To Win Afghanistan, Get Tough on
Pakistan
By HUSAIN HAQQANI
JULY 6, 2017
President
Trump’s review of American policy in Afghanistan should involve adopting a
tougher approach to Pakistan.
Although the Taliban are
said to controlor contest 40 percent of Afghanistan’s
territory, Taliban leaders operate from the safety of
Pakistan. United States incentives since the Sept. 11 attacks have failed to
dissuade Pakistan from supporting the Taliban, and Mr. Trump must now consider
alternatives.
Reading
Pakistan correctly has not always been easy for American officials. Pakistan
was a key American ally during the Cold War, the anti-Soviet jihad in
Afghanistan and the post-Sept. 11 operations against Al Qaeda. But for Pakistan
the alliance has been more about securing weapons, economic aid and diplomatic
support in its confrontation with India. The United States and Pakistan have
both disappointed each other because of divergence in their interests in South
Asia.
The George
W. Bush administration erred in ignoring the regrouping of the
Taliban in Pakistan after their defeat in Afghanistan in the aftermath of Sept.
11, considering Pakistan’s cooperation in capturing some Qaeda figures as
sufficient evidence of its alliance with the United States.
President
Barack Obama’s administration tried to deal with a resurgent Taliban with a
surge in troop numbers for a specific period. Mr. Obama deployed armed drones
to strike at Taliban targets inside Pakistan, but that proved insufficient in
dealing with the leadership living in the Pakistani cities of Quetta and
Peshawar.
Gen. Pervez
Musharraf, Pakistan’s former military dictator, had secretly
authorized the drone strikes, and some of the drones operated from bases inside
Pakistan — a policy that continued under his civilian successors. Under his
rule, Pakistan audaciously denied having anything to do with the
Afghan Taliban or its most sinister component, the Haqqani
network.
But
the United States presented evidence of
Pakistan’s links to Afghan militants just as Pakistan transitioned from
military to civilian rule in 2008. As Pakistan’s ambassador to the United
States for the new civilian government, I urged Pakistan’s civil and military
leaders to engage with Americans honestly instead of sticking to blanket
denials.
Islamabad’s
response was to argue that Pakistan does, indeed, support insurgents in Afghanistan, but it does so
because of security concerns about India, which is seen by
generals and many civilian leaders as an existential threat to Pakistan.
But
that excuse is based on exaggerations and falsehoods. India has no offensive
military presence in Afghanistan and there has never been any evidence that the
Afghans are willing to be part of India’s alleged plan for a two-front war with
Pakistan.
Afghanistan’s
president, Ashraf Ghani, recently asked India to train Afghan military
officers and repair military aircraft after frustration with
Pakistan, which failed to fulfill promises of restraining the Taliban and
forcing them to the negotiating table.
Pakistan’s
leaders question Afghanistan’s acceptance of economic assistance from India
even though Pakistan does not have the capacity to provide such aid itself.
It
seems that Pakistan wants to keep alive imaginary fears, possibly to maintain
military ascendancy in a country that has been ruled by generals for almost
half of its existence. For years Pakistani officials falsely asserted that
India had set up 24 consulates in Afghanistan, some close to the Pakistani
border. In fact, India has only four consulates, the same number Pakistan has, in
Afghanistan.
Lying
about easily verifiable facts is usually the tactic of governments fabricating
a threat rather than ones genuinely facing one. As ambassador, I attended
trilateral meetings where my colleagues rejected serious suggestions from
Afghans and Americans to mitigate apprehensions about Indian influence in
Afghanistan.
While
evidence of an Indian threat to Pakistan through Afghanistan remains scant,
proof of the presence of Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan continues to mount.
Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader, reportedly died in a Pakistani hospital in 2013 and
his successor, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed in an American drone strike in
Baluchistan Province in Pakistan last year.
The
United States should not let Pakistan link its longstanding support for
hard-line Pashtun Islamists in Afghanistan to its disputes with India.
Both
India and Pakistan have a lot of blood on their hands in Kashmir and seem in no
hurry to resolve their disagreement, which is rooted in the psychosis resulting
from the subcontinent’s bitter partition. The two countries have gone through
45 rounds of summit-level talks since 1947 and have failed to reach a permanent
settlement.
Linking
the outcome in Afghanistan to resolution of India-Pakistan issues would keep
the United States embroiled there for a very long time. The recent rise in
Islamophobia in India and a more aggressive stance against Pakistan by Prime
Minister Narendra Modi should not detract from recognizing the paranoiac nature
of Pakistan’s fears.
The
Bush administration gave Pakistan $12.4 billion in aid, and the Obama
administration forked over $21 billion. These incentives did not make Pakistan
more amenable to cutting off support for the Afghan Taliban.
The
Trump administration should now consider taking away Pakistan’s status as a
major non-NATO ally, which would limit its priority access to American military
technology. Aid to Pakistan should be linked to a sequence and timeline for
specific actions against Taliban leaders.
Sanctions
against individuals and institutions involved in facilitating Pakistan-based
Taliban leaders and pursuing Taliban reconciliation talks without depending on
Pakistan could be other measures signaling a firmer United States stance.
Moving
away from an incentive-based approach would not be punishing Pakistan. The
United States would be acting as a friend, helping Pakistan realize through
tough measures that the gravest threat to its future comes from religious
extremism it is fostering in its effort to compete with India.
Negotiating
a peaceful settlement with the Taliban also remains desirable, but it is
important to remember the difficulties 21st-century negotiators
face while seeking compromise with seventh-century mind-sets.
Husain
Haqqani, director for South and Central Asia at the Hudson Institute in
Washington, was Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011.
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