Pakistan: Now or Never?

from Afghan Journal:

America in Afghanistan until 2024 ?

The Daily Telegraph  reports that the status of forces agreement that the United States and Afghanistan are negotiating may allow a U.S. military presence in the country until 2024 .  That's a full 10 years beyond the deadline for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and handing over security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

The negotiations are being conducted under a veil of security, and we have no way of knowing, at this point at least, if the two sides are really talking about U.S. troops in the country for that long. ( The very fact that a decade after U.S. troops entered the country there is no formal agreement spelling out the terms of their deployment is in itself remarkable)

But it does seem more likely than not that there there will be a U.S. military presence, however small, in Afghanistan beyond 2014, and that is going to force the players involved in the conflict and those watching from the sidelines with more than a spectator's interest to rethink their calculations.

Indeed, the talk of an extended force deployment may be an attempt to reverse the perception that America was in full retreat following President Barack Obama's announcement  of a drawdown that many in the military believe has only hardened the resolve of the Taliban insurgents and their backers in Pakistan to wait out the departure.

Now with troops, including a sizeable element of Special Forces, backed by the United States' aggressive and unparalleled air power, to be based in the turbulent south and east of the country beyond 2014, the  players have to shuffle their cards again. For those elements in the Taliban who may have explored the idea of reconciliation, the plan for a long-term U.S.military involvement in the country has just made their task even more  difficult.

For Pakistan, the country most affected by what happens in Afghanistan, the idea that the United States is not going to walk away, sharpens its dilemma and once again goes to the heart of its role as a conflicted partner in the war against Islamist militancy.  On the face of it, a U.S. military presence next door means continued pressure on Pakistan to act against the militant groups that operate from its soil. It means the drones will continue to fly in its skies and fire missiles at will.

In India-Iran oil spat, nuclear row trumps Afghan war

Not too long ago, you could have predicted relatively easily how regional rivalries would play out in Afghanistan.  Saudi Arabia would line up alongside Pakistan while Iran and India would coordinate their policies to curb the influence of their main regional rivals. 

But that pattern has been shifting for a while — the row over Indian oil payments to Iran is if anything a continuation of that shift rather than a dramatic new departure in global diplomacy.  And as two foreign policy crises converge, over Iran’s nuclear programme and the war in Afghanistan, the chances are that those traditional alliances will be dented further. It is no longer a safe bet to assume that rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran will fit neatly into Pakistan-India hostility so that the four countries fall easily into two opposing camps come any final showdown over Afghanistan.

India, which has been working to improve its relationship with the United States for much of the last decade, already earned Iran’s wrath by voting against it at the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) over its nuclear programme, first in 2005 and then again in 2009. Though India has since been trying to repair the damage, comments by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei late last year criticising India over Kashmir soured the mood further between the two former allies.

The decision by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last week to suspend payments for oil imports made by Indian companies from Iran that use the Asian Clearing Union (ACU), a clearing house used to process multilateral payments between South Asian countries and Iran, was pretty much in line with that trajectory of slowly deteriorating relations.

As a caveat, it would probably be unwise to read too much into the oil payments row — Indian media have complained that the RBI decision was not coordinated across government departments and reported that the timing of its announcement came as a surprise even to the foreign ministry.  But extend the trajectory further and the outlook for coordination between India and Iran on Afghanistan does not look too promising.

India, Iran and Russia all supported the then Northern Alliance which opposed the Taliban when they were in power from 1996 to 2001.  But Washington and others have since accused Iran of covertly backing the Taliban — an allegation Tehran denies — in order to maintain pressure on the United States.  In the event of an escalation of the nuclear row, it could ratchet up support for the Taliban to make life even harder for the United States. That is anathema to India, which sees the Taliban as a Pakistan-backed movement used by Islamabad to try to maintain its influence in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile India has been cultivating ties with Saudi Arabia, which was one of only three countries along with Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to recognise the Taliban government when it was in power.  In February last year, Prime Minister Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made the first visit to Saudi Arabia by an Indian leader since 1982, seeking to build economic ties and to enlist the kingdom’s help in improving regional security.

Wikileaks on Pakistan

In the State Department cables released by Wikileaks and so far reported, the most eye-catching as far as Pakistan is concerned is a row with Washington over nuclear fuel.

According to the New York Times, the cables show:

“A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”

The Pakistan Army is deeply sensitive about any questions on the safety of its nuclear weapons.  The country is also often awash with conspiracy theories accusing the Americans of harbouring secret plans to dismantle the nuclear weapons.

