Recent media reports speculating about Islamabad's control of the Taliban do not take account of the fragmentation of authority both within Pakistan and within the Taliban. So says Faisal Devji, Reader in Modern South Asian History at Oxford. In an exclusive interview with Shyam Bhatia of asianaffairs, Dr Devji draws attention to the recently translated memoirs of Mullah Zaeed, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, which he says reek of contempt for the Pakistani establishment.

AA: Were you surprised by recent media reports about how Pakistan controls the Taliban?
FD: I wasn't surprised by them because one has seen this sort of thing before. I am a bit surprised that people are taking such reports so seriously and at face value. Because it seems to me that whatever the government of Pakistan is, whatever people mean when they talk about Pakistan 'controlling' the Taliban — whether they mean the government in power, the ISI or some faction within it — none of these parties really can be seen as being actors unified and politically capable of running a group such as the Taliban, which itself is not unified internally. So I think that mechanistic relationship of one party creating or controlling the other is just not possible, whoever you're talking about.

AA: Who is fighting whom in Afghanistan? It's very confusing. Are we looking at a proxy war?
FD: In a way I think all the great struggles that have permeated that region have been in some sense proxy wars. This applies whether you're talking about the anti-Soviet jihad, in which Saudi Arabia, Britain and many other states including Pakistan were involved, or whether we are talking about the struggle for control amongst the various warlords after the eviction of the Soviets — in which Iran and other countries were involved — or whether you are talking about the situation today. Internal rivalries in Pakistan themselves have also been part of the proxy war. Those include sectarian animosities between Shia and Sunni that go back a long way, that go back before the war on terror and into the time of that Soviet jihad in which you have pro- and anti-Iranian factions, pro-Iraqi and pro-Iranian factions, pro-Saudi factions, etc. So Pakistan, in a way more than Afghanistan, has served as a sort of arena for proxy wars for others across the entire extended region. The interesting question then is what role has Pakistan, its army and government played? Have they simply been tools of other powers, have they simply been complicit in these wars? It goes back to the first question: how can you actually identify a unified political actor? There seem to be so many links in the chain that it is not possible to actually sequester one or two actors and say these are the people who are doing what they are doing.

AA: Well you have one consistent actor in the shape of the US. Who are the proxies ranged against the US in Afghanistan?
FD: In various ways you have on the one hand elements within the Pakistani establishment. I say that also to make it clear that the Pakistani establishment cannot be seen as unified, though they are unified in other ways — that is to say, they might be related to each other in some sense. So that's an interesting phenomenon where you actually have kinship linkages. Then of course you have other powers in the region, whether Iran — which has interests not only in Afghanistan but also in Pakistan — India, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

AA: Have they all been operating through Pakistan?
FD: I think they have been in the past in various ways, but not in the same battles. That's the interesting thing. There's an interesting layering. So if you look at Shia-Sunni disputes in Pakistan, those are obviously influenced by what's happening in the larger region, whether it's the Iranian revolution, whether it was the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan which provided a lot of funding for Sunni militants, whether it's what's going on in Saudi Arabia. It occupies its own plateau in a way, though it's linked to other struggles. The point to note is the way each one of these struggles is connected to the other ones. It's not as if they are all the same thing. So it might mean the same players are engaged in more than one kind of struggle in Pakistan and Pakistan can be described as a vast battlefield. It's basically a borderland in which everyone appears to interfere, despite the fact that it has a very strong army and governments that are not simply superficial — not like Somalia. That's what's puzzling to outside observers because here you have a country which, no matter what kind of violence occurs within it, actually has a large, important, functioning, standing army. It has governments, it's not a lawless state and yet at the same time it allows its territory to be used for these great international struggles, sometimes willingly, sometimes perhaps due to a certain kind of weakness. In a way you could say it is Pakistan's linkages with the outside world, with the great powers in particular, that allow it to be used in this way.
When the US decides to wage a proxy war, as it did against the Soviets, for which it used Pakistan, you can't imagine that only they will have the right to use Pakistan in such a way. The fact that they do so brings everyone else in and not simply the Soviets.

AA: If Pakistani elements are involved in supporting the Taliban, does this provide the US with still more excuses to launch attacks on Pakistani territory?
FD: My suspicion is first of all, yes, it does provide an excuse and the drone attacks will continue. But my suspicion is that it is not clear whether even at the highest levels the Americans know why that should be the case. It's not clear to me whether it has become repetitive, compulsive behaviour, which achieves results, obviously, but the costs are extremely high. Not simply in civilian casualties and loss of property, but also in terms of reputation. America's reputation suffers not only internationally, but also in Pakistan itself with high levels of anti-American feeling. It's also not clear how these kinds of attacks will work when there are not enough examples on the ground of alternative modes of governance that are linked to the US.

AA: Conspiracy theorists would argue that selective leaks about the on-ground situation in Afghanistan are designed to prepare public opinion for still more attacks.
FD: Yes, and of course this can become an endless movement. You have a bunch of attacks that are preparing the ground for some other thing and that other thing comes but proves to be a damp squib; then something else happens. The problem is that nobody's clear, not simply because these are necessarily clandestine operations, but because you might move out people from one area and create a refugee problem, and then a similar problem pops up in another area when you go there as well. In other words there doesn't seem to be any incrementality. It looks like a lot of fire-fighting.
What we put into question here is the credibility of the US as a power that can not only deal with its enemies but that can set up effective models of governance in the territories of the people they support.

