Pakistan’s Real Danger in Afghanistan Is from the Jihadi Outfits — The Pakistani Taliban and Afghan Taliban, Islamic State, Al Qaeda, etc. Not India
By Khaled Ahmed
October 10,
2020
Former
Chief Executive Officer of the Unity Government of the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan, and now leader of the High Council for National Reconciliation,
Abdullah Abdullah, was in Pakistan in the last week of September seeking the
latter’s help in getting the Taliban to stop killing and sit down with the
government in Kabul and talk about the future of the country. Persian-speaking
Abdullah was immediately likeable, quoting Pakistan’s national poet Allama
Iqbal in Persian and speaking Urdu with TV hosts. In terms of public relations,
he was an immediate success in contrast to President Ashraf Ghani, whose
earlier visit was marked with stiffness because of his scepticism about
Islamabad’s “friendship” with his government.
Abdullah
Abdullah, left, chairman of Afghanistan's High Council for National
Reconciliation, meets with Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, in Islamabad.
[AP]
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Both visits
were a parable of paradox. Ghani was a Pakhtun deeply suspicious of Pakistan,
Abdullah, a Tajik, seemed upbeat. The Pakhtun represent the external image of
Afghanistan but they are deeply divided. Tajik Abdullah is supposed to be
pro-India but appears to have forgotten what Pakistan did after all the
commanders facing up to the Soviet invasion of 1979 took refuge in Pakistan.
Clearly, the “charismatic” Pakhtun Hekmatyar was preferred over the Tajik
leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. For Pakistan, the choice was natural: Afghanistan
was an extension of its own Pakhtun Belt on the Durand Line, and the Tajiks
were peripheral to its strategic interest. Today, Pakistan is disenchanted with
the old policy of Talibanisation of Pakistan.
India has
traditionally been connected with the Tajiks of northern Afghanistan and
developed political-social relations with them — like Tajiks getting their
higher education in India — while Pakistan got into trouble with its side of
the Afghan jihad. The last leader of the Taliban — Mullah Fazlullah —played
havoc with the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s north until he was ousted from there.
While in Afghanistan, he delivered the most lethal blow to Pakistan — the 2014
massacre of children at an army-run school in Peshawar, killing 132 children.
(Ehsanullah Ehsan, the man who planned the massacre, was caught by Pakistan but
was able to mysteriously escape; yet another indicator of Pakistan’s
vulnerability while dealing with Afghanistan.) Somehow, one believes that the
Pakistani Taliban sheltering in Afghanistan will remain separated from the
Afghan Pakhtuns in the post-US phase.
But it is
the Haqqani Network Pakistan is delivering on in the latest phase of diplomacy.
The Haqqanis, married into the Gulf Arab aristocracy, are the strongest group
of fighters in Afghanistan. A joint cell of the Islamic State or Daesh and the
Haqqani network recently carried out major attacks in Kabul, including an
attack on a Sikh temple in March. Pakistan is supposed to get the Haqqanis to
agree that the Taliban and other jihadi outfits like Islamic Jihad would stop
killing and sit across the table with the Afghan government. In 2012, the US
had tried to persuade Pakistan about joint action against the Haqqanis and
Mullah Fazlullah but Pakistan would not see the two as one force. Once again,
it is Pakistan’s outreach to the Haqqani Network that is being considered an
important factor in discussing the future of Afghanistan.
Pakistan is
supposed to be facing off a possible Indian penetration into Afghanistan but
its real danger is from the jihadi outfits — the Pakistani Taliban and Afghan
Taliban, Islamic State, al Qaeda, etc. — with warriors from the northern
neighbourhood like Uzbeks and Uighurs. If the Taliban take over from the Afghan
government, they will have a tough time deciding which group of warriors will
have the lead in governance. They will likely end up dividing the country into
infighting satrapies. The sharia will have to come back to regain consensus,
and much of the social development under the Afghan government and American
guidance will be rolled back. And there will be civil war redux, and
consequently a lot of refugees — women and children — racing across the
borders.
Aware of
the coming chaos, Pakistan is wire fencing its border with Afghanistan and
there are people on the other side who do not want it and Pakistan army
personnel are being killed daily on the Durand Line. Who could be behind this?
The Pakistani Taliban, who can easily be bribed by anyone, are thought to be
behind it. Pakistan, disenchanted finally with its “strategic depth” dream, is
nonetheless fatally unafraid of “the dream of sharia”. The Haqqani Network can
help because it is the strongest group fighting under one command but its
ideological worldview is different from the average Pakistani, barring the rare
general like Shahid Aziz who will disappear after retirement and join the
Islamic State in Syria and achieve the kind of martyrdom Pakistan couldn’t
allow — fighting to the last against the evil of the US.
Pakistan is
vulnerable to the coming ideological storm in Afghanistan. Its border provinces
are rebellious and receptive to the new wave of strict Islam, helped no less by
the deeply aggrieved and “believing” populations that it allowed to be crushed
by its Jihadis.
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Khaled Ahmed is consulting editor, Newsweek
Pakistan
Original Headline: Pakistan is vulnerable to
the impending ideological storm in Afghanistan
Source: The Indian Express
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/current-affairs/pakistans-real-danger-afghanistan-jihadi/d/123101
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