In the Context of Lisbon Conference the Possibilities of Ending the Afghan War! The Contradictory Pakistani Interests Versus International Community

Written By Hafeez Hasan Abadi

Some people believed that after the collapse of Soviet Union, a new world have been emerged, which gave birth to several states. With the shift of new priorities, new relationships were established. several countries including America believed that it was Soviet Union that was fanning the conflicts around the world; and were hoping that after its demise and the end of some Balkan wars, all its remaining mischief and intrigues would end up.

But it didn’t, because, it was naturally not possible. Therefore, as a result, several wars broke out in the world, which are now straining the nerves of all.

Afghan war is the first in the list of all great problems that the world is facing. This war is so serious that it has impelled the once old rivals to come together to think alike. Seemingly there is no such force which is supporting the Talban. Neither they have any bank nor they have any market, and nor do they have any office. Nevertheless, they are still competing with the well organized American and NATO forces; and forcing them to leave Afghanistan without achieving a desirable result.

Russia is now realizing that after the failure of America and its allied forces, Russia would be the first to be affected the most in the neighboring muslim states of Central Asia, where the Talban could easily spread the war into those countries.

The Lisbon conference on November19-20, 2010 is a historical event, because in which not only Russia participated but also from both sides it was underlined that new relationship with Russia should be based on strategic cooperation. General Secretary of NATO said: “we will make a fresh start in our relation with Russia with the aim of building a strategic partnership”.

In the meeting of 28 heads of states of ISAf, Secretary General of NATO elaborated the policy statement that said that at the start of 2011, special training of capacity building of afghan forces would be resumed to make them able to assume the security responsibility. He hoped that by the end of 2011 there would be a tremendous increase of number of troop of afghan army. Their number would be consisting of three hundred thousand excellently trained troops. They would be armed with sophisticated weapons. And by the end of 2014 they take the responsibility of entire Afghanistan security. It would pave the way of withdrawal of NATO and its allies from Afghanistan.

It is a wish belongs to America and its allies. But it remains to be seen how they can fulfill this wish and it needs to be seen if things go the way as they have planed or opposite?  These are the basic questions that are under discussion here.

So far as the American wishes are concerned, it wants to resolve this problem through wagging stick. But the painful reality is that with the passage of time it has been revealed that this problem has not only become so complicated, but also in near future, America’s ally Pakistan would get it worsens with the help of Iran.

Amid this entire scenario, the thing that has become so dangerous is that the main forces which are highly active in worsening the situation are either not being paid attention by America and its allies or they have no control over it.

It is the misfortune of Afghanistan that its war is being fought outside, and its people are being killed inside. From Soviet invention till American invasion, all parasitic rulers have failed to win the consent of Afghan people. As a result it has taken no time for already existing ambers to turn into flames.

If we have to suggest a solution to Afghanistan problem, we without hesitation say that “its solution exists in the defeat of Pakistan”. Unless Pakistan is pushed back from front line, the success of America and its allies remains a far cry, no matter how much money and sophisticated weapons are used in this war.

In the other words, in this proxy war the success of America results into the defeat of Pakistan.  If Pakistani plan succeeded, then the American and its allies will have to return back home without any results licking their wounds. And entire world will have to face a new danger of imbalance of power (the tilt in the balance is not under discussion here). Putting an end to Pakistani intrigues would result into paving the way of bring in a stable government in Kabul and it helps to end the Islamic terrorism and the race of weapons of mass destructions.

All leaders of major powers in the region, from Manmohan Singh, Russian Sergei Lavrov and high officials of America have expressed concern that Pakistan is the epicenter of all international terrorism and it is not sincere with its allies in this war.  And furthermore, its concept of “our Talban” and “alien Talban” has become the root cause of all obstacles and failures.  After understanding this reality, the American and its allies should have understood this fact that the killing of Talban in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan does not achieve the desired results. Despite some apparent success, there exist several flaws in these two options which are preventing the allied forces from achieving the desired goal.

Internally there are too many reasons of failure in Afghanistan, but the most important and the fatal is that the Karzai establishment lacks the confidence of public right from the beginning till today. Two things are important to be taken into consideration for confidence building which the Karzai lacks.  Firstly a transparent leadership; and secondly convincing the Americans that the strategy of putting into fire all their sinners and innocents into does not bear fruits, it rather worsen the situation. Currently wherever it achieved success, it could be said that it has been done only on bad bargains.  Every village on the way has been razed to the ground whichever area they wanted to lay their siege. Because of partial courage and the lack of media it is impossible to guess the cost of destruction. But  by the fresh ruins of the villages on the ways one can guess that worst type of barbarism has occurred in the area.  Obviously people cannot resist the American tanks and guns directly. The abhorrence that people contain in their hearts cannot be pacified by false solace of a weak government. Resultantly, the more harshly the Talban are crushed the more people join them in greater number. The words of NATO general secretly cannot be ignored in context about their new strategy in Afghanistan “we have launched the process by which the afghan people will once again become masters in their own house”.

It means that he believes that they cannot resolve the afghan problem only through military power, but rather they now focus their attention on winning the confidence of people.

However, by nourishing such desires, they are either oblivious or purposely ignoring the fact that when a government which is corrupt and its army brutalizing people can do such job? And above all, did they expect that Pakistan would allow that to happen? Though much of the “rough material” is available in Afghanistan, yet the Talban producing factory is indeed located in Pakistan.

