Pakistan: Now or Never?

Taliban talks – a necessary but not sufficient condition for peace

We have known for months that the United States has begun direct talks with representatives of the Taliban. And as I wrote in this story, the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid on May 2 should make it easier for the Taliban to break with al Qaeda, a fundamental requirement for including them in any eventual political settlement in Afghanistan. But lest anyone should think these talks, combined with bin Laden’s death, would somehow produce an early end to the Afghan war,  it is important to remember that engaging with the Taliban is only a necessary but far from sufficient condition for a political settlement.

As Thomas Ruttig  writes at the Afghanistan Analysts Network,  any deal between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai that was simply meant to open the exit door for foreign troops would not serve the interests of Afghans.  ”… they need an end of the bloodshed that will also physically reopen spaces for economic and political activities, a debate about where their country is going. A deal which does not address the main causes of the conflict (namely the monopoly over power of resources concentrated in the hands of a small elite, then possibly with some additional Taleban players) will not bring peace.

 ”Therefore, the ‘political process’ … needs to involve a representative cross-section of Afghan society, including former anti-Taleban mujahedin, the ethnic minorities … and what usually is called civil society … They need to hammer out a much broader political compromise that will guarantee, finally, the political stabilisation of Afghanistan where everyone has to concede something but finally everyone gains.”

The Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, described by Washington as the Quetta shura Taliban (QST), are not comparable to a national liberation movement with whom a peace deal can be struck and the war ended. Even among the Pashtun community, their support is patchy; and they are regarded with deep suspicion by other groups, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, with bad memories of Taliban rule from 1996 – 2001. Already there are signs that some of the Taliban’s most bitter opponents are mobilising to scupper any peace talks - among them Amrullah Saleh, former head of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency.

The insurgency itself is also fragmented – even within the so-called Quetta shura Taliban, no one is sure how far Mullah Omar can deliver some of the younger fighters into a peace settlement.  Then there are other major groups including the Haqqani network and the Hizb-e-Islami-Gulbuddin (HiG) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. So far, according to official sources from several countries, the United States is talking only with representatives of the Quetta shura Taliban.  (The Taliban themselves deny being involved in talks, while Washington has made no official comment.)

Yet the Haqqani network in particular is one of the most active insurgent groups in Afghanistan and blamed among other things for involvement in a suicide attack which killed CIA agents in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.  It is based on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, along with the remnants of al Qaeda, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and various other militants from groups with their roots in Pakistan’s Punjab province. What happens to them in the event of a political settlement in Afghanistan which draws in the Quetta shura Taliban?

This is where it gets even more complicated.  The professed objective of the United States and its allies has always been to bring stability to both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Yet as Shuja Nawaz writes here,  the Pakistani Taliban have declared war on the Pakistani state,  claiming responsibility for a string of bombings inside Pakistan.

from Afghan Journal:

Pakistan : four probes and a killing

Pakistan has launched four separate investigations into the life and death of Osama bin Laden on its soil, according to U.S. Senator John Kerry. The army, the air force and the intelligence establishment are running a probe each while parliament last week ordered an investigation by an independent commission to be set up for the purpose.

It's not entirely clear who is investigating what but a common theme running through the probes is to find out how did the United States launch a heliborne  operation so deep in the country, hunt bin Laden down in his compound after a shootout in the outer wing  and fly away with his corpse, without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities. Indeed the military and the government only got to know about it after the Americans told them once they were safely out of Pakistani airspace.

It's, doubtless,  a serious breach of Pakistan's air and ground defences and the biggest worry for the nation's security planners would be ensure that its eastern borders are secure, lest it gives bitter foe India any ideas of mounting an incursion of its own. It is also a failure of the intelligence agencies they didn't know it was coming, or indeed what had happened until they were informed by the Americans. All that will be the subject of the parallel investigations.

But what about the other question that people inside Pakistan as well abroad are asking : how is it that bin Laden came to live in a town buzzing with military officers, serving and retired, and not far from the nation's premier military academy without anyone finding out. The world's most hunted man is found to be living not in caves in the mountains of the northwest region straddling Afghanistan, but in relative comfort in a military town, barely two hour's drive from the office of the country's intelligence agency.  Shouldn't that be a question the nation must ask its security establishment ?  Indeed, avoiding the issue would only put the security agencies under a greater cloud of suspicion, as Pakistani commentators themselves are saying, not to mention their rather aggressive American interlocutors.

