Pakistan: Now or Never?

Afghanistan: Asia’s Congo

                                   By Dan Magnowski

For many in the West, Afghanistan and Iraq have much in common.  Both are Islamic countries whose nasty regimes were kicked out by the U.S. after September 11 2001; in both places, the Americans, British and others stayed and spent huge amounts of money on nobody’s quite sure what; and both were examples of ‘evil’, back when that was a cornerstone of foreign policy thinking.

But Afghanistan isn’t just another Iraq. In many respects, it’s much more like another country beloved of the international community: Democratic Republic of Congo.

Afghan “exit strategy” begins to unravel

The Afghan “exit strategy” appears to be fraying badly before it has even had time to get properly underway. With many fearing civil war after foreign combat troops leave at the end of 2014, it was always going to be hard to weave together the different elements needed to offer a hope of peace. Among those elements was a concerted international strategy to show outside powers were not going to abandon Afghanistan by promising generous funding after foreign troops leave;  some kind of regional detente, and sufficient momentum behind talks with Taliban insurgents to shape the conditions for a dignified withdrawal.

Yet signs are that it is getting harder rather than easier to pull those different moving parts together.

On the international front, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has suggested that all responsibility for security should be handed over to Afghan forces by the end of 2013 -rather than the end of 2014 as planned. The idea is not particularly new – U.S. officials have also been reported to have explored the possibility of speeding up the transition. It would have the merit of allowing Afghan forces to take charge of security while U.S. and other combat troops remain to help in an emergency, and could also ease talks with insurgents, who derive much of their support from their opposition to “foreign occupation”. 

Yet what chafed was that Sarkozy, who also announced France was pulling its own combat troops out by the end of 2013, gave the appearance of breaking ranks – undermining the consensus needed to give western countries leverage as they negotiate their way out of Afghanistan. He was also seen as being driven more by domestic politics after four French soldiers were killed than by a desire to frame a coherent, internationally agreed strategy.  That is significant, not so much for what it means before 2014, but for what it says about the international approach to Afghanistan after 2014. Right now, the international community is engaged in a game of bluff about who is going to pick up the tab to fund Afghanistan’s development and security forces after 2014 - to succeed, all countries are going to have to agree to share the burden.  If each country decides to put their domestic politics - and budgets - first, that is not going to happen and the Kabul government will fall. (The American Security Project has a great timeline illustrating the intersection between national elections and the Afghan withdrawal.)

Meanwhile, a regional detente – crucial among them being the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan – is looking tenuous at best. Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar travels to Kabul this week to try to revive talks on a peace settlement after months of tension following the assassination in September of Afghan peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani.  Yet the relationship between the two countries is notoriously volatile – after repairing the rift over Rabbani’s assassination in lengthy talks in Istanbul in November, Pakistan then snubbed Afghanistan by boycotting a conference in Bonn in December in protest over NATO airstrikes which killed 24 of its soldiers on the Afghan border.

As things stand, Pakistan and Afghanistan relations are still at the very early stages of damage repair, vulnerable to events, and far from the kind of engagement needed to address the more serious issues which divide them.  While Pakistan wants a friendly government in Kabul and curbs on Indian influence, the Afghan government is more inclined to build ties with India. While Pakistan wants a recognition of the Durand Line – the porous border defined by an 1893 agreement made by British colonial rulers – no Afghan government is expected to acknowledge it (the Taliban refused to do so when they were in power in Kabul from 1996 to 2001). While Afghanistan, along with the United States, blames the strength of the insurgency on its safe havens in Pakistan,  Pakistani officials  blame poor governance, corruption and a thriving narcotics trade on the Afghan side. And while western powers are building up Afghan security forces, Islamabad and Rawalpindi fear a strong Afghan army which could eventually pose a threat to Pakistan.

Most importantly, the two countries are far apart on how much the Taliban should be included in any eventual political settlement.  Though Pakistan’s policy on the Taliban – whose leadership is believed to be based there - is opaque, it is generally seen as wanting a sizeable, though not necessarily dominant, role for the Islamist group. Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistan ambassador close to the military establishment, suggested in an op-ed published last month that talks depended on giving the Taliban recognition as significant players. “The Afghan Taliban will not negotiate if they think they are weak and being shot at. Indications are that they will do so only if they can engage in talks as ‘equal’ partners,” she wrote.

