Commentary

Pakistan's Folly

By Najam Sethi. Mr. Sethi is editor of the Friday Times, a weekly newspaper in Lahore.

LAHORE, Pakistan -- In the aftermath of the air strikes launched against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, called for a rehabilitated Afghanistan with a new broad-based government whose formation should be "facilitated," not imposed, by the West. This reiterated Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar's warning last week that a puppet regime must not be installed in Kabul. "Those who tried to do so in the past had to pay a heavy price for such blunders," Mr. Sattar explained, "because the Afghans have never acquiesced to any proxy government in the past."

Mr. Sattar should know what he is talking about. Since the Soviets were kicked out of Afghanistan, Pakistan has tried to cobble together and prop up four governments there, and failed. Except for the government led by Burhanuddin Rabbani (a Tajik), still recognized as legitimate by the United Nations, all of Afghanistan's regimes, including the Taliban, have been led by Pashtuns. With the imminent demise of the Taliban, the search is on once again to find the "right" Pashtun-dominated government for Afghanistan.

Friendly Government

Muslim Pakistan has a natural interest in seeking a friendly government in its own backyard. It is ringed by India, which is Hindu and deemed hostile, and Iran, which is Shiite and deemed untrustworthy. Pakistan therefore feels that a new government in Kabul dominated by the opposition Northern Alliance, whose constituent Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minority communities have received economic and military assistance from both Iran and India, would compromise its national security.

Unfortunately, another notion in currency among Pakistani defense analysts has muddied the waters. This is the idea of Pakistan's need for "strategic depth," first articulated in 1990 by army chief Gen. Aslam Beg. He believed that in the event of a long and difficult war with India, Afghanistan's friendly territory could serve as a strategic buffer zone, providing secure operating bases for Pakistan's air force and army. Recall that during the 1965 war with India, Pakistan sought to protect its smaller air force from Indian air attacks by parking some of its American-supplied fighter aircraft in Iranian airfields near its western border. Iran and Pakistan were then both pro-U.S. allies.

Times have changed. Given the development of nuclear weapons and the deployment of ballistic missiles and faster jet planes, it has never been clear what Pakistan might want to "park" in Afghanistan, or why, in the event of another war with India. Moreover, Pakistan's defense establishment had consistently refused to learn lessons since it began cultivating close relations with the Taliban in 1996: A rigidly ideological government with a narrow worldview cannot be a reliable partner in the defense of Pakistan's interests.

Pakistan's predicament follows two decades of "intervention" in Afghanistan. This was based on a policy of picking Pashtun favorites and trying to install them in power in Kabul. Over time, however, this transformed Pakistan's need for a friendly neighbor into an unyielding obsession for a client state at its back. Consequently, Pakistan has ended up alienating Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, and driven their leaders into the lap of India or Iran.

Pakistan's obsession with a strong Pashtun state in Kabul flies in the face of history. Until 1973, when King Zahir, a Pashtun, ruled in Kabul, the Afghan government was pro-Soviet and friendly to India. But because it was politically broad-based and decentralized, it posed no serious threat to Pakistan, which was pro-US. In fact, despite pressure from India, King Zahir declined to open a front against Pakistan during the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pakistan wars. This was despite the fact that his government refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Durand Line, which demarcates the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and separates the Pashtuns into two multiethnic nation-states.

But this benign Afghan attitude changed after Prince Mohammad Daoud, a Pashtun nationalist, deposed the king and seized Kabul in 1973. He established a strong, centrist state and started to foment nationalism among the Pashtuns of Pakistan. After he was overthrown by leftists in a 1978 coup, the Durand Line was aggressively challenged by communist presidents Nur Mohammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, both die-hard Pashtuns. Thus, strong and centralized Pashtun governments in Kabul have either pandered to Pashtun nationalism in Afghanistan by supporting Pashtun separatism in Pakistan, or tried to export Pashtun-Islamic fundamentalism to Pakistan.

It should have been clear to Islamabad that a strong Taliban-led state in Afghanistan would eventually pose a threat to the territorial and political integrity of a multiethnic Pakistan, since it would combine the worst elements of ethnic nationalism with violent religious sectarianism. Yet when the Taliban arrived on the scene in 1994, and received a degree of public support in war-weary Afghanistan, Pakistan leapt into the fray and gave unstinting economic and military support to them to the exclusion of all the other ethnic contenders for power.

Unfortunately, the Taliban's military successes made them progressively confident and rigid, thereby diminishing Pakistan's political leverage with them. Now Pakistan is being held accountable for befriending the Taliban and being made to count the costs of not ditching them earlier. Where does Pakistan go from here?

Since Pakistan is now a Western ally again, its best bet would be to join hands with the international community to help establish a truly broad-based and decentralized federal government in Kabul in which the various ethnicities have a great deal of regional autonomy. This would have to include oppositionists in the Northern Alliance, as well as moderate remnants of the Taliban regime and other Pashtun commanders close to Pakistan.

Moreover, King Zahir could provide a transitional umbrella under U.N. supervision. The new government's job would be to clean up Afghanistan with Western support -- meaning, get rid of al Qaeda terrorist training camps and elect a representative governing body for Afghanistan.

The Western powers could then ask Pakistan to assist them in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan, thereby giving it a strategic foothold in Kabul, and eventually opening access to Western oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Pakistan and beyond. Transit royalties from the pipelines would pull Afghanistan out of its abject economic misery.

Rage and Passion

In the rage and passion of today, however, this seems a far cry. American officials admit that that the conflict is likely to be protracted and arduous. Pakistan's extremist Islamic parties are digging their heels in for a loud, long and angry protest movement. People have already been shot dead in Pakistan during violent pro-Taliban rallies and there will be more casualties in the coming weeks. The Taliban, despite American air attacks, remain defiant. Increasing civilian casualties in Afghanistan are bound to enrage Muslims everywhere, with unpredictable consequences. And Osama bin Laden and his Arab supporters will fight to the last.

But no matter. In the final analysis, as Gen. Musharraf has admitted, "the Taliban's days are numbered." In a remarkably decisive about-turn, he shed a couple of senior army generals on Oct. 7, including the director-general of the Interservices Intelligence agency which "handles" Afghanistan, because he saw them as impediments to a revamping of Pakistan's foreign policy. He has also invited King Zahir's emissaries for discussions. Pakistan has also convened a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Conference to deliberate ways to isolate the Taliban and save Afghanistan. These are good first steps in the long and complex battle against terrorism which masquerades as Islamic jihad.