Badar Alam, the editor of the monthly magazine Herald. said it was revealing that the unanimous resolution that parliament passed in setting up a commission to probe the incident in Abbottabad had little reference to bin Laden and the militant Islamist groups that threaten not just other countries, but Pakistan itself. Indeed, contrary to worries that parliament would use the opportunity presented by the security agencies' discomfiture to crack open the steel curtain and reveal their functioning, it seemed to have narrowed down the focus of the investigation to the U.S. violation of Pakistan's sovereignty, he wrote in a piece for Dawn.

 "Going by the tone, tenor and the text of the joint resolution, it is more than obvious that the investigators will be strictly focused on the American invasion into Pakistan, not on how bin Laden could live in Abbottabad undetected and whether there is any truth in unceasing reports about Pakistan army and intelligence agencies secretly collaborating with terrorists."

from Afghan Journal:

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the bin Laden raid

In conducting a raid deep inside Pakistan to take out Osama bin Laden, the United States pushed the boundaries of military operations,  inter-state ties and international law, all of which are the subject of a raging debate in the region and beyond. 

 One of the less talked-about issues is that the boots-on-ground operation by the U.S. Special Forces also blows a hole in a long-held argument that states which have nuclear weapons, legitimately or otherwise,  face a lower chance of a foreign strike or invasion than those without them. Thus  the United States didn't think twice before going into Afghanistan within weeks of the September 11 attacks or striking against Libya now because there was no nuclear threat lurking at the back of the mind. Even Iraq was a tempting target because it was not known to have a well-established nuclear arsenal  although the whole point of the invasion was that it had weapons of mass destruction. That only turned out to be untrue.

And conversely there is a belief that the United States or some of the other Western powers  wouldn't  take on North Korea because of the nuclear weapons it  holds. It is simply too dangerous and even in the case of Iran those who favour action say the time to do it is now while it is still developing the weapons, not when it has completed the programme.  

But the May 2 raid in a compound in a Pakistani garrison town tests that logic and shows the limits of nuclear deterrence, as Elbridge Colby, who served recently in the office of the U.S. Defense Secretary on START negotiations wrote in Real Clear World's Compass blog. Pakistan has a powerful  nuclear arsenal, growing at a rate that will make it the fourth-largest in a decade behind only the United States, Russia and China. It has the delivery systems, both missiles and aircraft, to fire these weapons and a huge professional army to support the nuclear programme. Yet all that nuclear infrastructure  did not stop the United States from breaching its air space, inserting soldiers in the ground right under the Pakistani military's nose, hunting down bin Laden and his associates in the house and flying away with his corpse. All without Islamabad's consent, according to the version put out by both sides.

Things could have spun out of control, the Pakistani military could have engaged the Special Forces with unpredictable results. The air force  according to reports did scramble its fighters, so there was always the chance of a fight. Yet, as Colby says, it is striking - and a lesson for others - that America seemed willing to take its chances against a nuclear-armed power.  It shows that nuclear weapons do not provide blanket protection.

"Countries that have nuclear weapons can still be confronted and operated against without escalation to nuclear use, particularly when the objective pursued is limited and discriminate, and especially when that objective is connected to a truly vital national interest," he writes.

Liveblog: What’s next for Pakistan? Ask your questions here

On Tuesday, May 10 at 3 p.m. BST/10 a.m. EST, Reuters is hosting a liveblog about Pakistan and what’s next for it after Osama bin Laden’s death. Reuters journalist Myra MacDonald, who runs the “Pakistan: Now or Never?” blog on Reuters.com, will answer your queries and respond to your comments so please leave them below in the “comments” section at the bottom of this post.

More specifically, Myra will discuss the role of the military in Pakistan, and its relations with both the United States and India. Her latest piece, “Pakistan’s mixed messages on bin Laden sow confusion”, tries to get to the bottom of whether Pakistan was involved with the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. For more of her pieces, click here.

Please join us for what is bound to be a riveting discussion on Tuesday.

Photo: A supporter of the Pakistani religious party Jamiat-e-ulema-e-Islam holds an image of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden during an anti-U.S. rally on the outskirts of Quetta May 6, 2011. About 1,500 Pakistani Islamists protested on Friday against the killing of bin Laden, saying more figures like him would arise to wage holy war against the United States. REUTERS/Naseer Ahmed

Are the Taliban distancing themselves from al Qaeda?

The question of whether the links between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda can be broken has been discussed at length over the past year or so, and will be a major factor in any eventual peace settlement with insurgents in Afghanistan.