Obituary of a scandal : A first draft on Pakistan’s “Memogate”

One of Pakistan’s most bizarre political dramas appears to be running out of steam.  What began as an unsigned memo seeking American help to rein in the military escalated into a full-blown power struggle between the civilian government and the army after Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz accused then ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani of writing it. Haqqani, who denied involvement, resigned and returned to Pakistan to clear his name.  But that did nothing to stem a crisis in civilian-military relations which carried uncomfortable echoes of the 1990s when government after government were dismissed in a decade which ended in a coup in 1999. 

With Haqqani now living in virtual house arrest in Pakistan, the so-called “Memogate” affair is far from over – it remains subject to judicial and parliamentary enquiries. But after weeks of drama, from coup rumours to allegations the army had already sought Gulf backing to take over - both denied by the military – to unusually spirited criticism of the army by the government, to the more farcical circulation of an old video featuring Ijaz commenting on naked female wrestling – the media feeding frenzy triggered by the memo appears finally to be satiated. Ijaz, meanwhile, has said he is unwilling to travel to Pakistan to testify, citing fears for his safety, diminishing his utility as a star player. 

As things stand, not only has the government led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of President Asif Ali Zardari survived, but it may even be on course to pull off an unprecedented feat in Pakistan – to serve its term, hold elections and hand over power to another democratically elected government. And while elections are not due until 2013, it is widely expected to hold them early with a real possibility of winning enough seats to stake a claim to lead a new coalition. Pakistan’s constituency-based system makes it hard for outsiders like the Tehrik-e-Insaf Pakistan (PTI) of rising politician Imran Khan to break the traditional grip of the PPP and its main rival, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif.

Yet to suggest that the civilian government has come out on top in its confrontation with the generals would be to vastly overstate the significance of  “Memogate”,  and to grossly underestimate the distribution of power in Pakistan.

Step away from the minutiae of Memogate and look back over the period since the civilian government took office in 2008. It began its term hoping to improve relations with India, a crucial factor in determining the civilian-military imbalance within Pakistan. The rivalry with India has traditionally helped the army to bolster its power as it soaks up resources in military spending to counter what it sees as an existential threat. It has also fuelled support for Islamist militant groups to counter India in Kashmir and Afghanistan – groups whose relationship with the Pakistani state ran  through the army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, again increasing its power relative to the country’s civilian politicians.

Conversely, peace with India would expand the space available to a civilian government by increasing trade,  allowing a greater share of a growing economy to be used on non-military spending, and cutting off the oxygen which helped Islamist militant groups to flourish.  You might even argue that the government’s desire to improve relations with India was as much to do with countering the power of the army at home as it was to end a bitter divide dating back to partition in 1947.  Extend that argument further and you can begin to understand why the army, whose DNA is configured to confront India, might have been genuinely alarmed by the memo, which not only talked of clipping its powers to manage Islamist militants, but offered to bring Pakistan’s nuclear weapons under international supervision. 

Indeed, back in 2008 Zardari even went so far as to suggest that Pakistan could adopt a policy of “no first use” of nuclear weapons - a huge encroachment on the power of the military which considers nuclear weapons its own preserve, and sees the credible threat of first use as necessary to offset India’s conventional superiority.  The suggestion enraged the army – one diplomat told me that the language used by senior officers  to describe Zardari’s offer, particularly after a good few glasses of Scotch, did not bear repeating.    

Failing to learn: US resumes drone attacks in Pakistan

When Pakistan’s Express Tribune wrote this week that the CIA was likely to resume drone strikes for the first time since November, it included a quote from an unnamed Pakistani official saying that Pakistani authorities believed drones were “strategically harmful but tactically advantageous”.  I tweeted the link and asked who would explain to the Pakistani public that the drone strikes – which have fuelled intense anti-Americanism – were seen even in their own country as “tactically advantageous”.

