US
‘Realises It Cannot Win’ Afghan War: Using Pakistan As A
Face-saver
13 July 2010By Tom Hussain
Some Pakistani officials are convinced that the
United States’ ongoing military surge against the
Taliban in Afghanistan is doomed, and that the
diminishing western appetite for the war will position
it as the key to a future political settlement,
Pakistani analysts said.
Pakistan’s foreign policy leaders, notably its
powerful army chief, consider the June 23 exit of Gen
Stanley McChrystal as the commander of US forces in
Afghanistan as indicative of a growing acceptance by
the Obama administration that the conflict cannot be
settled by force, they said.
“It’s the realisation that you cannot win,” Imtiaz Gul,
the chairman of the Centre for Research and Security
Studies, an independent think-tank based in Islamabad,
said in a recent interview.
“For Pakistan, history has moved full circle. For the
third time in as many decades, Pakistan is likely to
be used to provide a face-saver for the US in
Afghanistan,” he said.
Mr McChrystal was ostensibly forced to resign after he
and his aides made disparaging remarks against key
figures of the Obama administration in an interview
with Rolling Stones magazine.
However, the episode has been viewed in Islamabad in
the context of the failure of US-led Nato forces to
gain the support of the Afghan population during
operations this year in the Taliban heartland of
southern Afghanistan, the analysts said.
The military surge has been accompanied by a
three-fold increase in violence, according to a recent
United Nations’ report.
The lack of military progress prompted Gen David
Richards, the British army chief, to suggest in a June
27 interview with BBC Radio that talks with the Taiban
should start “pretty soon”.
Vincent Desportes, a senior French general, was less
subtle in a July 2 interview with Le Monde, saying the
surge was “not working” and that the situation in
Afghanistan “is worse than ever”.
“The British and the French have come around to what
the Pakistani government has been saying all along:
the military option is not going to get you anywhere,”
said Mr Gul, who is the author of a book about
Pakistan’s tribal regions bordering Afghanistan, The
Most Dangerous Place.
That interpretation of events in Afghanistan is
finding voice in a more assertive Pakistani posture on
issues in which its interests conflict with those of
the US, the analysts said.
Those include plans to acquire two nuclear power
reactors from China, Pakistan’s closest strategic
partner, and import natural gas by pipeline from Iran.
The US has spoken cautiously on both projects, rather
than opposing them outright.
Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative to
Afghanistan and Pakistan, speaking to reporters in
Islamabad on June 20, advised Pakistan to read the
fine print of tough new unilateral US sanctions
targeting Iran’s energy and financial sector before
“over-committing” to the pipeline.
The US and other members of the 46-member Nuclear
Suppliers Group also sought “clarification” from China
on the nuclear reactor deal at the organisation’s
annual meeting in New Zealand in June.
China did not respond to the pressure at the meeting,
but its embassy in Washington told the US media on
July 4 that the proposed supply of the two nuclear
reactors, yet to be formally announced, is an
extension of an existing deal under which Pakistan has
already acquired two reactors for its Chashma Barrage
power complex.
Such US pressure, however subtle, is typical of the
mistrust that characterises US-Pakistan relations,
analysts said.
“While we are ‘allies’, the nuclear issue, along with
India and terrorism, continues to cast a shadow,” said
Tanvir Ahmed Khan, a former secretary to Pakistan’s
ministry of foreign affairs.
The analysts said Pakistan would leverage its
influence among militant groups in Afghanistan, vital
to any negotiated settlement, to deflect such
pressure, as it had done during the Soviet occupation
of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Al Jazeera television reported in June that a meeting
had taken place between Hamid Karzai, the Afghan
president, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads one of
three major militant networks fighting Nato and Afghan
government forces.
Mr Haqqani is based in Pakistan’s North Waziristan
tribal region, prompting repeated calls from the US
for a Pakistani military operation to be launched
there. Pakistan has refused, saying its forces are
overstretched because of operations against
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan militants in other tribal
regions.
The report said the meeting had been arranged and
attended by Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army
chief, and Gen Shuja Pasha, the head of the Inter
Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), Pakistan’s
spy agency.
All the reported participants have denied any meeting
took place.
However, the analysts acknowledged that Pakistan was
still not able to give up its militant proxies because
of lingering fears that the US could hurriedly depart
from Afghanistan because of a lack of support from its
international coalition partners.
They said the government also recognised that
maintaining a strategic partnership with the US
remains a priority for Pakistan, both to keep the
country’s fragile economy afloat through aid dollars
and deflect diplomatic pressure from India.
Mr Khan, who chairs the Institute of Strategic
Studies, an Islamabad-based government think-tank,
said Gen Kayani had instilled “more realistic
thinking” among his commanders to support greater
intelligence sharing and security cooperation with the
US.
“He recognises US pre-eminence and is trying to give
the army a more realistic view of the world,” he said.
“But the army still feels it could have influence in
Afghanistan.”
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