Red Army behind Pakistan's back, which suddenly decided to adopt the Soviet position by now insisting that there should first be an agreement on an interim government in Kabul prior to the date of the exit of the Red Army, but by then it was too late. The second strategic mistake was in 1993, when the Islamabad Accord on Afghanistan brokered by the Nawaz Sharif government which included a coalition of Rabbani and Hikmatyar with the hacking of Iran and Saudi Arabia, was allowed to collapse. Finally, in 1994, Pakistan ended up sponsoring the Taliban, with consequences that are now unfolding. The most unfortunate aspect is that had the Government of Pakistan devoted the same resources for the Kashmir case that it did for the Taliban cause in Afghanistan, the situation on the former would have been differentpment" to quote the words of ex-premier Benazir, developments on Pakistan's western frontier pose three different kinds of dangers. First, on this issue of the Taliban regime in