Pashtun Nationalism Can Spoil Pakistan’s Euphoria
Pakistan has solicited funding for the Taliban, bankrolled Taliban operations, provided diplomatic support as the Taliban’s virtual emissaries abroad, arranged training for Taliban fighters, recruited skilled and unskilled manpower to serve in Taliban armies, planned and directed offensives, provided and facilitated shipments of ammunition and fuel, and on several occasions apparently directly providing combat support.
The Pakistan government has repeatedly denied that it provides any military support to the Taliban in its diplomacy regarding its extensive operations in Afghanistan.
In direct violation of U.N. sanctions Pakistan’s army and intelligence services, principally the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), contributed to making the Taliban a highly effective military force. Pakistan’s notoriously porous border with Afghanistan facilitated the transshipment of men and materiel.
History of Military Support
Pakistan has a history of military support for different factions within Afghanistan, extending at least as far back as the early 1970s. During the 1980s, Pakistan, which was host to more than two million Afghan refugees, was the most significant front-line state serving as a secure base for the mujahidin fighting against the Soviet intervention.
Pakistan also served, in the 1980s, as a U.S. stalking horse: the U.S., through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), granted Pakistan wide discretion in channelling some $2-3 billion worth of covert assistance to the mujahidin, training over 80,000 of them.
Even after the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, serving and former Pakistani military officers continued to provide training and advisory services in training camps within Afghanistan and eventually to Taliban forces in combat.
In addition, Pakistan promoted the emergence of a government in Afghanistan that would reduce Pakistan’s own vulnerability to internal unrest by helping to contain the nationalist aspirations of tribes whose territories straddle the Pakistani-Afghan border.
Pakistan also sought to quell local support for Afghanistan’s ambitions of redrawing the Durand line. Thus, Pakistan came to throw its support behind the Hizb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hikmatyar, a Pashtun-dominated group that espoused an Islamist rather than nationalist agenda. Because the U.S. granted Pakistan wide discretion in channelling its covert assistance to the mujahidin based in Pakistan, Pakistan was able to give Hikmatyar the lion’s share.
Strategic Depth
Throughout the war against the communist government and Soviet forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan asserted a mix of internal and external concerns. The ISI and Pakistan army sought leverage against the hostile neighbour on its eastern border, India, by giving Pakistan “strategic depth.”
Pakistan has always wanted Afghanistan as strategic depth against India. An Afghanistan that facilitated those connections and provided Pakistan with a base to pursue its objectives in Kashmir would give it greater security against India. It has also been part of the ‘Great Game’ against India. Pakistan believes that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will eliminate Indian threat through Afghanistan.
With strategic depth, Pakistan can retreat into Afghanistan if India attacks. Second, they can rain their missiles on India from Afghanistan. And third, they can utilize jihadis from Afghanistan to launch a new jihad in Kashmir.
The New Taliban
Islamabad believes that it has the Taliban by the scruff of the neck, a term once used by Pakistan’s Chief of General Staff, Lt Gen Mohammed Aziz, during the time of the Kargil operations.
But the Taliban of today are not the naïve Talibs that the Pakistanis created under the leadership of Mullah Omar. This generation are seasoned militants who have sometimes experienced jail and ill-treatment at the hands of the Pakistanis. Islamabad hopes that its control over the Taliban logistics will continue to provide it leverage, as will the presence of its powerful proxy—the Haqqani Network which has been absorbed into the Taliban over the past two decades. But the rapid consolidation of authority over Afghanistan by the Taliban and their outreach to Iran is likely to have upset those calculations.
Pakistan has an uphill task in converting its tactical advantages in Afghanistan into strategic gains. The Pakistan army is now in the driver’s seat in Kabul. But can it drive the Afghan state and society anywhere, let alone in a sensible direction?
It did not come as a surprise that Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), dashed to Kabul after Taliban’s victory to secure his government’s interests. Hamid’s role was also to mediate between different Taliban factions on power-sharing and launch a sustainable new Afghan government.
