Our disjointed Afghan policy

By

Dr Ghayur Ayub 

Governments, all over the world, do not change ongoing policies no matter which party wins an election. Pakistan is unique in this regards. Over the years, we have seen new governments introducing, new policies within first six months of their inceptions, to prove that they are doing something superb for the country and for the people. Whether it helps the public is another matter; all I can say is that, in the process, the crafty bureaucrats (A well-known retired police officer and a good writer call them bureaucats) improve their ratings in the eyes of politicians running the governments. I have already written on the subject of Health Policies'; today I would like to write a word or two on our Afghan policy which seems disjointed.  

As a matter of principle, the policy-makers of progressive countries make foreign policies according to the situations surrounding their immediate neighbourhood. They know that trouble with neighbours can create unnecessary hindrance in the progress, especially if a particular neighbour has a troubled past history. History tells us that shrewd British created a buffer zone between Afghanistan and united India to avoid problems spilling over to the mainland. They called it the Tribal Belt. Cleverly, they controlled the region by mixing centuries old Khanate system with administrative setup of British Raj and termed it FCR. Through FCR, they legalised tribal customs based on Jirga system and linked them with Indian Penal Code inserting a few new draconian clauses that gave unprecedented powers to the political agents. It worked well, indeed very well.

At the birth of Pakistan, British left us with nothing; no security, no financial backups, no government, no army, practically nothing. All we had was a limping imported bureaucracy from Indian Civil Service. Unlike India, Pakistan lacked visionaries and visionaries don't grow on trees. The situation got worse with untimely demise of Mohammad Ali Jinnah leaving Pakistan in a vacuum having short-sighted policy-makers who were only good in adhocism. The process continues. If it wasn't for the specific instructions of Quad-e-Azam to keep the tribal belt a buffer zone, our political forefathers would have engulfed them into settled area; just like they are trying to do so at present.

They ignored the basic principle of neighbourhood importance and sidelined Afghanistan. A prime example was the replacement of the first Pukhtun ambassador, A. S. B. Shah. According to the sources, he was replaced because Afghanistan was the only country that voted against Pakistan in UN.  A Muhajir from Bombay, I. I. Chundrigar was sent as envoy, who lacked knowledge about Pukhtun customs and culture and was known to carry low opinion of Afghans. (As luck would have it, later, he became the prime minister.) Diplomatic mistakes such as that caused us dearly, where instead of mending the situation; we sowed the seeds of mistrust. Over the years, the situation got worse, when we started playing in the hands of foreign powers for all the wrong reasons. As a result, America once used us on the name of "˜fundamentalist Islam' and left us high and dry after they achieved their goals. Now, they are using us, on the name of "˜moderate Islam' to fight a war which was not initiated by us. 

I am not against joining a country as coalition partner in a war, as long as it is in the interest of that country. Those interests could be financial, developmental, social, cultural, honour and in case of Pakistan, religious. The criteria of such interests should spiral around public welfare. But sadly, the leaders seemingly ignore those criteria. For example, today, our leadership is fighting a war not because of their commitment to the public welfare but because their commitments are glued to things like NRO.  

Coming back to the topic; I remember in 1958, my father was the Consul of Pakistan in Kandahar. That was the time, when relations between the two countries were at the lower ebb which ended in closure of embassies and consulates. Before the closures, the agents from Afghan secret service chased us wherever we travelled. Once we were travelling from Kandahar to Chaman and on our way we lost track of them. My father asked the driver to turn the car back in case they met an accident and needed help. We found them a few kilometres down the road. On enquiry, they told us that they went out of Benzene. We helped them fill their tank. They were very grateful and became friendly. They used to tell us that Pakistanis are good people and majority of Afghans respect and liked them. Such a message coming from the officials of secret service meant a lot especially in those days when the two governments were at loggerhead. The interesting thing was that, those goodwill feelings had nothing to do with religion. If religion played active role in their political and social life than the Hindus and Sikhs would not have developed thriving businesses in Kabul and other major cities.

This subtle goodwill surfaced in the coming decades when they supported us in our wars with India in 1965 and again in 1971. They spread their arms and opened their hearts in those difficult days. But our successive leadership failed to understand the Afghan psyche. It was the visionary leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who, for the first time, understood it and took steps in the right direction. He worked hard to reduce tension created by his misguided predecessors and built realistic relation of cordiality with Sardar Dawood Khan. According to retired senior bureaucrats from foreign office, the two leaders were at the verge of signing agreement on the Durand Line issue. The final draft was already cleared by both the governments. Meanwhile Dawood was assassinated and the document never reached the table. While waiting for an appropriate time, ZAB was also removed and the matter was not taken up by the military government disrupting the continuity of a stable policy.  

Similarly, Nawaz Sharif government approached Engineer Masood by holding a meeting with Taliban government in Dushanbe in 1997. Further meetings were held in Ashqabad and Dushanbe in the following year. The final draft was prepared which, among other things, included a framework with following salient features;

1.      Taliban agreed to take members of Masood group in the Shura.

2.      The Shura would frame a Constitution for Afghanistan within three months.

3.      Elections would be held according to that Constitution bringing all the divergent groups within the constitutional democratic framework.

An important meeting was arranged between Engineer Masood and Taliban in November 1999 to finalise the deal. On October 12, 1999, army took over the reign and when the interior secretary (by then he was removed from his post) asked the government about the meeting, he was told Afghanistan was not the top priority on the list of military government. It is the lack in continuity of a stable Afghan policy that pushed Pakistan back on the track of diplomacy. As a result, we have made and are still making more adversaries than friends, both within and outside the country with regards to Afghanistan. Lets us look at the results of such policy;

1.      The Taliban are against us.

2.      The vast majority of Pukhtuns are not happy.

3.      The Afghan Muhajirs are against us

4.       The Afghan government is not happy with us

5.       The America, as coalition partner, is not happy with us

6.       The major political parties are not happy

7.      The major political partner of coalition-PML-N-is not happy

8.      A good number of PPP is not happy

9.      A large number of MNAs and Senators are not happy.

10.  The civil society is not happy

11.  The lawyers are not happy

12.  A sizable retired army officers are not happy

13.  A vast number of students and other professional bodies are not happy.

14.  A vast majority of tribal, including their legislators are not happy.

The big question is who is happy with this apparently disjointed Afghan Policy of ours?

The end