So it’s interesting to see this post by Alex Strick van Linschoten highlighting what he calls the first semi-official acknowledgement from a Talib – former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef - of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

He cites the following quotes from an interview with Zaeef, in response to a question about bin Laden and his relations with Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar after Sept. 11:

“Following the September events, the Commander of the Faithful Mullah Omar met with Bin Laden in the presence of a large number of Taliban leaders and Al-Qaeda members, and asked him if they were behind the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon.

“Osama denied the allegations but I now believe that Bin Laden planned the attacks without informing the Commander of the Faithful and then lied to him by denying his involvement in the attacks after they took place.”

According to Alex, who co-edited Zaeef’s memoirs, “this admission is a crucial first step in tackling the issue of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Let’s hope it’s part of a larger political development.”

Last week I asked senior Pakistani politician Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, who is sympathetic to the Taliban, what would happen to al Qaeda in the event of a political settlement.  

Give us bin Laden, Britain tells Pakistan

It’s the kind of language, or perhaps more accurately the tone, that can test the patience of any nation.

You have had eight years,  you should have been able to catch Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri,  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is reported to have said about Pakistan in an interview with the BBC following a conversation with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari over the weekend.

“We have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden. Nobody has been able to get close to Zawahiri, the No 2 in al-Qaeda. And we have got to ask the Pakistan authorities and security services, army and politicians, to join us in the major effort the world is committing resources to, not only to isolate al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan,” he said.

Quite apart from the fact Brown chose to go public with his frustration with Pakistan just days after a U.S. senate report said that U.S. forces had bin Laden “within their grasp” in Afghanistan back in 2001, it comes when Pakistan is in the middle of an offensive in South Waziristan which has triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks on its towns killing hundreds.

As the Times reports, Brown’s intervention upset Pakistan which shouldn’t be much of a surprise. ”We are doing what we can. We have carried two very big operations at enormous cost to the country,” the Times quotes Pakistan’s envoy Wajid Shamsul Hasan as saying.  Bin Laden, according to Pakistani intelligence was in Afghanistan, and if the West had information about him being in Pakistan, they should share it, the Pakistanis say.

Pakistan had captured or killed 700 al Qaeda members over the past eight years, a Pakistani foreign office spokesman said, adding nobody should have doubts about its resolve to fight them.

Bangladeshi group fingered for Indian serial blasts linked to Osama

In the absence of any claims, and a denial of involvement by the main local separatist group, the Indian media is  are starting to point the finger at a Bangladeshi militant Islamist group for Thursday’s multiple bombings that left 65 left dead and more than 300 wounded in Assam state.

If it is indeed the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJi) Bangladesh that orchestrated one of the most deadly attacks in the far flung northeast state, then it could end up hardening the mood in India against not just Bangladesh, but also once again against Pakistan.

For the group, which was formed in the early 1990s to establish Islamic rule in  Bangladesh, is an organisation with tentacles running all the way to Afghanistan and to Osama bin Laden and in so doing, is seen as linked with Pakistani militant groups, some of whom have enjoyed backing in the past from the Inter-Services Intelligence. (more…)

U.S. military a threat to Pakistan -poll

U.S. government and military leaders worry that  the next attack on the homeland will emanate from western Pakistan, believing al Qaeda to have reconstituted there.

But Pakistanis worry too for their security and their fear is  the U.S. military itself.

A couple of polls on what ordinary Pakistanis think of the  U.S. campaign against al Qaeda makes for interesting reading,  coming as it does ahead of the second  U.S. presidential debate between candidates Barack Obama and John McCain where Pakistan will likely figure high on the foreign policy agenda, as it did in the previous round.

More than four in 10 (45 percent) of those polled by Gallup said the U.S. military presence in neighbouring Afghanistan was a threat to Pakistan.  Only 17 percent said the United States did not imperil their country while a sizeable 38 percent did not have an opinion

Pakistanis appear to be worried about a  U.S. military presence in Asia itself, suggesting the distrust that has crept into the relationship between the two allies runs deep and is not just about the war along the  Afghan-Pakistan border.

Forty-three percent of residents said a U.S. military presence in Asia threatens Pakistan and again only 17 percent said it did not.

Gallup carried out the poll in June, much before the United States intensified cross-border attacks on militants inside Pakistan including the first known ground assault in  September. So, for a significant proportion of Pakistanis  some of those fears are coming true.