September 30, 2019
Which means all this silliness of putting pressure on Pakistan
Which means all this silliness of putting pressure on Pakistan to do more on
Afghanistan will come to naught — why would Pakistan expose itself to a decline
in influence in Afghanistan in support of an American policy that the Americans
themselves don’t really believe in?Worse, the Trump review is coinciding with a
second successive fresh-look perspective in the military leadership here.
But yet
another round of American silliness can have a damaging effect on Pakistan —
because of what it could mean for Afghanistan and what happens inside Pakistan
itself.Pak-US relations are about where they should be given all that separates
them and the little that they have in common.
The problem is that it’s not. It
makes sense to change some things on Afghanistan. US President Donald Trump
(Photo: AP) The Americans are at it again.Here’s the thing, though: the Obama
years happened. Troop surge in Afghanistan, policy review on Pakistan,
alternating between threatening and bribing us to "do moreâ€.Barack Obama may
ultimately have reversed himself on withdrawing all US troops from Afghanistan,
but it was long obvious that he had no real interest in the area.A circularity
in a region full of circles and maddening conundrums. When the Americans are
breathing down your neck, you have both reason and excuse to delay deeper
readjustments.
Let’s work through it.But then in strides the American behemoth
once again, knocking heads around, demanding actions, threatening and
intimidating — all because it wants its (muddled) way in Afghanistan.More of the
same by a US administration towards Pakistan will only increase the odds of more
of the same from Pakistan on Afghanistan. In his early days, Qamar Javed Bajwa
could attempt the same: a policy review, if not a reversal.That creates an
incentives problem.
To really convince itself that fixing Pakistan is not the
automatic and inevitable route to fixing Afghanistan, the US would have to
really turn the screws on Pakistan.To fix Afghanistan, Pakistan must be fixed —
and to fix Pakistan, the usual tools are to be deployed. By coming in and
starting a military-led debate on Afghanistan that sounds so familiar, the Trump
administration is confirming what most outside powers in Afghanistan already
suspect: US policy in Afghanistan is somewhere on the spectrum between
not-interested and stale.
That drift allowed other outside powers to increase
their interest in Afghanistan — some with the explicit support of the US
(India), some with ambivalent American support (China) and some, arguably, by
the US dropping the ball (Russia).Just get them off your back and make sure you
don’t get too banged up.Possibly because the US doesn’t have the influence or
leverage it needs, but more likely because the debate we see in public is
supplemented by one out of view:The public stuff may be all Afghanistan,
Afghanistan, Afghanistan, but there’s counterterrorism cooperation, nuclear
safety and security, and a link to China and India that shapes what can be done
on Pakistan. The only realistic peaceful solution in Afghanistan is a negotiated
settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan government. To the extent that the
game be played out endlessly — US coaxing, cajoling and pretending it can change
Pakistan; Pakistan playing coy; the two occasionally falling out and then
sulkily sidling up to the other again — it doesn’t really matter.
The Trump
AfPak review is doubly damning because it’s back to the future after years of
White House disengagement.The terms of the debate being framed in the US for
Donald Trump on Pakistan are nascent but familiar: through the Afghan looking
glass and a blame-cum-incentives framework.That’s why the Taliban have always
insisted on primarily negotiating with the Americans.By arrangement with
Dawn.It’s like it’s 2009 again.Or at least makes sure that the public talk of
really turning the screws on Pakistan does not translate into actual action.But
there are far too many hawks on Afghanistan here to navigate a policy review
while also coming under pressure from the US to fit its stale and unworkable
agenda.But indulging that temptation just as Pakistan may be growing confident
enough to have an overall policy debate on militancy may be a classic American
mistake.Raheel Sharif tried and failed to change our Afghan policy.But if all
the US is going to do is to ensure a tenuous survival of the Afghan government,
tamp down the Taliban insurgency when it threatens to get out of control, and
give no more than lukewarm support to a peace process — there will be no real
peace process.Let’s assume Bajwa is inclined towards an overall policy rethink —
towards a militancy-free Pakistan, in all shapes and manifestations.In faraway
DC and nearby Kabul, the temptation to knock Pakistan around for perceived
misbehaviour is mostly irresistible. But it hasn’t worked and won’t.
That could
have a chilling effect on the overall anti-militancy debate that Bajwa may
want.But the only outside power that is fundamentally committed to the post-Bonn
Afghan state structure and power centres is the US.But it can’t — won’t — really
turn the three-dimensional
printer screws Manufacturers screws on Pakistan because of the other,
security-based aspects to the relationship and so the US will never reach the
stage where it can disabuse itself of the belief that fixing Pakistan is the
route to fixing Afghanistan.
There’s more. It’s 2017 and the Americans may be
about to screw it up for us — again, though perhaps in a new way. The Afghan
debate is one half of the overall militancy debate here.In faraway DC and nearby
Kabul, the temptation to knock Pakistan around for perceived misbehaviour is
mostly irresistible
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