THE STATE OF THE PAKISTANI FRONTIER

There is a race for the failed state of South Asia and it is between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In Oslo, the United Nations Special Representative for Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said the security situation in August was at its worst since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. UN figures put the number of security incidents at a peak of 983, with special concern over children and teenagers being lured and deceived into becoming suicide bombers. The number of civilian deaths had also reach its highest, at more than 320 in the same month. An operation alone in heart Province on August 21 and 22 resulted in 92 civilian casualties. 62 of them were children.

On the same day, analyst Ahmed Rashid told the 54th annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly that the state of affairs in Pakistan was “more dire” than it was in Afghanistan. While it is not clear if he explained his point, Rashid did go on to point out three main areas in which Islamabad could  use more international support.

“There is an economic crisis, which is the result of lack of structural changes during the military rule of Mr. Musharraf; a terrorist threat from militias controlling the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghan border; and a difficult relationship between the government and the military, which is refusing to move against insurgents”

With the advent of a new administration in Washington, Rashid urged for a “high-level diplomatic initiative” to build a genuine consensus on the achievement of Afghan stability by addressing the sources of Pakistan’s instability, including a settlement of the Kashmir dispute. This will then allow the Pakistani military to concentrate its efforts on the border with Afghanistan.

“... unless the decision-makers in Pakistan decide to make stabilizing the Afghan government a higher priority than countering the Indian threat, the insurgency conducted from bases in Pakistan will continue”

Former US Congressman Lee Hamilton and co-author of the 9/11 Report also chimed in for a greater focus on Pakistan.

In a piece for the Indianapolis Star, he began,

“there is not one crisis in Pakistan; there are several interconnected crises, each with the potential to undermine the stability of Pakistan and South Asia. The danger of a failed state, replete with nuclear weapons, ethnic tensions, Taliban sympathizers and Osama bin Laden in residence, is chilling.(emphasis added)”

He called for the United States to devise a “comprehensive plan to promote stability in the region with integrated security, political and economic components” and in the frontier regions where the Taliban is active,“discreetly help Pakistan defend traditional forms of tribal governance and the elders who could form the backbone of indigenous resistance to the Taliban.”

Hamilton also stressed Washington's necessity in addressing the issue of India, Pakistan's “national security obsession”.

“The United States should support rapprochement and a settlement over Kashmir, while encouraging Pakistan to view its regional security challenges more broadly.”

By now, there is general consensus that Pakistan cannot be neglected if there is to be any progress in Afghanistan. Jointly publishing a paper with the Centre on Faith and International Affairs, academic Joshua White who researched locally wrote that Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province has “emerged more recently as the base of a ‘neo-Taliban’ insurgency, which has grown into a complex religio-political movement with three distinct but overlapping objectives.” 

The three objectives were:

1.Fuelling the Afghan conflict and overturning the Karzai government.
2.Providing a safe haven for Al Qaeda and its affiliates to plan attacks against Western interests.
3.Carving out a sphere of influence within the ‘tribal’ agencies of the FATA for the establishment of Islamist rule, and on destabilising the Pakistani state so as to disrupt its co-operation with its US and Western allies.

American patronage has heavily privileged the Pakistani military, and done little to strengthen the kinds of civilian institutions that are necessary to provide a counterweight to both religious politics and insurgent mobilisation.

However all is not lost. With the incursion of al-Qaeda and the Taliban into traditional tribal territory, White believed that “religious parties are increasingly ambivalent about the goals of the neo-Taliban, and feel threatened both directly and indirectly by the movement’s expansion into areas which were traditionally dominated by ‘democratic Islamist’ groups. This realignment has not only reduced the influence of parties such as the JUI-F over the younger generation of madrassah graduates, but also created new common interests between the religious parties and the state in channelling discontent into the formal political process.”

What can then follow is a more “integrated and creative agenda designed to bolster the state’s political legitimacy and improve its capacity to respond to new threats.” This would include crafting policies, which encourage local communities to side with the state and against Islamist insurgents, combining political engagement, public diplomacy, security programming, and development assistance.

On the part of the Americans, they needed to overcome a reluctance as General Petraeus did in Iraq to talk to the enemy, and in the case, beginning with those they are suspicious of.

US diplomats , White said, needed to make greater efforts to engage with right-of-centre and religious parties.

Because in this part of the world, as the saying goes,  the enemy of my enemy will always be my friend.