One of the answers was particularly telling. It was from a supporter of the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) of former cricketer Imran Khan – who has risen in popularity on a wave of anti-Americanism, opposition to drone strikes, and belief the government of President Asif Ali Zardari has sold out to the United States. Here is the tweet:

“I find this so infuriating. It is about time the present #Zardari administration was shown the door. #PTI for #Pakistan”

Yet the popular view that American money is being used to bribe Zardari into allowing the country to be attacked by U.S. missiles has no basis in reality. In as much as drone strikes are discussed with Pakistan – and there is a great deal of disagreement about how far they should be used - the “red lines” have been negotiated with the Pakistan Army, which controls foreign and security policy.  Such is the lack of transparency in Pakistan.

But if that seems too strange, then let’s look at the approach in the United States to drones.  We might, perhaps, have expected it to use the pause in drone strikes to improve their transparency. Indeed, given their impact in fuelling anti-Americanism, Washington might have considered publishing some photographs to prove its contention that the drone strikes do not cause the kind of civilian casualties assumed in Pakistan? After all, if Iran could down a drone and gain  access to U.S. technology, how much more can be given away in a photograph?

Yet instead, we had a leaked story from the New York Times that the pause in drone strikes was allowing al Qaeda and Pakistani militants to regroup.  (Note to the U.S. administration – rightly or wrongly, a leaked story in the NYT is seen in Pakistan as a statement of policy so it would be far better to come out and say it yourself.) And sure enough, just days after that story, the United States resumed drone attacks.

The big problem with this lack of transparency is that it has become almost impossible to discuss the merits of drone strikes rationally. That has been lethal to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship; it is damaging to the U.S. image in the world as a whole; and it is also distorting Pakistan’s current struggle for power between the civilian government and the military.

Talking to the Taliban:an elusive peace in Afghanistan

It is the season for “progress” on Taliban talks. In January 2010, the London conference on Afghanistan put the idea of negotiating with the Taliban firmly on the international agenda. In February 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a major policy speech, insisted it was time the United States began to talk to its enemies. Her speech was accompanied by a leaked report that Washington was in fact already holding direct talks with the Taliban to try to convince them to join a political settlement and sever ties with al Qaeda. And now we have the Taliban agreeing to open a liaison office in Qatar to help speed along the talks process as Washington prepares to withdraw most combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

But what are we actually looking at here? A quick-fix settlement that could provide just about enough cover for war-weary western governments to pull their troops out before Afghanistan descends again into civil war? Or a serious process which might offer an enduring peace? Do we believe the Taliban are now more amenable to talks than they were before? Or rather that domestic political compulsions in the United States are driving it more rapidly towards the exit? 

Let’s be clear. The idea the Taliban would be willing to negotiate some kind of power-sharing deal, and that talks could be helped by measures like the release of prisoners, has been around for a couple of years, if not longer.  Moreover, a lasting settlement would require not just a deal with the Afghan Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, but also reconciliation among all the different actors inside Afghanistan as well as deep-rooted governance reform. It would  need intensive regional diplomacy to prevent the country’s neighbours from undermining any settlement — whether this be driven by Pakistan’s unhappiness with Indian involvement in Afghanistan, or the temptation for Iran to queer the pitch as its row with the west over its nuclear programme worsens.

Arguably the chances of reaching a lasting settlement  are less now than they were before the United States sent extra troops to Afghanistan in 2010 aiming to decisively turn the tide and force the Taliban to the negotiating table from a position of strength.  Since then, the military campaign has splintered the Taliban, making it harder for its Pakistan-based leadership to bring younger and more radicalised fighters  into an overall settlement.  The souring of ties between the United States and Pakistan over 2011 – particularly after the killing of bin Laden on May 2 - and the deteriorating political environment inside Pakistan itself,  all argue against the chances of making a real and enduring peace process work.

In that context, a new book due out this month on the relationship between the Taliban and al Qaeda by Kandahar-based researchers Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn could hardly be better timed. “An Enemy We Created, The Myth of the Taliban/Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, 1970-2010” should be compulsory reading for anyone trying to separate reality from political spin. It is also an essential guide to what might yet be achieved through talks, and what might have been achieved had serious talks been held earlier.

