The jirga, a Pashto word meaning meeting of elders, brought together 25 Afghan and 25 Pakistani politicians, tribal elders, government officials and intellectuals in Islamabad on October 27-28. It was a sequel to the inaugural grand jirga of about 700 Afghan and Pakistan delegates held in Kabul in August 2007. The Kabul jirga had also decided to hold peace and reconciliation talks with armed opponents of the Afghan government but nothing came of that initiative.
The Islamabad jirga, or jirgagai as it was called due to the small number of participants, endorsed the need to hold peace talks with the militants but this time negotiations would be held with armed opponents of both Afghan and Pakistan governments. However, the offer of talks is conditional as the Islamabad jirga made it clear that the opposition groups such as Taliban would have to accept the constitution of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, lay down their arms and stop fighting the armies of the two countries.
As expected, Taliban rejected the condition and even questioned the representative character of the jirga as it was packed with people nominated by the Afghan and Pakistan governments. Taliban also reiterated their condition that the United States-led foreign forces must withdraw from Afghanistan before talks could be held with the Afghan government. As for the Pakistani Taliban, they are an extension of Afghan Taliban and follow their example in decision-making. The U.S. too has placed conditions by differentiating between reconcilable and irreconcilable elements among the Taliban and other armed groups and ruling out talks with the ‘irreconcilables’ such as the Mulla Omar-led hardliners who dominate the Taliban Islamic movement.
As all parties to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan want their conditions to be met before peace talks could be held, it is obvious that there is little chance of any breakthrough in bringing the combatants to the negotiating table. It is interesting, though, that none of the parties to the conflict is opposing peace talks and Nato military commanders and a number of western politicians are publicly saying that the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan is un-winnable. Sooner or later, the combatants would have to begin peace talks and certain peacemaking initiatives, including the one spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, hold much promise.
Any peace initiative to be successful would have to first remove the misgivings that Afghan and Pakistani government harbour about each other. Some months ago the two neighbouring Islamic countries were on a collision course. The suicide bombing that targeted the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July and killed about 50 people was the reason for the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to indulge in a blame-game.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry, without even waiting for any findings or preliminary investigations, blamed the ‘regional intelligence circles’ for coordinating and advising the terrorists who carried out the attack. The ministry’s top official General Zahir Azimi, and following him President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, didn’t name Pakistan or its prime secret service, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), directly but there was no doubt about the hint given by them. Subsequently, the accusations against Pakistan became focused and sections of the Afghan media also started blaming the ISI for the bombing. It was alleged that Taliban had carried out the attack with assistance from the ISI. The American CIA later endorsed these allegations by claiming that the ISI was involved in the attack.
By not claiming responsibility for this particular suicide bombing, Taliban may have escaped the blame for killing so many civilians but Pakistan still couldn’t get out of the firing line. India also suspected Pakistan’s hand in the attack and its Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor came up with a statement that ISI’s hand in the bombing couldn’t be ruled out.
Predictably, Pakistan rejected the allegations and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the Kabul bombing and sympathised with the victims. Gilani argued that a stable Afghanistan was in Pakistan’s interest and his country had nothing to gain from sponsoring bombings and destabilising its neighbour.
Such verbal sparring has become a standard practice and an integral part of the uneasy relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The two neighbours have been unable to have normal and friendly ties. Afghanistan was the only country in the world that opposed Pakistan’s creation in 1947 and its representative, Abdur Rahman Pazhwak, in the United Nations at the time, made claim to parts of the newly independent state. Subsequently, this claim evolved into Afghanistan’s backing for Pashtunistan, which was to be carved out from Pakistan as a state for the Pashtun people inhabiting Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan. Successive Afghan governments, including those led by the pro-Pakistan groups such as the Afghan mujahideen and Taliban who ruled the country during the 1990s, never formally recognised the Durand Line border between the two countries. The long and porous border hasn’t been demarcated at certain places and Afghan and Pakistani border guards have several times clashed due to disputes on the status of the boundary.
