*Enter the year of the Taliban *
M K Bhadrakumar
No matter what the Chinese may say about 2012 being the year of the dragon,
this is going to be the year of the Taliban so far as the United States is
concerned.
The New Year began with an exciting media "leak" by senior United States
officials in Washington that the Barack Obama administration was
considering the transfer to Afghan custody of a senior Taliban official,
Mullah Mohammed Fazl, who has been detained at the US facility at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for the past nine years.
The officials claimed Fazl might be released (or transferred to Qatar) in
response to a longstanding request by Kabul as a "confidence-building
measure" intended to underscore to the Taliban the US's seriousness in
engaging them.
To be sure, the Obama administration is raring to go. Just about four
months are left for the summit meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) in Chicago, an event showcasing Obama's leadership of
the Western alliance - and that he can lead from the front - embedded
within his unpredictable re-election bid. The summit is expected to focus
world attention on the Afghan situation.
With the Europeans caught in existential angst due to their grave economic
crisis, Obama needs to use all his charm on his NATO colleagues not to
ditch him in Afghanistan. For that, he needs to convince them that he is
leading them to the end of the dark tunnel. The Chicago summit cannot
afford to fail, as happened with the two events leading to it - the
Istanbul meet on November 2 and the Bonn Conference II on December 2.
But the mood in the region surrounding Afghanistan is turning ugly.
Moscow has dealt a devastating blow to the game plan drawn up by the US
and NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen eyeing Central Asia
tactically as the backyard for Afghan operations if push comes to shove in
the US's relations with Pakistan - and strategically as a platform for the
great game toward Russia, China and Iran.
In a geopolitical coup, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
summit in Moscow on December 20 took a momentous decision that for the
setting up of foreign military bases on CSTO territory, there had to be
approval by all member states of the Moscow-led alliance that also includes
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan. Kazakhstan President Nurusultan Nazarbayev announced with a
straight face:
The most important outcome of our meeting was an agreement on the
coordination of military infrastructure deployment by non-members of CSTO
on the territory of CSTO member states. Now, in order to deploy a military
base of a third country on the territory of a CST.O member state, it will
be necessary to obtain official approval of all CSTO member states. I think
this is a clear sign of the organization's unity and its members' utmost
loyalty to allied relations
The last sentence was dripping with irony since the Obama administration
had just recently taken a decision to provide military assistance to
Uzbekistan in a policy turnaround with the intent to hijack the key Central
Asian country to undermine the CSTO. To Washington's dismay, Uzbek
President Islam Karimov not only attended the CSTO summit in Moscow, but
went on to voice his support of the alliance's decision.
With this, Moscow signaled to Washington that its monopoly of
conflict-resolution in Afghanistan has to end. The US has a choice to crawl
back into Pakistan's favor and persuade Islamabad to reopen the transit
routes that have been shut down for a month already or, alternatively, fall
back on the Northern Distribution Network for supplying NATO troops and for
taking the men and materials out as the troop drawdown picks momentum
through 2011.
The CSTO decision hangs like a sword of Damocles on the US base in Manas
near Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, which is a strategic hub for air
transportation.
There is no evidence so far that Russia and Pakistan have begun acting in
tandem - although, in his statement anticipating Russia's foreign policy
priorities for 2012, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did single out
Pakistan.
*As the crow flies ...*
Amid all this, Fazl's possible release from Guantanamo comes as a
masterstroke by Washington aimed at scattering the growing regional
bonhomie over the Afghan situation. The Obama administration hopes to
release a fox into the chicken pen. Fazl is one of the most experienced
Taliban commanders who has been with Taliban leader Mullah Omar almost from
day one and he held key positions commanding the Taliban army.
He would have been a favorite of both Mullah Omar and Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and his "homecoming" ought to bring joy
to both. On the other hand, he was also culpable for the massacre of
thousands of Hazara Shi'ites during 1998-2001 and was possibly accountable
for the execution of eight Iranian diplomats in the northern Afghan city of
Mazar-i-Sharif.
Fazl inspires visceral hatred in the Iranian mind and could create
misunderstandings in Pakistan-Iran relations (which have been on an upswing
in recent years) and put Islamabad on the horns of a dilemma vis-a-vis
Mullah Omar.
Fazl is also a notorious personality from the Central Asian and Russian
viewpoint insofar as he used to be the Taliban's point person for al-Qaeda
and its regional affiliates such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
(IMU) and Chechen rebels. He was also in charge of the strategic Kunduz
region bordering the "soft underbelly" of Central Asia where he was based
with IMU chief Juma Namangani at the time of the US intervention in October
2011.
Fazl belongs to the "pre-Haqqani clan" era. Will the Haqqani network - a
key component of the Taliban-led insurgency from its base in Pakistan's
tribal areas - accept Fazl's "seniority" and give way to him? Pakistan may
have to prioritize its "strategic assets"; it is a veritable minefield.
Enter Qatar, which is increasingly emerging as the US's closest ally in the
Middle East next only to Israel. The Obama administration feels impressed
by the skill Qatar displayed in theaters as diverse as Libya, Egypt and
Syria in finessing the Muslim Brotherhood and other seemingly intractable
Islamist groups and helping the US to catap ult itself to the "right side
of history" in the Middle East.
The Obama administration is optimistic that if Fazl could be left to able
Qatari hands, he could be recycled as an Islamist politician for a
democratic era.
Fazl does have the credentials to bring Mullah Omar on board for launching
formal peace talks. Fazl enjoys credibility among the Taliban militia and
they would be inclined to emulate his reincarnation. His bonding with
Islamist forces in Pakistan and the ISI could be useful channels of
communication with Islamabad, which will come under pressure to cooperate
with the US-led peace talks, or at the very least refrain from undercutting
them.
Indeed, he is the perfect antidote to Iran's influence in Afghanistan. Once
Qatar is through with him, Fazl becomes just the right partner for
Washington in the great game if the Arab Spring were to appear in Central
Asia, holding prospects of regime change and the rise of "Islamic
democracies" in the steppes. Fazl can be trusted to persuade Taliban not to
make such a terrible issue out of the US plans to establish military bases
in Afghanistan.
However, will the plan work?
Pakistan may have fired the first salvo of the New Year to demolish the US
plan when Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said in Islamabad on
Monday:
Establishing sustainable security and stability in Afghanistan is
impossible without Iran's role. To establish security and reinvigorate
Afghanistan, Iran must be given due attention and must be trusted, because
pushing the trend of peace and establishing durable security and stability
without Iran's partnership is impossible.
Basit was speaking within earshot of the whirring sound of the Iranian
cruise missile with the ferocious name Qader (Mighty) fired from an
undisclosed location unambiguously demonstrating Tehran's capability to
enforce a blockade of the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
An accomplished diplomat, he certainly knows Doha lies just 547 kilometers
away as the flies from the Strait of Hormuz. Fazl won't be safe in Doha.
*Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.*
|