As long as this war of destruction continues in Afghanistan, Pakistan financially continues to benefit from it in the name of war against terrorism. Pakistan’s military and the so called political establishment are anxious that today if the war in Afghanistan reached to an end, tomorrow they would be ignored by international community.

In many aspects, the continuity of war in Afghanistan and its destruction has become essential for Pakistan. Unless this angle of Pakistani interests is meticulously observed, reaching to a solution would always remain a far cry. Even a face saving withdraw would be impossible for Americans.

Apparently it seems Pakistan is suffering from terrorism, but by looking other side of the coin, we can see that its ‘public’, ‘military’ and the ‘rulers’ have quite different interests and each is different from the other. In other civilized world interests of the three are kept under the policy of national interests. Therefore, whatever they think, their first priority would be the interest of their nation. But here in Pakistan things are totally different; as there is no conception of Pakistani nation, Pakistani language, Pakistani culture and history. It is just an unnatural compressed geography of different nations, which were annexed in it against their well. Here no one is accountable to public; politicians always endeavor to seek the blessing of agencies rather than public.  And military is a totally different creature, different from the public. Therefore, Public is the main victim of this terror war. Political and military leadership are safe. At least they think so. Becoming target of terror, if one or two brigadiers or Generals among thousands of poor soldiers, or a few Politian got killed, does not stop them to consensually abandon this war. Of these trivial losses, (as they don’t regard public losses as theirs), the interests of those are far greater about which we are going to analyze here.

As we know the concept of “our Talban” and alien Talban” isn’t something that exists in air, therefore, we can confidently say that the “our Talban” are being used to serve Pakistani interests.  First of all it would continuously use them against its historical rival India. As the position of Pakistan in front of India is like an envious person who does not work hard to build stamina to stand its rival, but instead wants to break its leg. Therefore, to break India’s legs Pakistan needs Jihadists. To mitigate the Indian influence in Afghanistan it needs those who believe in slaughtering the secular forces by chanting the slogan of Allah Akbar.

The mare realization, that India has taken its place in Afghanistan, has turned Pakistan into a lunatic state, the fact is that Pakistan has done everything to earn a place in Afghanistan since Doud Khan Era, for that, according to Colonel Amam, at the beginning it has, under harsh conditions, trained 9 thousands warriors. Even during the war against Soviet Union Pakistan was in the front line. Not only it has lost its grip over afghan policy, but also India is standing in place of it in the first row. In many respect things are highly conducive for India in Afghanistan.  The afghan people have great respect for Indian people.  Traditionally the Afghanistan leadership has never felt uneasiness in establishing relationship with India, contrary to that, interaction with Pakistan has always been an uneasy task for them.  In short, whenever there have been talks, the Pakistani started with lamentation and it ended up with empty promises.  It has now dawned on Afghan leadership.  It has been expressed by afghan leader Hamid karzai, that Pakistan wants Afghanistan to reach to a point where it could be ungovernable and he be forced to requests Pakistan for guardianship for greater Pakistan and they rule over Afghanistan exclusively as a part of it, like they did it with Balochistan.  But from Indian side neither the afghan leadership nor its public feels any threat of expansionism.

Therefore, Currently Pakistani state is in need of a destructive force until the right moment arises. But given the situation, it can be said that internal and external problems have left Pakistan nowhere. It even cannot free itself from its own problems, how one can think that it can compete in Afghanistan or elsewhere with India which has an exemplary democracy.

That is way Pakistani state is not interested in eliminating the Islamic extremist forces, it cannot get a better place but Afghanistan’s soil. Here things are so easy that one can hit several targets with one bullet. The extremists are exercising for war games and new extremist forces are emerging.  In the name of “so called” war against terrorism, money is easily being earned. So to say, as if, Pakistan has entrapped America and Europe into a vicious circle!

The benefit that Pakistan gets in the afghan war is that it helps it to continue its existence. If hundreds of thousands of American and its ally’s forces were not bogged into this afghan quagmire, the civilized world along America would not have remained silent over Pakistani barbaric brutality towards Baloch people. Entire world knows that Baloch are resisting an external aggression. But the reason, that they cannot adopt an aggressive language against this aggression is that the integrity of world powers and their trapped troops in afghan are at stake.

It is still fresh in our memory, just a few days ago, when the Americans, living in Afghanistan, carried out an incursion against Talban, as usual, into so called Pakistani border; as a result of a collateral damage, few personnel of Pakistani forces were killed (because they were military men not civilian, as civilian are in dozens being killed by drones attacks on daily basis). As a result, Pakistan launched a strong protest and in retaliation, only within one day it torched almost 150 NATO trucks and trailers and closed one of its border gates for NATO supply passage. As soon as America assured that it would not be repeated again, the rate of torching of trucks and tankers came down to 95 percent. Apparently it seemed that it was a public reaction, but neither the American, nor the NATO leadership and international community were so foolished that they didn’t know who was doing that. This is the weakness of international community which is viciously being exploited by Pakistani state and it is brutally killing the pro independent Baloch people in an inhuman way. To prevent them from national freedom movement it has created an environment of terror of genocide in Balochistan. It has trespassed every limit of human and “Islamic” laws in its brutality. It regards itself above of all established universal laws. But no one has the moral courage to stop it from committing barbarism, because of its intrigues.  Baloch are in the tight grip of Pakistani barbarism, just as the other world powers in the quagmire of afghan war. It knows well that the day this war ends, the international community starts talking about Baloch and Balochistan. There is no valid reason for world community to refrain itself from direct intervening and to help Baloch to regain its freedom like Bengali people.