pakistani342
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Frank article penned by Scott Smith and Moeed Yusuf -- On a slight comical note -- the Afghans on the DC circuit fume at Moeed Yusuf's organized events vis-a-vis Afghanistan.
Article on Foreign Policy here, excerpts below:
The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan might mean that Ghani's strategy of reaching out to Pakistan is too little too late. But Ghani did not seem to have many other options
...
Ghani’s likely diagnosis is that the enduring Taliban insurgency is a symptom of an undeclared but constant state of hostility between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is precisely because he believes that Pakistan is the problem that he is trying to address it. His gamble is that if he can satisfy Pakistan’s main concerns regarding Afghanistan, then Pakistan may force the Afghan Taliban to strike a political deal with Kabul.
Ghani’s move is probably more a reflection of his lack of alternatives than any liking for Pakistan or naiveté about how much he can trust his neighbor. It is nonetheless a dramatic departure from former President Hamid Karzai’s policy of trying to coerce Pakistan into giving up support for the Taliban or attempting to engage with the Taliban without Pakistan’s support. Over the past decade, Pakistan has been able to maintain the Taliban and Haqqani network sanctuaries and thwart attempts at peace talks when it wanted to.
Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan policy has long been driven by four basic considerations, which have never properly been understood by Washington or others. Foremost, for Pakistan, Afghanistan remained a playground for its larger regional competition with its traditional foe, India. At no cost would Pakistan’s leaders allow India to gain a foothold in Afghanistan. By extension, Pakistan did not want a government in Kabul that was sympathetic to India, or any other regional player, to the point that it appeared antagonistic towards them. Third, Pakistan recognized that it could not openly defy the world’s only superpower — and was also benefiting greatly from its funding — and so it wanted to achieve the first two goals while remaining part of the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. And finally, it did not want any development in Afghanistan or any of its own policy choices to increase the risk of domestic instability within its borders.
From Islamabad’s perspective, the U.S. reaction to 9/11 provoked its worst fears: the growing warmth of the Indo-U.S. relationship, Pakistan’s view of Karzai as a pro-India leader who used Pakistan as a scapegoat for his internal policy failures, and a massive terrorist backlash within Pakistan that Islamabad considered to be a spillover of U.S. policies in Afghanistan and its own need to back the United States. And so, while continuing to offer significant tactical counter-terrorism support to the U.S.-led “global war on terror,” the underlying logic of Pakistani policy during the Karzai years was to accept, or even to abet, controlled chaos in Afghanistan as a means of keeping itself relevant and preventing a comfortable existence for actors that it feared would undermine its interests in Afghanistan and the South Asian region.
Ghani moved to address Pakistan’s concerns on all four counts. First, he has continued to defend his strategy and has been praising Pakistan’s support in private and public. Second, by suspending an arms deal with India he has indicated that he will not try to play the two countries against each other, as Karzai did. It was interesting to note that even during his recent visit to India, he seemed to pay particular attention to how his statements would be received in Islamabad. Third, with the United States continuing to withdraw while backing the idea of a peace process, Kabul and Islamabad are finally able to engage in a rapprochement that eliminates Pakistan’s perpetual worry that Washington would provide it no space on the negotiating table where Afghanistan’s future might be decided. And finally, Kabul’s principal ask is no longer for Pakistan to militarily go after the Afghan Taliban, it is to get them to the negotiating table.
Article on Foreign Policy here, excerpts below:
The resurgence of fighting in Afghanistan might mean that Ghani's strategy of reaching out to Pakistan is too little too late. But Ghani did not seem to have many other options
...
Ghani’s likely diagnosis is that the enduring Taliban insurgency is a symptom of an undeclared but constant state of hostility between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is precisely because he believes that Pakistan is the problem that he is trying to address it. His gamble is that if he can satisfy Pakistan’s main concerns regarding Afghanistan, then Pakistan may force the Afghan Taliban to strike a political deal with Kabul.
Ghani’s move is probably more a reflection of his lack of alternatives than any liking for Pakistan or naiveté about how much he can trust his neighbor. It is nonetheless a dramatic departure from former President Hamid Karzai’s policy of trying to coerce Pakistan into giving up support for the Taliban or attempting to engage with the Taliban without Pakistan’s support. Over the past decade, Pakistan has been able to maintain the Taliban and Haqqani network sanctuaries and thwart attempts at peace talks when it wanted to.
Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan policy has long been driven by four basic considerations, which have never properly been understood by Washington or others. Foremost, for Pakistan, Afghanistan remained a playground for its larger regional competition with its traditional foe, India. At no cost would Pakistan’s leaders allow India to gain a foothold in Afghanistan. By extension, Pakistan did not want a government in Kabul that was sympathetic to India, or any other regional player, to the point that it appeared antagonistic towards them. Third, Pakistan recognized that it could not openly defy the world’s only superpower — and was also benefiting greatly from its funding — and so it wanted to achieve the first two goals while remaining part of the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism. And finally, it did not want any development in Afghanistan or any of its own policy choices to increase the risk of domestic instability within its borders.
From Islamabad’s perspective, the U.S. reaction to 9/11 provoked its worst fears: the growing warmth of the Indo-U.S. relationship, Pakistan’s view of Karzai as a pro-India leader who used Pakistan as a scapegoat for his internal policy failures, and a massive terrorist backlash within Pakistan that Islamabad considered to be a spillover of U.S. policies in Afghanistan and its own need to back the United States. And so, while continuing to offer significant tactical counter-terrorism support to the U.S.-led “global war on terror,” the underlying logic of Pakistani policy during the Karzai years was to accept, or even to abet, controlled chaos in Afghanistan as a means of keeping itself relevant and preventing a comfortable existence for actors that it feared would undermine its interests in Afghanistan and the South Asian region.
Ghani moved to address Pakistan’s concerns on all four counts. First, he has continued to defend his strategy and has been praising Pakistan’s support in private and public. Second, by suspending an arms deal with India he has indicated that he will not try to play the two countries against each other, as Karzai did. It was interesting to note that even during his recent visit to India, he seemed to pay particular attention to how his statements would be received in Islamabad. Third, with the United States continuing to withdraw while backing the idea of a peace process, Kabul and Islamabad are finally able to engage in a rapprochement that eliminates Pakistan’s perpetual worry that Washington would provide it no space on the negotiating table where Afghanistan’s future might be decided. And finally, Kabul’s principal ask is no longer for Pakistan to militarily go after the Afghan Taliban, it is to get them to the negotiating table.