The authors, who edited the memoirs of former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, examine in detail the failure of attempts to convince Afghanistan’s then Taliban rulers to expel Osama bin Laden in the years before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks.  That these attempts were not inevitably  doomed to fail is underlined by their assertion that the relationship between the younger and less experienced Afghan Taliban and the Arabs in al Qaeda was considerably less close than was commonly assumed (an argument also made by other scholars.) 

However, they argue that Washington’s single-minded focus on bin Laden jarred with the Taliban’s often conflicted views - where international pressure to expel al Qaeda competed with their own domestic insecurities as well as concerns about how such a move would be viewed by Muslims outside Afghanistan,  particularly in the Arab world . Even after the Sept. 11 attacks, the authors argue that an outcome other than war might have been possible. “A different development of the conflict is imaginable. Neither the United States nor the Taliban displayed the political will or insight to make it happen.”

In Pakistan, history may not even rhyme, let alone repeat

In his book, Between Mosque and Military, Pakistan’s former ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani wrote of how military coups in the past were carefully planned, yet carried out in such a way as to give the appearance of being a spontaneous reaction to an emergency.

“The Pakistan military always insists on an immediate provocation as the trigger of its coups,” wrote Haqqani, who was forced to quit last month after being accused of involvement in a memo seeking American help to rein in the army, an allegation he denies.  “The army’s ability to swiftly execute a military takeover within hours of a supposed provocation is often attributed to its having contingency plans for such occasions. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals a pattern of careful prior planning, including disorder in the streets orchestrated with the help of the reliable street power of Islamist political parties.”

No one in Pakistan is expecting an outright military takeover – the army has specifically denied it. But that ghost of coups past is haunting Pakistan in its latest political crisis, one which could ultimately force out the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP)-led government of President Asif Ali Zardari.

First of all, the signs pointing towards a civilian-military confrontation have been there for months – before the scandal over the alleged memo. The U.S. humiliation of the Pakistan Army in the May 2 raid which killed Osama bin Laden, and subsequent attempt to corner it over its alleged support for Afghan militants, put the military’s back against the wall in a way not seen its disastrous Kargil war of 1999. That conflict led to the ouster of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a military coup.

Secondly. the economy is in a mess, governance has ground to a halt, and the politicians are bickering, just as they did in the 1990s. To a military mind, that is no way to run a country, and especially not a country which the army – the ultimate arbiter of national security – sometimes finds hard to distinguish from itself.

And thirdly, the army has had plenty of time to make careful preparations, if indeed it were to choose to move against the government.  Its grumbling against Zardari and his alleged corruption has been an open secret for years – rising most noticeably to the surface after the president left the country to visit France and Britain during the devastating floods in the summer of 2010.

It was around that time that cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan was first cited as an alternative. Here was a man untainted by corruption allegations, whose views broadly match those of the army, and who might be groomed by what Pakistanis call “the establishment” to rise from his position as a virtual nonentity in politics to become strong enough to challenge the existing political parties.

Winning the battle, losing the war; the US and Pakistan

When former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said this weekend that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not safe under President Asif Ali Zardari, he almost certainly did not mean that the nuclear arsenal is not secure. The nuclear weapons have little to do with the civilian government; they are guarded ferociously by the Pakistan Army both against terrorist attacks and any foreign or U.S. attempt to seize them, and, as a matter of pride for Pakistanis chafing at any American suggestions otherwise,  safeguarded to international standards.

Rather it was a rhetorical device to attack the government at a rally where Qureshi announced he was joining the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) , the party of former cricket star Imran Khan, a rising force in Pakistani politics.  Qureshi’s assertion tapped into growing anti-Americanism, and a populist view that the  civilian government led by the Pakistan People’s Party, to which he once belonged, had somehow sold the country’s honour – in this case symbolised by nuclear weapons – in return for American aid.  (Pakistan first agreed its uneasy alliance with the United States under former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.)

Yet it is a measure of how distorted and narrow political discourse has become within Pakistan that Qureshi might use the safety of nuclear weapons to attack the government. That political discourse, difficult even at the best of times, is likely to become even narrower in the fury which has followed the NATO airstrikes which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers on the border with Afghanistan on Saturday. 

The attack, which Pakistan says was unprovoked and NATO described as a “tragic, unintended incident”, has outraged Pakistanis who have already endured thousands of casualties in a war they believe was forced on them by the United States.