The bitterness marking Pak-Afghan relations was particularly intense in the aftermath of the suicide bombing at the Indian Embassy in Kabul because the incident took place not long after the attack on the national parade in the Afghan capital on April 27. The Afghan intelligence agency had put the blame for that attack also on Pakistan and accused it of trying to use the occasion to kill President Karzai. Taliban had claimed responsibility for that attack, which had embarrassed the Afghan government and the U.S.-led Nato forces operating in Afghanistan as it occurred due to security lapse at such an important event.
The dramatic rise in Taliban attacks in 2008, including the suicide bombing at the upscale Serena Hotel in Kabul and the spectacular jailbreak in Kandahar, had also raised tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan on account of the strong belief in Kabul that Taliban hiding in Pakistan’s tribal areas were planning and executing such strikes. The issue of cross-border infiltration of Taliban and other militants from Pakistan has become a major irritant in Pak-Afghan relations and the U.S. and its western allies having troops in Afghanistan were supporting Kabul in the matter. This issue took a dangerous turn recently when the U.S. Special Forces launched a ground assault in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region and killed 20 people, all civilians and including four women and five children. Besides, the U.S. missile attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas have also increased in intensity and ferocity. The increased U.S. attacks in Pakistani territory threaten to adversely affect Pakistan’s relations not only with America but also with Afghanistan. It has already contributed to rise in anti-U.S. sentiment in Pakistan and damaged the credibility of the new democratic, post-Musharraf government due to its weak response to the incursions by American troops in Pakistani territory.
The Pak-Afghan border is now a symbol of hostility. Clashes erupt on the slightest pretext between border guards even at Torkham and Chaman, the two official crossing-points between the two countries. In June 2003, a major clash took place when Pakistani troops marched into the remotest parts of Mohmand tribal region on the border with Afghanistan to establish the state’s writ in a no-man’s land. The border clash strained Pak-Afghan ties to such an extent that the UN offered mediation and the U.S. actually got involved in reconciling its two allies with one other.
It is no longer a secret that Pakistan skilfully used the opportunity presented by America’s so-called war on terror to extend its writ to remote, unadministered tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. In December 2001, Pakistan for the first time deployed troops in Tirah valley in Khyber tribal region and in parts of Kurram on a request by the U.S. to block entry of Al Qaeda fighters fleeing its military operations and bombing in the Tora Bora mountain range in eastern Afghanistan. Pakistan’s proactive policy angered the former Afghan government, which argued that Islamabad must consult it before taking and implementing any major decision concerning the tribal areas.
There are other irritants as well in Pak-Afghan relationship. Pakistan is concerned about the growing Indian influence in Afghanistan and has often complained about the use of Afghan soil by New Delhi to destabilise Pakistan’s border provinces, NWFP and Balochistan, where Islamic militants and Baloch nationalists are challenging the writ of the state. It was also worried that the Northern Alliance, which was made up of Afghan warlords and politicians known for their hostility to Pakistan, monopolised power in the Afghan government until President Karzai started sidelining its leadership. There is no love lost between Pakistan and components of the Northern Alliance.
The issue of the Afghan transit trade through overland routes in Pakistan also causes friction. Then there is the issue of more than two million Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan. Islamabad wants the refugees to be repatriated but it cannot force them to leave as such a move would cause adverse reaction worldwide. Donors are no longer helping Pakistan share the burden that the Afghan refugees are exerting on its economy. Another concern in Islamabad is Kabul’s patronage for Pakistani tribal elders and its efforts to use them to stir up trouble in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
It is obvious that resurgence of Taliban in Afghanistan has not only increased risk to the lives of Nato soldiers but also added a dangerous new element to the already tense and uncertain ties between Islamabad and Kabul. Given the historic animosity that characterised their relationship, there is little hope of any improvement in the situation.
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