Syed Talat Hussain

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to India and Pakistan last week was a classic study in contradictory behaviour. He praised India’s role in Afghanistan and mouthed the usual rhetoric about Pakistan being the epicentre of global terrorism

As these lines appear in print, the London Conference on Afghanistan will be in full swing. This one-day event shall culminate in a communiqué from all the interested parties spelling out the course of the international community’s response to the Afghanistan challenge. It is good that the world is now waking up to the grim realities in this war-torn country. But while it wants to change these realities, it has very little power to do it.

Pakistan is one country that has the clout and the influence to provide the international community a real opportunity to stabilise Afghanistan to a point where it no longer is sucking in precious and dwindling resources from the increasingly suspicious western taxpayer, and allows international diplomacy to make meaningful headway. However, for Pakistan’s potential to become a factor for stability and success to be achieved, two things are imperative.

First, the world has to resolve its contradictory approach to Pakistan. Nowhere is this reflected more than in the manner the world treats Pakistan’s core security concerns. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ visit to India and Pakistan last week was a classic study in contradictory behaviour. He praised India’s role in Afghanistan and mouthed the usual rhetoric about Pakistan being the epicentre of global terrorism. And as if this was not bad enough, he decided on his own that India’s response was most measured and mature in the aftermath of the sad episode of the Mumbai attacks, and that India’s patience could legitimately run out in case a repeat or a similar event were to take place.

At a general level, no one was surprised at a US diplomat massaging India’s ego and running down Pakistan. This has been the pattern for long. But what was really surprising was the timing of it all: just when Pakistan is poised to become the world’s best bet to restore some sanity to Afghanistan’s madness, a top-ranking US official chooses to encourage Islamabad’s traditional enemy to keep the heat on.

This feat became possible because of the split view that Washington takes of Pakistan, which has resulted in what can be called both-edges-of-the-mouth diplomacy. The US wants to keep Pakistan’s goodwill, but it does not want to let go of any lever of pressure that could be applied to keep Islamabad’s behaviour in check. The India card is a useful tool of coercive diplomacy in this context.

This attitude in not confined to the US only. This city, London, which is hosting the Afghanistan conference, is infested with double-speak on Pakistan. The host country, the UK, itself is a good example to quote. Gordon Brown has been exceptionally generous in underlining Pakistan’s profile as a terror-breeding soil. He has done it for international purposes: his interview with Sky News a few weeks back in which he openly talked about the presence of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan and demanded that Islamabad should do more, is just one example. He has also done it for domestic purposes: there are a number of British officials who have repeated Brown’s ludicrous charge that somehow most of Britain’s internal extremism emanates from Pakistan.

These statements are not frivolous in intent or impact. For Pakistan, these are reflections of a mindset that wants Islamabad’s assistance in all manner of endeavour to get the game of stability going in Afghanistan, but does not want to let go of handles to beat the country with unfairly and badly. As long as this contradiction persists, Pakistan’s ability to become the staging-ground of a successful bid for peace in Afghanistan will remain limited. Islamabad’s precious energies that can all be focused on the single most important cause of preventing a total collapse of order in Afghanistan shall be continuously spent on defending itself against such charges. It shall be forced to spend equally precious time and resources on countering the security effects of a bully India leaning on it with the backing of international encouragement.

The second thing that must happen for Pakistan to play its part in Afghanistan is for the world to recognise that Islamabad has solid, long-term interests in Afghanistan, which cannot be put on the backburner just because the world is in a blazing hurry to create a success story out of the mess it has made here in the last nine years. These legitimate interests include a non-hostile Afghanistan region across Pakistan’s frontiers, stretching from the east to the south. It also includes a desire to see all shades of public and political opinion — regardless of the length of their beards or their dress codes — in Afghanistan being given their due share in power.

This would require that the ongoing hypocrisy of defining Afghanistan’s resistance as a purely religious movement must end. The trouble in Afghanistan is no longer the Taliban only: it is the growing feeling that the world continues to extend its hold over Afghanistan’s territory, justifying its occupation in the name of peace, development and counter-terrorism. This is not a new point. Nor is it an incorrect one. Those blessed with common sense and sincerity of purpose have been raising voices even from within the system that sustains the tyranny of occupation in Afghanistan.

Matthew P Hoh was a senior civilian representative in Afghanistan’s Zabul province. His resignation letter in September last year, submitted to Ambassador Nancy Powell, director general of the foreign service and director of human resource in the US State Department, shows that clarity of thought that is singularly absent from the present global debate on Afghanistan. He admitted that the US was faced with a ‘Pasthun insurgency’ in Afghanistan because the Pashtun people perceived this war to be an assault on their land. He went on to make an even more fundamental point: “The US and Nato presence and operations in Pasthun valleys and villages as well as the Afghan army and police units that are led and composed of non-Pasthun soldiers and police provide an occupation force, against which the insurgency is justified” (writer’s italics).

These thoughts were neglected, and since he was not a high-ranking officer, Hoh’s letter did not create even a ripple. Yet the wisdom of the analysis is striking and remains as much relevant today as it was then when it appeared as a justification for an official resignation.

It is regrettable that all the world’s supposed best brains cannot comprehend the simple point that in Pakistan’s desire to see non-hostile borders with Afghanistan and India lies the key to building consensus on lasting peace for Afghanistan. Powerful world capitals continue to see this demand as a sinister plot to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan’s power play. It will be interesting to see whether the outcome of the London Conference would depart from this blinkered approach or not.

The writer is a leading Pakistani journalist