That said, the row reported by the NYT appeared to have been about HEU at a nuclear research reactor rather than the weapons themselves, so it may turn out to be less dramatic than it appears.  Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are considered to be well-guarded although analysts have cited a risk of militants trying to seize nuclear material which they might use to make a dirty bomb. (For a factbox on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, see here).

Of potentially huge significance for Pakistan are cables, reported in The Guardian, saying that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.

“The Saudi king was recorded as having ‘frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme’, one cable stated. ‘He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,’ the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah’s meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.” The Guardian reported.

When two foreign policy crises converge: Iran and Afghanistan

Last week’s suicide bombing of a mosque in Zahedan, capital of the Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan, is another reminder of how far two of the United States’ main foreign policy challenges – its row with Iran over its nuclear programme, and its policies towards Afghanistan and Pakistan – are intertwined.

A senior commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that the United States would face “fall out” from the bomb attack which it blamed on the Jundollah Sunni Muslim rebel group - a militant group which Iran says is backed by Washington and operates from Baluchistan province in neighbouring Pakistan.  Massoud Jazayeri, deputy head of the dominant ideological wing of Iran’s armed forces, did not specify what he meant by fall-out from the bombing, which killed 28 people and which the United States has condemned.

But his comments nonetheless raised tensions at a time when the United States is at loggerheads with Tehran over its nuclear programme, and when its top diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are visiting Pakistan and Afghanistan to try to press U.S. interests there.

The intertwining of these two foreign policy challenges runs far deeper than a coincidence of timing or geography.

As I wrote in this analysis after a suicide bombing last year in Sistan-Baluchestan – also blamed on Jundollah – the violence there exposed a deep sectarian faultline between Shi’ite Iran and Pakistan, allied with Tehran’s main rival, Sunni Saudi Arabia. (For a detailed study of Jundollah, and tensions between Iran’s dominant Shi’ites and its minority Sunnis, see this report (pdf) by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment published last July).  

Analysts have also said that the use of suicide bombers suggested that Jundollah – which fights for the rights of ethnic Baluch in Iran – was becoming increasingly influenced by the tactics and sectarian agenda of groups like the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, blamed for a series of suicide bombings inside Pakistan.

Weaving the net more tightly is  Iran’s capacity to act as a spoiler in any U.S. attempt to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan, ratcheting up or down its alleged support for Taliban insurgents depending on the extent to which its distrust of the Sunni movement is outweighed by its anger with the United States.

Could you pass bin Laden to the left please?

Whatever Osama bin Laden once aspired to, it was not to be passed around the table like a bottle of port  in the British Raj nor worse, handed on quickly  in a child’s game of Pass the Parcel. Yet that is the fate which for now appears to be chasing him.

For years, the default assumption has been that bin Laden is hiding somewhere in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Last month, I heard a Pakistani official say that bin Laden was last heard of in Pakistan’s traditional enemy India in 2003 – in Bangalore and Hyderabad to be precise -before he disappeared without trace.  Then Fox News came up with a story about how he was living in luxury in Iran. Not to be outdone, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad then suggested he was more likely to be hiding in Washington.

Anyone want to guess where bin Laden is reported to be next?  He definitely seems to be acquiring the taint of the unwelcome guest.

That said, and to be briefly serious, you can draw two tentative conclusions.  Either you say that the man identified with the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington is no longer the icon and threat he once was. Or you say that the man himself was never the real threat, but rather a symbol of the cause (itself subject to much debate) which both preceded bin Laden and will also outlive him.

Either way, how many people out there still believe that taking out bin Laden would change things on the ground? Probably quite a few – but how many compared to those who believed this immediately after 9/11? The answer to that question would tell historians quite a lot about how attitudes have changed over the past nine years.

Is Baluchistan more strategically significant than Afghanistan?

Baluchistan, Pakistan’s biggest province, rarely gets much attention from the international media, and what little it does is dwarfed by that showered on Afghanistan.  So it is with a certain amount of deliberate provocation that I ask the question posed in the headline: Is Baluchistan more strategically significant than Afghanistan?

Before everyone answers with a resounding “no”, do pause to consider that China – renowned for its long-term planning – has invested heavily in Baluchistan, including building a deep water port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to give it access to Gulf oil supplies.  The region is rich in gas and minerals; attracting strong international interest in spite of a low-level insurgency by Baluch separatists. 

Bordering both Iran and Afghanistan, it lies along the sectarian and geopolitical faultlines that have fissured the region  since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan later that year. Its capital, Quetta, is often cited by Washington as a haven for the Afghan Taliban in the so-called Quetta shura, who operate independently of the more secular Baluch separatists. 

