The Afghan Equation

As the Pakistan Army Chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, works to preserve his strategic space in Afghanistan, he is a worried man. The February 13 Pune blasts, the February 26 Kabul suicide attack and ramping up of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir are manifestations of his unease. Two radical departures have been made by Pakistan after the unveiling of the new re-focused International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Strategy in December 2009 whose timing are indicators of Gen. Kayani’s nervousness.

One, it apprehended Mullah Beradar, a member of the Afghan Taliban executive committee. Whether by design or default, or at the behest of its Saudi benefactors, or whether he had fallen out with Mullah Omar, or to put pressure on the latter, Pakistan is sending clear signals that it wants a central seat at the negotiating table as the new ISAF strategy envisages, among other things, a reconciliation and reintegration process.

Two, Gen. Kayani has evinced a new-found love for the Afghan National Army (ANA). While speaking at the Nato Commanders Conference at Brussels in January, he said, “If we get more involved with the ANA, there’s more interaction and better understanding... It’s a win-win for Afghanistan, the US, ISAF and Pakistan”.

The problems for Gen. Kayani are that the ISAF military strategy is going to make the Taliban weaker, the ANA stronger; its political strategy of reconciliation with the top Taliban leadership may be minus Mullah Omar and the Haqqani network, whom the Americans call a “bridge too far” because of their strong Al Qaeda connections. There is the additional worry that even if these connections are renounced, there is no guarantee that these may not be revived in a later time frame.

Gen. Kayani does not have much time to get Haqqani and Mullah Omar to renounce Al Qaeda as the American pressure on him grows stronger to move into North Waziristan congruent to the ISAF clearing operations and moving closer to the Durand Line. The ISAF military strategy is set to unhinge Gen. Kayani’s calibration as never before. There are a number of things the ISAF is doing and proposes to do. A few of them will succeed. A few will not. But it is the few things that may succeed which accounts for the Pakistani discomfort.

For instance, the underpinning of the new strategy is to put the Afghan people first, with the caveat that the insurgency can afford to lose fighters and leaders but cannot afford to lose control of the population. The earlier emphasis on kinetic targeting and “kills” has given way to preventing collateral damage and driving the Taliban out of its strongholds, such that they are made irrelevant in their own Pashtun backyard. In its biggest offensive in Marjah, the ISAF has separated the population from the insurgents by driving the Taliban out at a meagre civilian casualty of 28, very low for an offensive of this magnitude. This strategy will be replicated in Lashkar Gah, Kandahar city and, finally, Spin Boldak, all Taliban heartland.

Importantly, this may impact the $200,000 Taliban monthly income generated from poppy fields in and around these strongholds. If this happens, it will choke off funds to the movement. As these areas are cleared, the ANA will hold them for “a government in a box” to build the Afghan farm sector, improve governance, establish law and order, education, health, etc.

While conventional forces separate the Taliban from the population, the Army’s Delta Force, the Navy’s “Seal Team Six”, and drones take out insurgents from known hideouts astride the Durand Line. In fact, in the last three months alone drones have taken out more than 200 hardcore insurgents with 17 strikes in North Waziristan. Special Forces’ raids on specific targets along the Durand Line have gone up from an average 10-15 per month to almost 100 per month in the last two months. This strategy is keeping the top Taliban leadership away from the battlefield.

The ISAF reintegration strategy, too, is immensely worrisome for Gen. Kayani because it is aimed at a huge number of “local Taliban foot soldiers” who are not ideologically committed but are in the war because of unemployment, frustration with the lack of change since 2007, or anger because a local villager was killed by the ISAF. The ISAF proposes to reintegrate these “loose” Taliban through monetary and employment opportunities, thus weakening the Taliban further.

Already, in a significant development in January, leaders of the largest Pakistan tribe (Shinwari), representing 400,000 Pashtuns in the eastern province, have pledged to send at least one male from each family to ANA. This pact is the first time an entire Pashtun tribe has declared war on Taliban insurgents. In return US commanders have given $1 million directly to tribal leaders, bypassing the local government.

A mighty force will succeed in all this. It will not succeed, however, in preventing the Taliban from moving back in. But their numbers will be small and may no longer have the capacity to mount large-scale operations to overwhelm any particular location.

What it means, therefore, is that ANA will represent a domestic authority that will stand up to the Taliban as and when the ISAF begins to draw down. The ANA of late has shown tremendous resilience and held its own against the Taliban. Gen. Kayani knows that it will take the ANA at least three to five years to take over all its responsibilities, in which time they will continue to grow stronger at the expense of the Taliban. This is what, if handled well, will prevent India from going down under. As the ANA grows over the new few years, from 170,000 in end 2010 to 300,000 by the end of next year, it will require $12 billion a year from the current $6 to $7 billion annually. With Nato approving the expansion of the ANA trust fund to allow non-Nato countries to contribute, India can chip in. An ANA sympathetic to India is a big source of worry for Gen. Kayani and, hence, his sudden offer to train them.

For the moment the US is concentrating on a ruthless military efficiency which seeks to marginalise the Taliban in its own heartland while the Special Forces and drones undertake precision strikes against the Haqqani network and Al Qaeda in North Waziristan. If the ISAF mission succeeds in sufficiently separating the Pashtun population from the Taliban and degrading the latter’s economic and military strength, it will set the ISAF and Afghan government tone for negotiations from a position of strength. Then, it will not be only Pakistan that will matter; there will be the ANA, and Afghanistan’s northern neighbours who have enduring interests in and influence over particular segments of Afghanistan. India is not out of the Afghan equation. Not yet. This is Gen. Kayani’s worry.

Courtsey: The Asian Age, 12 March 2010

http://www.asianage.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5168:the-afghan-equation&catid=40:opinion&Itemid=65   

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).