Peace with Terror

Gen. David Petraeus likes to say, you make peace with your enemies, not your friends. The Earlier post on a Taliban Government had articulated various options and their pitfall in rushing for peace.

Amongst all this will the US cut a deal with Hekmatyar? As per Newsweek, Hekmatyar is trying to send a message to Washington—that he will have to be reckoned with if the Americans want to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Last week a Hezb-i-Islami delegation brought a 15-point “peace proposal” to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, calling for a total U.S. withdrawal by the end of the year. Never mind the details, says Hekmatyar’s spokesman, Mohammad Daud Abedi, a California businessman who disavows any sympathy for Al Qaeda. “The main point for us is to see a process of the foreign forces leaving Afghanistan,” Abedi says. “We have decided to make conditions right so that international forces can leave with honor.”

His plan calls for foreign forces to start pulling out in July, said Zarghun, the group’s spokesman in Pakistan. That would be a year before President Obama’s desire to start withdrawing forces in July 2011. It may be recalled that in Afghanistan’s battle against USSR, Hekmatyar and his fighters received the largest share of U.S. aid to the mujahideen in the 1980s, courtesy of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), which controlled the distribution. He responded by denouncing American values at every opportunity. Haider Ali  Hussein Mullick , a  Fellow at the U.S. Joint Special Operations University articulates a systematic approach towards gaining inroads into the peace process by engaging the Taliban and other war lords  from a Pakistani perspective.

The first step of this reintegration plan will be to flip an important moderate insurgent picked by Washington, Islamabad, Kabul, and Delhi, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar or the Taliban insurgent Hafiz Gul Bahadur. After that, the tribes that support him can be threatened and bribed to turn against the Taliban as well. With amenable tribes, this individual can go to work on second-tier Taliban. In conjunction with a growing class of ex-insurgents, the United States, Pakistan, and other parties would, for example, be able to broker a cease-fire among the Haqqani network (the insurgents responsible for most of the attacks on U.S. troops in southern and eastern Afghanistan), the Pakistani and Afghan governments, and the international community.

If regional partners agree to this process, Pakistani intelligence officers say they would even be willing to give up Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban who is thought to be hiding in Pakistan with the protection of its military. And there is already evidence of cooperation: the media have recently reported meetings between Hekmatyar and the United States, as well as rifts in the Quetta Shura, the organization of the highest Taliban leaders. Last month’s capture of top Afghan Taliban leaders in Karachi is yet another example of cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.

Such an arrangement would be incumbent upon Pakistan’s ability to “hold” and “build” the “captured areas of Swat and South Waziristan. It would also have to befriend the Pakistan Taliban – still supported by the Al Qaeda and capable of flexing its muscle through out Pakistan and in some parts of Afghanistan. Given the complexity of ISI in handling the terror groups, Pakistan should be able to achieve the desired congruence. As evident from arrest of Mullah Baradar, it is amply clear that Pakistan controls the Quetta Shura and through various parties in the game such as Mullah Omar and the Haqqani group, may forge an alliance of these groups in the future arrangement for Afghanistan with a dominant role for Pakistan. Karzai hated these arrests as it undermined his efforts at making peace with the warring factions. Besides the ongoing talks, he said Baradar had “given a green light” to participating in a three-day peace jirga that Karzai is hosting next month. But the US ignored his pain. The route to reconciliation in Afghanistan, as per US, therefore will  have to be charted through Rawalpindi. The US knows this as their ticket out of Afghanistan and are willing to wager on it. This despite Robert Gate’s statement that “it is too early to start talking peace yet” or Holbrooke’s assertion that Baradar’s arrest was not a conspiracy.

And although Pakistan has recently identified the Taliban as a primary threat to national security, its old habit of using militants to hedge against India will remain. Be it a U.S.-brokered deal on influence sharing in Afghanistan or progress in solving the Kashmir dispute, Islamabad will continue its business as usual. And if terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba execute another Mumbai-style attack on India, Pakistani soldiers will abandon holding operations and head east. The US may not want this – not yet. The Pakistan army having gained experience in counter insurgency operations with Pakistan Taliban are now keen to open their own counter insurgency school. It remains to be seen how the new-found knowledge is employed by Pakistan through the various terror groups in Pakistan against India and the Zionist world.

Indeed, the stakes are huge in this war. If any one of planned al Qaeda plots last year had succeeded in New York, Detroit, or Copenhagen, Obama’s presidency and US history would have been transformed. Al Qaeda’s  ambitions are enormous and include acquiring weapons of mass destruction in Pakistan, provoking war between India and Pakistan, and dealing NATO and America a defeat in Afghanistan as devastating as the defeat the Soviet Union suffered there in the 1980s. Obama’s visit is a reminder of how important—and difficult—this mission is. Nurturing of LeT and other Islamic Jihadi groups by Pakistan ups the ante further against India and America. It also depends on getting the Pakistani army to undertake a real rather than an imagined strategic U-turn, because backing extremists of any hue to carry out foreign policy goals is no longer internationally acceptable.

Foot Note for India

In addition to India, China, Central Asian Republics and Iran, besides Pakistan also have a stake in peaceful and moderate Afghanistan. India has to be seen as part of a regional firmament that seeks a pacified and stable Afghanistan. Presently, though unfortunate, India is seen to be on the side of the United States/NATO which, but naturally, is viewed as an occupying force. Pashtuns had shared a traditional relationship with India but to meet the requirement of defeating Taliban, India had to perforce support the Tajik/Uzbek Northern Alliance.

Does India need to stand on judgement on who is to lead Afghanistan and be involved in the installation of an India friendly dispensation, or, seek a relationship with all Afghans irrespective of who is in power?

The Af-Pak endgame in Washington also signals an opportunity for India to dehyphenate its own America policy.

For the moment though, Pakistan will have to hold on and consolidate its gains in Swat and Waziristan for it to be able to bring the Taliban to the negotiation table.

Making peace with the enemy through an interlocutor who is batting for both sides may be difficult for US and does wonders to Kayani’s plans.