Sartaj and the Afghan crisis

The inane illusions of the Karzai regime and its habitual outbursts against Pakistan have become a source of laughter even to the philistine.
This was again in evidence on Monday July 1 when Deputy Foreign Minister Ershad Ahmadi declared “There are elements within the Pakistani government who have a grand design of using the peace process as a means to undermine the Afghan state and establish little fiefdoms around the country in which the Taliban – its most important strategic asset in Afghanistan – play an influential role.”
Wearing the shallow mask of affected affliction, he continued that Kabul had hoped the newly elected government in Pakistan would “curb meddling in Afghan affairs” but it was now apparent that the civilian leadership was hand-in-glove with the military and the ISI in playing a “double game” in Afghanistan. Ahmadi was merely repeating what President Hamid Karzai had told the media after his talks with Prime Minister David Cameron in Kabul on June 29.
The tirade was prompted by a suggestion supposedly made by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s national security and foreign policy adviser, Sartaj Aziz, during a meeting on June 28 with the Afghan ambassador, Umer Daudzai that some sort of power-sharing arrangement should be worked out between the Karzai regime and the Taliban. There was nothing novel about this proposal as it has been made time and again by all and sundry including President Karzai, who has repeatedly urged the Taliban to renounce violence and join the political mainstream.
But the Afghan ambassador reported to his government that Sartaj Aziz had suggested a loose federal structure in which power is ceded to the Taliban in some of the Afghan provinces. Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmadi went completely off the deep end and said “We believe this federalism is a means for the Pakistanis to achieve what they could not achieve through their proxy (the Taliban) on the battlefield.”
However this was rejected by the Pakistan foreign office spokesman who told Reuters that the question of ceding territory had never been discussed during the talks. With this categorical denial it is impossible to determine what actually transpired at the meeting which was essentially a courtesy call by the Afghan ambassador on the adviser and, as per diplomatic practice, substantive issues are normally not raised on such occasions.
But what can be said with absolute certainty is that in the last 23 years, not once has Islamabad tried to persuade the Afghans about the type of government they should or should not have. In the early 1990s, for instance, when the Peshawar and Islamabad accords were negotiated by the Afghan groups, Pakistan’s only role was that of a facilitator.
Again, from December 1996 to May 1997, when Islamabad was involved in intense shuttle missions between Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Sheberghan and Farkhar it confined itself to the promotion of the sequential settlement formula. This was the brainchild of the United Nations Special Mission in Afghanistan (UNSMA), the broad parameters of which had already been agreed upon by the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
It envisaged a peace process beginning with a ceasefire followed by the exchange of prisoners, the surrender of heavy weapons, the formation of a political commission and the eventual establishment of a broad-based multiethnic government. The only purpose of the shuttle mission was to bring the Afghan groups within negotiating range.
Similarly, it was during Afghanistan-related talks in Moscow in April 1997 that Pakistan evolved the Six-plus-Two mechanism. This again was built around the concept of facilitating an intra-Afghan dialogue in which the six countries with contiguous borders with Afghanistan plus Russia and the US would participate as observers. The only role of the observers was to guarantee any agreement that emerged from the Afghans themselves.
However Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN secretary general’s special envoy for Afghanistan, claimed that the idea was his own and then proceeded to make a monumental mess of things. Scores of Six-plus-Two meetings were held in far-away New York to which the Afghan groups were never invited. The only exception was the Tashkent meeting on July 20-21, 1999 which was attended by the Taliban and all the Northern Alliance factions. Sartaj Aziz, who was then foreign minister, played a fundamental role in making this happen.
Against this background it is unlikely that he would make the absurdly ridiculous suggestion to ambassador Daudzai that Kabul should cede “power in some of the Afghan provinces to the Taliban.” Sartaj is the only person in the Nawaz Sharif government who has met and interacted closely with the Taliban and understands the nuances of Afghan-related issues.
An intriguing outcome of the Sartaj-Daudzai meeting was the Karzai regime’s sudden objection to an intra-Afghan dialogue. A foreign ministry official in Kabul said on Tuesday, July 2 that his government was convinced that there was “no need for such a dialogue in the presence of an elected government and other functioning state institutions in Afghanistan.” Yet during the trilateral summit at Chequers on February 3-4 between Britain, Pakistan and Afghanistan the emphasis was on talks with the Taliban and the final communiqué set the unachievable target of a peace settlement within six months.
At the time, in an interview to The Guardian and ITV, Karzai made the outlandish statement that the greatest threat to Afghan peace and stability was not from the Taliban but from “meddling foreign powers.” The hysterical reaction in Kabul on the proposal allegedly made by Sartaj Aziz is, therefore, not surprising.
Karzai has a turbid passion for power that he does not want to relinquish. But he feels hemmed in by the rapid pace of events and in the writing on the wall he sees the prophesy of his own doom. He has become absurdly edgy and is obsessed by the fear of being sidelined in any intra-Afghan dialogue whether through the Doha process or any other format. He also dreads the possibility of being succeeded in April next year by a person who could prosecute him and his family for alleged corruption.
Thus initially Karzai was insistent that, if at all the Taliban office in Doha was to be opened, it would be used only and exclusively for talks between his government and representatives of Mullah Omar. However, after his meeting with President Obama in Washington on January 11, he also agreed to allow negotiations for a prisoner-swap arrangement between the US and the Talban. But on his return to Kabul, Karzai reneged on this understanding because he feared being left out in the cold should the talks broaden into negotiations for a comprehensive peace settlement.
To ensure that the next president is one of his protégés and not a person who would be likely to initiate criminal charges against him, Karzai proposed radical changes in the electoral laws in early January. In a thoroughly researched article earlier this year, former foreign secretary Najmuddin Shaikh commented that the envisaged eligibility criteria for the 2014 presidential election automatically disqualifies those with any kind of disability and requires potential candidates to: (i) be fluent in written and spoken Dari and Pashto, (ii) have ten years of work experience in government, (iii) possess a university degree, (iv) pay one million Afghanis, and, (v) come up with 100,000 endorsement signatures cumulatively from at least 20 different provinces.
These unworkable proposals reflect the desperation of a drowning man clutching at straws. Hamid Karzai does not realise that the fanatical clerics of Kandahar do not accept the Afghan constitution and consider their leader, Mullah Omar, the amir-ul-momineen who will rule Afghanistan for the rest of his life. Fortunately, it is no longer possible for the Taliban to re-establish their control of the country, but after the withdrawal of US-led troops next year the hideous possibility of a prolonged civil war looms large.
This has to be pre-empted at all costs and Pakistan must use whatever influence it still has with the Taliban and persuade them to sort out their differences with the Kabul regime at the negotiating table. The importance of the Doha process is self-evident.
The writer is the publisher of Criterion Quarterly. Email: iftimurshed@ gmail.com