Chief of the Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has offered to train the Afghan army and police. In diplomatic circles, particularly Western, the move was described as bold and daring. However, doubts were raised about its practicability in view of the past bitterness in bilateral relations.

Gen Kayani made his offer at the recent annual Nato military commanders’ conference in Brussels and then made it public in rare briefing sessions arranged separately for foreign and Pakistani journalists at his Rawalpindi offices. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who participated in the recent London Conference on Afghanistan, also made mention of the offer.

It is understood that the offer had been conveyed much earlier to Afghan army chief Gen Bismillah Khan and to President Hamid Karzai. However, a positive response from Kabul is still awaited. The delay could be due to opposition to the offer from powerful sections of the Afghan ruling coalition. Gen Bismillah himself is from the Shura-i-Nazar component of the so-called Northern Alliance led by the late Ahmad Shah Masood. The Northern Alliance distrusted Pakistan in the days of the Afghan Jihad due to its closeness to Mujhideen leader Gulbadin Hekmatyar, and later it became suspicious of Islamabad’s designs in Afghanistan on account of its links to the Taliban.

One major concern for the Afghans is that the ISI would recruit Afghan army officers if they are sent for training to Pakistan, which would then use them for its strategic goals in Afghanistan. It isn’t clear if the Afghans have the same worry regarding Indian intelligence agencies, including RAW, recruiting their army and police officers during training in India. Pakistan would certainly be conscious of the Indian possibility and one important reason for its offer to train the Afghan army and police is to prevent this.

The Afghans have the bitter experience of their young army officers sent for training to the Soviet Union becoming influenced by the communist ideology. A number of these officers later staged the bloodless 1973 coup that brought Sardar Mohammad Daud to power, replacing his cousin King Zahir Shah, and then violently overthrew Daud himself in April 1978 to install a communist regime. The rest, as they say, is history. Three decades later Afghanistan is still a battlefield and would not like to become the arena of a proxy struggle between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s proposal was due to the realisation that India was considering sending its military officers to Afghanistan for training purpose. India gave weapons and financial support to the Northern Alliance and possibly also trained its fighters during the 1990s to fight the Taliban.

According to reports in the Indian media, around 100 Afghan defence personnel are trained every year in India’s military academies. There were also reports that some Indian army officers were sent to Afghanistan to teach basic military field-crafts and English-language skills to personnel of the Afghan National Army. Afghan policemen and foreign ministry officials have also attended training courses in India. One report in the Indian media said President Karzai sought “further capacity building” of his armed forces with Indian assistance. In this context, the report said Indian help was sought in training Afghan pilots and technicians for using Mi-35 helicopter-gunships.

Yet another report in the Indian media claimed that the US had asked India to send some of its special forces’ instructors to train Afghan military personnel in counter-insurgency and commando operations. Due to Taliban attacks on Indian workers, India sent paramilitary soldiers to Afghanistan to protect the crews of its Borders Roads Organisation, building roads, including the already completed strategic one linking the Iranian seaport of Chahbahar with Zaranj, capital of Afghanistan’s Nimruz province, and onward with Dilaram on the Kandahar-Herat highway.

The US and its Western allies, who want greater Indian involvement in Afghanistan, have publicly praised New Delhi’s economic assistance for Afghanistan’s reconstruction and are keen that India as the world’s largest democracy would be able to assist Kabul in strengthening its nascent democratic institutions.

India’s assistance to Afghanistan, now nearing $1.5 billion, has been mentioned as far too generous and, therefore, motivated by the desire to outbid Pakistan, at the same time competing for influence with China in the war-ravaged country. India’s emphasis on building roads, hospitals, educational institutions, electricity systems and other projects of public welfare is paying rich dividends and earning it tremendous goodwill of the Afghan people. Due to its economic woes, Pakistan obviously cannot match India’s contribution to Afghanistan’s development and it has to selectively and wisely spend its money to win Afghan hearts and minds, after having wasted its resources in the past on funding Afghan warlords.

As training of the Afghan security and law-enforcement forces and raising their strength is a vital component of the “exit strategy” of the US-led coalition forces, the Nato military commanders would be keen to seek help from all around to rapidly train the Afghan army and police, so that their troops can start leaving Afghanistan. However, they would be concerned if India and Pakistan brought their rivalry to Afghanistan in training the Afghans.

It seems Indian and Pakistani military trainers would not be encouraged to come to Afghanistan. The other option is to send a substantial number of Afghan army officers and policemen to train in India, which is already offering training courses to some Afghans, and also in Pakistan. Some Afghan policemen a few years ago attended a course in Pakistan at the Police Training College at Sihala.

As Gen Kayani pointed out, Pakistan has quality military training facilities and is already offering its services to army officers from a number of countries. In his words, the interaction between the Pakistani and Afghan army officers would benefit both and improve goodwill and coordination, and in the process serve the purpose of the US and its Nato allies to tackle terrorism and extremism in the region.

President Karzai said at the recent Munich security conference that his government was planning to train 300,000 Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police personnel by 2012. He even hinted at reintroduction of conscription, under which, until 1992, every adult Afghan male had to serve in the army for two years.

The introduction of an army draft law would mean that the government is not getting enough recruits. Low salaries, dangerous working conditions due to frequent Taliban attacks and the ethnic imbalance on account of preponderance of Tajik officers compared to Pashtuns have prevented the more than 100,000-strong Afghan army from becoming a professional and disciplined force.

The increased strength of the Afghan army was also highlighted by Gen Kayani as something worrisome for Islamabad, as he felt an unfriendly force of 250,000 on Pakistan’s western border would pose a potential threat to a country already facing India in the east. This is the reason that he wants Pakistan to get involved in the training of Afghan security forces to develop understanding and earning their goodwill, rather than giving an open field to India to befriend Afghan army officers.

For army high commands offers of training by other armies, are generally unwelcome, particularly by those coming from countries with which their own countries have been on unfriendly terms. Many Afghans too may not like to be trained by the Pakistanis, but then such decisions are sometimes necessary for the long-term interests of nations, more so if they are neighbours. Besides, the Afghan army is in need of a lot more support and training if the government in Kabul is to be prevented from falling once the foreign forces depart. The last time the Afghan army was put to test was in 1992, when it collapsed in the face of the Mujahideen onslaught.

The writer is resident editor of The News in Peshawar. Email: rahim yusufzai@yahoo.com