With Pakistan supported Haqqani group occupying cabinet berths in the new Afghan dispensation, terrorist groups are likely to continue to flourish, rather than be controlled, as globally demanded. The Haqqanis are suspected to be close to the Islamic State (ISIS-K) which launched the suicide attack on Kabul airport. They are also closely associated with Pak-backed terrorist groups, JeM and LeT, which operate in Kashmir. The new Afghan army chief, Qari Fasihuddin, has ties with the ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement). Russian security agencies believe that thousands of ISIS-K cadres are concentrated along Afghanistan’s borders with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Hence, the world rejected the Afghan government and tended to ignore its populace, pushing this responsibility on to Pakistan. Pakistan is itself in financial doldrums and facing food shortages. It cannot afford to fund and feed an additional 40 million without global support. Pakistan, which should have enforced a globally desired government in Kabul, at least initially, pushed one which it could control, ignoring global demands.
It is possible that Pakistan would have promised to support and fund Afghanistan in return for creating a government which it desires. Now it is saddled with a nation which, though possessing billions of dollars’ worth of US military equipment, lacks basic food stocks and funds to administer the country. Afghanistan may be compelled to export drugs or sell US equipment for immediate financial needs.
The Problem With Durand Line
What the Pakistanis do not realize is that they have a soft underbelly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan is strong enough to destabilise Afghanistan, but not powerful enough to construct a stable political order across the Durand Line.
While the Taliban were beholden to Pakistan for evicting the Soviets from their land, they never recognized the Durand Line as their official border with Pakistan. The Taliban consider the Durand Line as a figment of the British imagination. Afghanistan dearly wants to merge Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with itself. Needless to say the Pakistanis are not happy with this ambition. They want the Durand Line to be recognized as the international border with Afghanistan as soon as possible.
The Durand Line is a legacy of the 19th century Great Game between the Russian and British empires in which Afghanistan was used as a buffer by the British against a feared Russian expansionism to its east.
The agreement demarcating what became known as the Durand Line was signed on November 12, 1893 between the British civil servant Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman, then the Afghan ruler, essentially a British puppet. His agreement with Durand demarcated the limits of his and British India’s “spheres of influence” on the Afghan “frontier” with India.
In reality, the line cut through Pashtun tribal areas, leaving villages, families, and land divided between the two “spheres of influence”. It has been described as a “line of hatred”, arbitrary, illogical, cruel and a trickery on the Pashtuns. Some historians believe it was a ploy to divide the Pashtuns so that the British could keep control over them easily. It also put on the British side the strategic Khyber Pass.
With Independence in 1947, Pakistan inherited the Durand Line, and with it also the Pashtun rejection of the line, and Afghanistan’s refusal to recognise it. Afghanistan was the only country to vote against Pakistan joining the United Nations in 1947.
‘Pashtunistan’ — an independent country of the Pashtuns — was a demand made by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan at the time of Partition, although he later resigned himself to the reality of Partition. The proximity of the ‘Frontier Gandhi’ to India was a point of tension between the two countries almost immediately. The fear of Indian support to Pashtun nationalism haunts Pakistan to date, and is embedded in its Afghan policy.
Pakistan’s creation and support for the Taliban is seen by some as a move to obliterate ethnic Pashtun nationalism with an Islamic identity. But it did not work out the way Pakistan had planned. When the Taliban seized power in Kabul the first time, they rejected the Durand Line. They also strengthened Pashtun identity with an Islamic radicalism to produce the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, whose terrorist attacks since 2007 left the country shaken.
As cross-border tensions peaked in 2017 with several attacks on Pakistani border posts by militants that Pakistan accused Afghanistan of sheltering – while the Afghan government accused Pakistan of giving safe haven to Afghan Taliban and Haqqani Network – Pakistan began erecting a fence on the Durand Line. While it may have reduced the movement of militants from Afghanistan into Pakistan, it did little to stop the movement of Afghan Taliban across and back.