Underneath the confusion about the aims and course of the Afghan war, lies a deep sense of hurt that Pakistani lives are somehow less valued than American lives, and a painful loss of pride over the country’s inability to defend its territory from attacks by a foreign, and apparently hostile, power – whether from airstrikes, drones, or even the May raid by U.S. forces who killed Osama bin Laden.

The result is a society which is being shaped by the Afghan war in ways which neither Pakistan’s neighbours, nor western powers, would choose.  The airstrikes, coming soon after the forced resignation of Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani for allegedly seeking American help to curb the power of the military, have added fresh oxygen to a combustible mix of anti-Americanism and religious nationalism enveloping Pakistan.  Haqqani denies the allegation, but the so-called “Memogate” scandal has badly weakened the civilian government, while the airstrikes have rallied the country behind the army.

In such an environment, there is little room for a discourse that might suggest Pakistanis should also be outraged at the deaths of civilians blown up by suicide bombers sent by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and therefore discuss ways to turn decisively against Islamist militants. Nor is there space for a realistic political debate on how Pakistan should manage its foreign relations that goes beyond a hatred of America and an illusory faith in China’s readiness to ride to the rescue. 

Capturing the Punjabi imagination: drones and “the noble savage”

Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid may have captured something rather interesting in his short story published this month by  The Guardian.   And it is not as obvious as it looks.

In “Terminator: Attack of the Drone”, Hamid imagines life in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan under constant attack from U.S. drone bombings.  His narrator is one of two boys who go out one night to try to attack a drone.

 ”The machines are huntin’ tonight,” the narrator says.  “There ain’t many of us left. Humans I mean. Most people who could do already escaped. Or tried to escape anyways. I don’t know what happened to ‘em. But we couldn’t. Ma lost her leg to a landmine and can’t walk. Sometimes she gets outside the cabin with a stick. Mostly she stays in and crawls. The girls do the work. I’m the man now.

“Pa’s gone. The machines got him. I didn’t see it happen but my uncle came back for me. Took me to see Pa gettin’ buried in the ground. There wasn’t anythin’ of Pa I could see that let me know it was Pa. When the machines get you there ain’t much left. Just gristle mixed with rocks, covered in dust.”

It is powerful stuff, told in the language of a black American slave in the style of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”.  It vividly captures the terror inspired by drones, and the helplessness of the people who live in the tribal areas. But is it true? And does it matter?

In a discussion on Twitter, literary critic Faiza S. Khan, who tweets @BhopalHouse, argued that the story should be judged as a work of fiction rather than taken as reportage. A fair point. But what if we turn this around and consider the story as reportage, not of the tribal areas and the drones, but of the way these are imagined in Pakistan’s Punjabi heartland? As a writer who spends part of his time in Lahore, capital of Punjab, Hamid can be considered representative of at least part of that Punjabi imagination.

We will return to the short story later, but first step back a bit and consider that the narrative gaining traction, at least in urban Punjab, is that the people of the tribal areas have been radicalised by American drone attacks.  Pakistan’s rising political star, Imran Khan,  attracted tens of thousands to a rally in Lahore last month with a version of this narrative. Stop the drones, and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, can be engaged in peace talks to end a wave of bombings across Pakistan. 

from Afghan Journal:

India-Afghan strategic pact:the beginnings of regional integration

A strategic partnership agreement between India and Afghanistan would ordinarily have evoked howls of protest from Pakistan which has long regarded its western neighbour as part of its sphere of influence.  Islamabad has, in the past, made no secret of its displeasure at India's role in Afghanistan including  a$2 billion aid effort that has won it goodwill among the Afghan  people, but which Pakistan sees as New Delhi's way to expand influence. 

Instead the reaction to the pact signed last month during President Hamid Karzai's visit to New Delhi, the first Kabul had done with any country, was decidedly muted. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani  said India and Afghanistan were "both sovereign countries and they have the right to do whatever they want to."  The Pakistani foreign office echoed Gilani's comments, adding only that regional stability should be preserved. It cried off further comment, saying it was studying the pact.