The province is also a source of friction with India, with Pakistan accusing it of using its presence in Afghanistan to fund the Baluch separatists, a charge Delhi denies.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of that argument, you can be fairly sure that anywhere lying on the intersection of Indian, Chinese and Pakistani interests will be strategically far more important than it might appear on the surface.

In that context, Forbes Magazine has a must-read take-out on China’s drive to develop its presence in Baluchistan.

“In the Pakistani province of Balochistan, South Asia and central Asia bleed into the Middle East. Bordered by Afghanistan, Iran and the Persian Gulf, and well endowed with oil, gas, copper, gold and coal reserves, Balochistan is a rich prize that should have foreign investors battering at the gates,” it says.  “But for a half-century it has been the exclusive playground of the Pakistani government and its state-owned Chinese partners. China would prefer it to stay that way.”

For an entirely different view, Informed Comment has a guest contribution up by Berkeley academic Kiren Aziz Chaudhry. The arguments can be a bit distracting if you don’t buy into conspiracy theories about the reasons for the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. But do persevere until you get to the point where the writer identifies Baluchistan as the main centre of interest for the many rivalries across Afghanistan and Pakistan:  “The fulcrum is the province of Balochistan. And within Balochistan, the pivot is the dusty, obscure coastal town of Gwadar. Gwadar has a spanking new deep water port. Wheels within wheels. Devices within devices.”  It’s worth reading through to the end, if nothing else but because this little known part of the world deserves as many different voices as possible.

Iran’s role in Afghanistan

Iran has been hosting regional leaders, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to celebrate the Persian New Year, or Nowruz (a spring festival whose equivalent in Pakistan, incidentally, is frowned upon by its own religious conservatives).

The Nowruz celebrations, which also included the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, are part of Iran’s efforts to build regional ties and followed renewed debate over the kind of role Iran wants to play in Afghanistan. As discussed here, it has also been improving ties with Pakistan, and both countries may have worked together on the arrest last month of Abdolmalik Rigi, leader of the Jundollah rebel group.

Depending on who you listen to, Iran is either an unlikely potential ally of the United States in Afghanistan, with shared common interests in stabilising the country, or a spoiler ready to support its old enemies the Afghan Taliban in order to undermine Washington’s position.  Others put it somewhere in between, like every other country in the region biding its time in order to make sense of the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan, while also picking its way through a showdown with the United States over its nuclear programme.

Evidence so far of its exact intentions on Afghanistan is sketchy. After initially supporting the United States following the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 -Shi’ite Iran has no natural sympathy with the hardline Sunni Taliban – it found itself branded by former president George W. Bush as part of the axis of evil in 2002, and then after 2003 squeezed between U.S. troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since then there have been regular unconfirmed reports of Iranian support for the Taliban, largely designed to queer the pitch for the Americans. In one of the more recent reports, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper provided what it said were details of Taliban fighters being trained in camps in Iran. In a follow-up, however Britain’s Daily Telegraph quoted a senior diplomat as saying that there was intelligence that Iran was instead holding off support to the Taliban and had recently refused requests for arms. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates described Iranian support for the Taliban as “pretty limited”

At the same time, Iran is keen for stability in Afghanistan in part to help clamp down on a booming heroin trade which has left it with its own huge drug addiction problem. Nearly a year ago, it offered help in combating the Afghan drugs trade at a conference in The Hague attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Its police chief was quoted this month by Press TV as saying that, ”in addition to hosting a large domestic consumption market for narcotics, Iran is the shortest drug trafficking route from Afghanistan to the world. Opium-based products such as morphine and heroin are usually transported to European countries and other products such as hashish are trafficked to other countries such as the Persian Gulf littoral countries. Given all of this, naturally Iran is the country suffering here.”

Pakistan: winning over Tehran and Kabul

According to the Iranian foreign minister, quoted by Press TV, this week’s visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to Islamabad was related to plans for a trilateral summit between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The relationship between the three countries and potential influence on Afghanistan gets a lot less attention than the strained ties between India and Pakistan. But it’s worth watching closely for the way it can shape the regional competition for influence in Afghanistan ahead of an expected drawdown of U.S. troops in 2011.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in Kabul this week, and shortly afterwards Karzai flew to Islamabad.

Press TV quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying that while Karzai’s visit was “not directly linked” to President Ahmadinejad’s trip, it was related to a decision made during talks with the Iranian delegation about holding a trilateral summit in Islamabad. “I think based on the negotiation between Ahmadinejad and Karzai, he will also be in contact with President (Asif Ali) Zardari,” the Iranian foreign minister said.