AA: When you have weak political leadership in the West, isn't that when their intelligence agencies start to assert themselves in troubled areas, even though they have their own limitations? We saw that in Vietnam.
FD: Yes, you see it very clearly here as well. It's partly to do with the hyper-professionalisation of all these services, which makes them in some ways very effective, but also makes them even less able to grasp the more general issues and problems. In a way the old-fashioned amateurs could do it much better. People who could multi-task, to use today's jargon, and be diplomats as well as something else. Partly, it has to do with the fragmentation of authority, which mirrors in a perverse way the fragmentation of authority among the enemies of the US, the militants, where you have outside contractors. We know that at the lower levels of institutionalised counter-insurgency, this has proven to be as much a handicap as an asset. For instance, cases like Abu Ghraib in Iraq etc, all kinds of things are allowed to happen that end up costing the US a lot.

AA: The US military machine does not seem to understand that when you devolve power without responsibility, or you decentralise so that those fighting the wars for you are not accountable, terrible things will happen.
FD: That's precisely the case. The intriguing thing for me is how, in the absence of accountability, in the absence of an ability to fully control all the actors who are there in the name of security — private contractors and others — what seems to be emerging is the language of morality and ethics. Again, the mirroring of militant organisations is astounding. It's not deliberate but what it shows is two products of contemporary modernity operating at cross purposes politically, but in reality in a quite similar manner when you think of their organisational faults.

AA: If the conflict in Afghanistan intensifies what will be the repercussions for the region?
FD: Not very pleasant ones. Even if it doesn't escalate, there are enough problems to deal with. The fact that Afghanistan has now apparently been discovered to possess huge deposits of important minerals and precious metals like lithium, gold, iron etc means that potentially it can be economically a very important country. But at the same time, it means it could go the same way as the Democratic Republic of Congo, which also has massive resources. Hence it's not necessarily good news. It might easily lead towards more fragmentation, warlordism, etc, and that process could easily also be, if not encouraged, then colluded in by corporations that are eager to access resources. We know what happens in Central Africa. We are at a moment which is really crucial. It's not simply a matter of the political hostilities of the parties concerned, but also these new entrants, economic players of various kinds and it's no longer opium that's going to be the only thing on offer. All these developments have the ability to spin completely out of control and this is worrying for all the regional powers, whether it's China, India or Russia. The important thing is how China does not appear to have put in much of an appearance, either in Pakistan, where it has very significant interests, or in Afghanistan. That is a question rarely asked: why China is relatively invisible in these areas, whereas India is not. It's very visible in Afghanistan.

AA: You mention fragmentation. Can you envisage a divided Pushtun/Tajik Afghanistan and indeed a divided Pakistan?
FD: The fear is certainly there, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I have heard it said at the highest levels of the Pakistani elite that the country might be split up and suffer another partition. I don't place much credence on these fears, but it's true there are regional secessionist movements. What's also true, however, is that the countries that neighbour Pakistan are unlikely to see that the partitioning or splitting up of Pakistan is of any help to them. They would probably not want it to happen. Not Iran, not India, not even Afghanistan. Such a splitting up would alter their own demographic balance of power. I don't feel it would suit them. In fact each one of those countries is more likely to want a stable Pakistan. Afghanistan too — since the end of Soviet rule, people have spoken of splitting up, Pushtuns and Tajiks especially. The countervailing argument is that Afghans, at the end of the day, tend to constantly go on about a single Afghanistan and there has been no movement for separation. There has simply been pressure for a more equitable distribution of power and resources and that is something that can be organised. In the long term, if the whole of South Asia becomes an EU-like structure perhaps, then these issues of fragmentation can re-emerge but be dealt with in a non-violent way.

AA: What would happen if the Taliban were ever to return to power in Afghanistan?
FD: The Taliban today have certainly learned from its own history and it's not clear to me that they could ever return to power on their own, first of all. Secondly, even if they did, they simply wouldn't repeat their disastrous experiment, which was made possible by circumstances that no longer exist. For instance, the fact that you had post-Soviet Russia licking its wounds on one side, lack of US and Western interest in Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the role of supporting groups like the Taliban that it believed would represent its interests, especially against India. Some of these factors are still in play but others couldn't re-emerge in the same way.

AA: What is the mindset of the Taliban leadership now?
FD: One thing that's more exacerbated now than in the past is anti-Pakistani feeling. It's ironic when you think about the way in which there's so much support been given by Pakistan to the Taliban. But you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who has a good thing to say about Pakistan, even the ISI. The recently translated memoirs of Mullah Zaeed, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, are indicative in this respect. He has nothing but contempt for the Pakistani establishment, even those who helped him. In this way the Taliban are like many Afghan parties. You might call them ungrateful, but there's a degree of nationalism there that prevents even a Taliban-supported government from becoming the tool in the hands of Pakistan.

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