It continued to hold discussions, meanwhile, on the grant of the Most Favoured Nation to India as part of moves to normalise ties. Late last month the cabinet cleared the MFN, 15 years after New Delhi accorded Pakistan the same status so that the two could conduct trade like nations do around the world, even those with differences.

And on Thursday, Gilani met Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the margins of a regional summit in the Maldives and the two promised a new chapter in ties, saying the next round of talks between officials as part of an engagement on a range of issues will produce results. Afghanistan or the pact, was scarcely mentioned in public, although it is quite conceivable that the two would have talked about it.

Is there a shift in the ground, in both India and Pakistan ?  Pakistan is battling multiple  crises, including ties with the United States that at the moment certainly look worse than those with India. It is also struggling to tackle a melange of militant groups that have metastasized into a mortal danger for the Pakistani state itself and a deep economic downturn that a nation of 180 million people can ill-afford at this time. While it continues to invest time and energy in Afghanistan, a large part of the war has come home too and it is struggling to enforce its writ on its side of the Pasthun-dominated lands that straddle the two countries. A lessening of tensions with India can only help at this point.

India, meanwhile, has shot out of the blocks building a trillion-dollar economy  that dwarfs everyone else's in the region, not just in size but also growth rates even if  it is slowing down now. It still has a long way to go to meet the aspirations of a billion plus people and realise its own potential, though. It needs peace within and on the borders and it needs closer economic ties with  all its neighbours.  Its economic stakes are rising across the region including Afghanistan where Indian firms, along with the Chinese who preceded them, are the only ones prepared to risk blood and treasure to exploit its mineral resources. Conversely if a pomegranate farmer in southern Afghanistan- the Taliban heartland - wants to sell his produce to the booming Indian market,  New Delhi wants to do whatever it can to try and make that possible.

She came, she saw, she confounded: Clinton in Pakistan

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recently concluded visit to Pakistan has left us none the wiser about how the United States and its allies will end the  Afghan war. In her public comments, she spoke of action ”over the next days and weeks – not months and years, but days and weeks”.  She promised the United States would tackle Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan in response to a long-standing Pakistani complaint that Washington had neglected the region when  it decided to concentrate its forces in population centres in southern Afghanistan in 2010 (remember “government in a box”?).

She called, in return, for cooperation on the Pakistani side of the border to ”squeeze these terrorists so that they cannot attack and kill any Pakistani, any Afghan, any American, or anyone.”  Between the two countries, they would tackle the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban.

But squeeze them to what end?  To weaken all but the hard-core leadership of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network so that they agree to lay down arms and rejoin the political process in Afghanistan? Or to entice them into serious negotiations through which they might be offered a share of power in Kabul, or accommodated in a “soft partition” of Afghanistan (an idea deeply unpopular among Afghans) which leaves them in control of the south and the east?

As Pakistani columnist Ejaz Haider wrote in Pakistan Today just before Clinton arrived, the current U.S. policy looks a bit like the dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. “‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ asked Alice. ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where—’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.”

True, Clinton stressed the need for a peace process to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan.  But that idea has been on the diplomatic agenda  for nearly two years. By the second half of last year, we were hearing that the United States had endorsed talkswith all of Afghanistan’s main insurgent groups, including the Haqqani network. By January this year, western countries said there would be no preconditions set for insurgents entering peace talks – only end-conditions that they sever ties with al Qaeda, renounce violence and agree to respect the Afghan constitution. In February, Clinton stressed the need for negotiations in a landmark speech to the Asia Society which coincided with reports the United States had begun direct talks with the Taliban.

In other words, we have heard a lot about talk about talks without any explanation as to why these have achieved so little so far (some blame U.S. military strategy, others Pakistani interference, others Taliban intransigence, others poor Afghan governance).   And the danger is that as long as these talks about talks continue without  yielding results, all parties to the Afghan conflict arm themselves up in readiness for an escalating civil war.

True,  Clinton admitted in public during her visit to Islamabad that the United States had held a preliminary meeting with representatives of the Haqqani network. But we already knew that.    According to The Washington Post, U.S. officials met Ibrahim Haqqani, the brother of the group’s patriarch, Jalaluddin Haqqani, in a Gulf kingdom in August. The meeting was arranged by the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who also attended, it reported.