Pakistan had long been suspicious of Iranian influence in Afghanistan, but has been making efforts recently to improve relations with Tehran.  Its ambassador to Tehran suggested last month that Pakistan had helped in the capture of Jundollah Sunni rebel group leader Abdolmalek Rigi, who Iran had said was based in its Baluchistan province.

Karzai, meanwhile, after building a close relationship with India after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban in 2001, made all the right noises in Islamabad about improving relations there.  Islamabad says India has been using its presence in Afghanistan to destabilise Pakistan, particularly by backing a separatist revolt in Baluchistan (which operates separately from Jundollah) — a charge New Delhi denies. It looked sourly on Karzai’s close ties with New Delhi which it saw as underpinning a proxy war in Afghanistan between Pakistan and India which had spilled over from their long-standing dispute in Kashmir.

Speaking in Islamabad, Karzai said he did not want any country using Afghanistan against another. ”The bottom line is, Afghanistan does not want any proxy wars on its territory,” he said.  “India is a close friend of Afghanistan but Pakistan is a brother of Afghanistan. Pakistan is a twin brother … we’re conjoined twins, there’s no separation.” 

Karzai is keen to achieve some kind of reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban. But with Pakistan arresting Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and other Taliban leaders, it has made it clear that any reconciliation will need its help.

Seeking Saudi cooperation on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is making the first visit to Saudi Arabia by an Indian leader since 1982, seeking to build economic ties and to enlist the kingdom’s help in improving regional security. While much of the focus is likely to be on securing oil supplies for India’s growing economy, the visit is also part of the complex manoeuvres by regional players jostling for position on Afghanistan and beyond.

Singh told Saudi journalists ahead of the visit that he would discuss with Saudi King Abdullah how to promote greater stability and security in the region.  “Both King Abdullah and I reject the notion that any cause justifies wanton violence against innocent people. We are strong allies against the scourge of extremism and terrorism that affects global peace and security,” he said.

Junior Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor also said India could seek Saudi support in persuading Pakistan to act against Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups — later adding however this did not mean looking for Saudi mediation (anathema to India which sees no room for third party involvement in its relationship with Pakistan).

“Saudi Arabia of course has a long and close relationship with Pakistan but that makes Saudi Arabia all the more a valuable interlocutor for us,” he said. ”When we tell them about our experience, Saudi Arabia listens as somebody who is not anyway an enemy of Pakistan but rather as a friend of Pakistan, and therefore I am sure listens with sympathy and concern to a matter of this nature.”

Sunni Saudi Arabia has close ties with Pakistan, seeing it in part as a bulwark against Shiite Iran, its main rival. Analysts say it shares Pakistan’s concerns about Indian and Iranian influence in Afghanistan. It has also been cited as potential mediator with the Taliban. While it has shown little enthusiasm right now to act as a mediator, it is expected to play a powerful role in negotiating any eventual political settlement in Afghanistan.

India, meanwhile, invested heavily in Afghanistan after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban in 2001, and built close ties with the government of President Hamid Karzai. It has been caught on the back foot by talk of reconciliation with the Taliban, which it fears could give Pakistan an opportunity to reassert its old influence over Afghanistan as well as bolstering its position as Washington’s indispensable ally in the region.

Some analysts have argued that India should counter this by building its own relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Iran — C. Raja Mohan made this point as early as May last year. Any improvement in the relationship between India and Saudi Arabia, including a deepening economic inter-dependency, could therefore be significant.

Towards a regional settlement in Afghanistan (Redux squared)

Regular readers of this blog will know we have been talking for a long time about finding a regional solution to Afghanistan. The argument — much touted during President Barack Obama’s election campaign — was that you could stabilise the country if you persuaded the many regional players with a stake in Afghanistan — including Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia and China — to cooperate rather than compete in finding a political settlement to what was effectively an unwinnable war.

The argument looked at best utopian, at worst a description of the delicate balance of power in the early 20th century that was meant to keep the peace but in reality led to the outbreak of World War One.  It is now resurfacing again as public opinion in western countries — including in staunch U.S. ally Britain – turns against the long war in Afghanistan.

As discussed in this analysis, we are now seeing some fresh signs of regional cooperation. The foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan hold talks on Thursday to try to break a diplomatic freeze which followed the 2008 attack on Mumbai. And Pakistan and Iran may have cooperated on the arrest of Jundollah leader Abdolmalek Rigi.

The utopian argument may finally about to have its day. That said, none of this is following a U.S. script. So we could also  see — as happened before 1914 — the best efforts at balancing out every nation’s interests turning out for the worst.

(File photo: Children in Arghandab, Afghanistan)