Karzai’s Outburst
06 June, 2006
By Prof. Khalid Mahmud
Hamid Karzai has a reason to be jittery. He is finding it hard to establish a semblance of peace in the country he is supposed to govern. But his misdirected aggression against Pakistan had no justification. He cannot blame others for his own failures, or as the foreign office in Islamabad rightly pointed out, Hamid Karzai himself should be held responsible for lawlessness and disorder in Afghanistan. He cannot acquit himself by shifting the blame on Pakistan.
Pakistan has always been a convenient whipping boy for rulers in Kabul. But then much water has flowed down river Kabul since the heyday is ‘favorites’ being sponsored from across to border to contend for power in Kabul. The ‘godfather’ has arrived on the scene of action to decide who would be incharge in Kabul. And Karzai being the handpicked nominee of the American-led coalition, all the necessary measures have been duly taken to install him in the Afghan capital as the lawful Afghan ruler. The warlords who are virtually autonomous in their fiefdoms may still have foreign connections, but no one other than the reigning superpower has the authority to upset the system. The question of protégés of one or the other external power being in the run for control in Kabul does not arise under the circumstances, since deviation from the rules of the game will incur the wrath of the US-led coalition.
Karzai charge that Pakistan was assisting the Taliban to regroup does not make sense. He is no longer content with alleging that Pakistan was not doing enough to contain the Taliban fugitives in the Tribal Areas who thus have the facility to undertake militant operations across the border. Karzai has now accused Islamabad of having a hand in Taliban-led armed resistance in Afghanistan. In precise terms, Karzai has blamed Pakistan for providing shelter and training to Taliban fighters, or in other words has held Islamabad responsible for sponsoring resistance against the regime in Kabul. Although Karzai did not say it in so many words what his statement implied was that Islamabad was double-crossing the Americans.
In case Pakistan has been trying to take the Americans for a ride, as Karzai suggested, and following a strategy of ‘hunting with the hounds and running with the hare, the Americans should have been the first to detect the ‘double dealing’ and condemn Pakistan for what would have been called ‘treachery’. But the Americans have been until recently showering praises on Pakistan for the wonderful job it did in advancing the cause of ‘war against terror’. Karzai has either been utterly naives or flabbergasted by Islamabad’s skill to do two conflicting things at the same time, fighting the Taliban, as the Americans believed it, and assisting the Taliban to regroup for action, as Karzai said. Hamid Karzai has indeed make a fool of himself by accusing Islamabad of a wrongdoing which the whole world testify as ridiculous.
Why should Islamabad try to destablise the Kabul regime when its national interest calls for peace and stability on its western frontier, and above all choose a conduit for fomenting strife in the neighboring country which has created more trouble back home than any other recent phenomenon. It is known to all and sundry that law and order situation in the tribal areas has taken an ugly turn because of the pro-Taliban tribesmen’s refusal to abandon the ‘soldiers of Allah’ who have following the fall of regime in Afghanistan converged on the area and have been involved in fighting running battles with Pakistani security forces. It sounds ridiculous but what Karzai seems to suggest is that Pakistan is on the one hand engaged in fighting pro-Taliban forces, local as well as foreign, in the federally administered tribal areas, and on the other hand assisting these elements to carryout ‘acts of terrorism’ across the border in Afghanistan.
Accusations of interference, destabilization and subversion etc. are not something which Islamabad has not heard before. On the contrary the Northern Alliance faction of the Kabul regime has never stopped its anti-Pakistan tirade even after joining the Karzai-led coalition and prima facie willing to do business with Islamabad at the government level. Hamid Karzai has of late himself joined the chorus to the utter surprise of some ‘Kabul watchers’ in Pakistan who had given him a clean chit for honorable intentions and were urging Islamabad not to equate him with compulsive ‘Pakistan bashers’. What is the matter with Karzai calls for an incisive analysis. Nevertheless his newest charge-sheet against Islamabad has a startling dimension – the tone and tenure of his tirade could not have been more aggressive.
Acts of terrorism can also reach Pakistan, Karzai held out an obvious threat of retaliation. Needless to say Islamabad has already been complaining of funds and arms being channeled to subversive elements in Balochistan from across the Afghan border. But official quarters in Islamabad have been quite discreet in the war of words against Kabul, as the regime has never been blamed for involvement in sponsorship of subversion in Pakistan. And Islamabad has not even hinted at the possibility of a tit-for-tat vendetta. Karzai must realize that, he being as offensive to Pakistan as he has been in his latest utterance, could be asking for trouble. Given his limitations playing the bully is not Karzai’s cup of tea, since Pakistan can do more harm to his ‘captive’ regime than he can do to Pakistan. Karzai may have been harboring wrong notion about his leverage and bargaining counter because of American patronage and the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, but then as the old saying, ‘if wishes were horses beggars would ride them’.
Whatever are the Indian designs in Afghanistan, their substantial presence there has been a source of strength to the ‘anti-Pakistan lobby’. Observers in Pakistan have been alleging that, apart from scores of engineers, technocrats, and technicians, engaged in the running of one or the other development project, the tentacles of Indian support-base are being spread in different parts of Afghanistan via diplomatic missions which are intriguingly large in number and engaged in activities beyond their diplomatic mandate. These missions, critics in Pakistan suspect, are just covers for RAW operations aimed at subversion in Pakistan’s troubled areas. Needless to say, propaganda to discredit Pakistan constitutes an essential part of RAW’s agenda. Some undercover RAW agents must have been handy for advice to the bigwigs in Kabul, including Karzai, on policy matters, and their stamp on pronouncements by the regime could be detected.
Opinions differ on whether Karzai’s anti-Pakistan tirade was meant to tell the Americans that he was doing his job well, but Pakistan was not letting him run the show, or it was a ploy, endorsed by the American commanders and their surrogates, to pressure Islamabad into falling in line with their prescription of combating the Taliban resistance. Ironically, a British commander almost said the same thing, even though the British government promptly disassociated itself from his statement, saying these were his personal views. It is now an open secret that the American military commanders are not satisfied with how Pakistan has been conducting operations against pro-Taliban forces. And when they say, ‘not enough’, Pakistan should do more to catch the ‘terrorists’, they are suggesting that Pakistan should resort to an all-out crackdown against its own people in areas of suspected Taliban support.
The Americans would want Pakistan’s tribal areas, where they say the Taliban/Al-Qaeda fugitives are hiding and being protected by the local people, to be turned into another Afghanistan, or Iraq, and an army of occupation be deployed to settle scores with the ‘insurgents’. Little wonder Pakistan is not prepared to indiscrimately kill its own people in pursuit of apprehending a handful of terrorists, or mortgage its territory to an ‘army of occupation’ which claims it can do more to contain the threat of terrorism.
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