Re: American Scholar suggests: Afghans must respect Durand line, Karazai needs some Aql
Ex ambassador and ISI chiefs comments on his recent trip to Afghanistan.
Whither strategic depth?
LT GEN (RETD) ASAD DURRANI
“Neki kar, darya mein dal”, isone of the many pearls ofwisdom passed on to us over the ages. Another adage comes close: “a good deed done by one hand should not be known even to the other hand”. It may not work doing your tax returns: even left-handed generosities have to be recorded, usually by the other hand. It was still our best bet in the tax-free Afghanistan.
**Want an Afghan to be grateful for our help during the Soviet occupation? Then don’t talk about it. There are good chances that he would express his gratitude, before he expressed his ire for whatever we may or may not have done thereafter.
To do one better, tell him the truth: we helped the Afghans not because we loved a brotherly neighbourly people, but in the faint hope that their legendry resistance would turn the Bear back. When it did, we expressed no gratitude.
On the other hand, we blamed the Afghans for painting the Pakistani landscape with drugs and weapons; what in the first place was ours to prevent. The Afghans are now paying us back in the same coin. They blame us for what we are neither solely responsible, nor can do much about. Time to be truthful to each other. **
The Afghans know for example that we cannot control the cross-border movement; not with eighty thousand troops or for that matter with any other number. Let us say so. We know that fencing or mining this border was not a practical proposition. Even if it were, without effective cover of fire and observation (ask any PMA cadet), it would be breached before one could say “Durand Line”. The Afghans suspect, understandably, that our main interest was to clinch this issue once and for all. Of course their suspicion is ill-founded, but that is how one survives in a tribal society: by being suspicious; and not by being trustful. The problem is that we too have not done enough to address their paranoia.
Durand Line may not be an effective barrier against unwanted movement of people, it does seem to have blocked the much needed exchange of ideas. We in Pakistan for example, despite being the collateral beneficiaries of the US war on Afghanistan, feel sorry that our neighbours were once again under foreign rule. Most of the Afghans still see the invasion as a liberating act. Mercifully, the Americans were doing their best to bring the Afghan illusions closer to ours. What are we doing to bridge some of the weirdest gaps deep down?
Reaction in Pakistan to the American led intervention was a mixed bag. But most of us were relieved to shed some of our Afghan baggage that was getting unwieldy. I do not know anyone here who in his right mind wants us to mess around again in their power politics. Most of the Afghans are, however, convinced that Pakistan had not given up its Taliban option. Perceptions on the refugees are even more diverse, and even more absurd.
We suspect that Kabul was hedging on their return by design: they are to serve as “the fifth column”, whenever. The Afghans believe, we would only send them back under a Taliban flag. The thought that they might be- like many of our compatriots in yonder lands- economic refugees, does not seem to have crossed our collective mind. Nor, are the Pakistanis too keen to recall that most of them wandered into the subcontinent uninvited. In any case, the present number of Afghans here was not an “unbearable burden” for a country that adds every year, without any external help, more than that to its human ecology.
Many of our perceptions are obviously influenced by how we read the signals from the other side. Strategic Depth is a sound concept, but has caused confusion in both the countries. Afghanistan provided us “forward” strategic depth against the Soviet Union.
When the Soviets invaded the Country, we lost this depth. The concept, however, goes beyond its more familiar geographical dimension (Israel’s strategic depth, for example, lies thousands of miles away in the US). I, therefore, readily agreed with the wise Afghan who suggested that Pakistan’s strategic concerns were best served by winning over the Afghan hearts. Most Afghans, however, believe that we would rather conquer the Afghan heartland. And most Pakistanis would rather not believe in such amorphous conceptions to start with.
And then there was this misconception that we needed a “friendly government” in Afghanistan. The professionals amongst us have always pleaded that any ruler of Afghanistan would ultimately be friendly, if not for love of Pakistan than out of compulsions of Afghanistan. Those who were crowned in Kabul because they vowed to be less friendly (Daud, Taraki, Amin, even Najeeb) paid the price for accepting the Pakistani reality. But then no ruler in Kabul, even if he rode to power on Al-Khalid tanks, would do our bidding once he was there. Post Taliban we know that. To convince the Afghans, that we know , we have to cut the Gordian Knot.
Alexander wanted to rule Asia and therefore, so goes the fable, he used a sword to cut the knot tied by King Gordius of Phrygia. Pakistan and Afghanistan, too, have tied themselves in knots. Neither country has any imperial designs, but both seem unable to breakout of their ideated fortresses, and innovate to break the logjam. This knot can be cut without the sword.
The state apparatus falls short on such occasions. The bureaucratic compulsion to respond in kind only aggravates the grumpy environment. Under pressure of the fourth estate, that in the meantime leads all others by their tail, the diatribe escalates to levels where retrieval becomes difficult. It is time for the “civil society”, or whatever was left of it in the two countries, to get involved.
During my recent visit to Kabul, I found much concern about the rapid decline in our relationship and also many ideas how to go about preventing it: establish a standing joint commission to stem the rot; form a council of wise men on both sides; high time some ulema talked to the clerics who were enflaming the tribal areas; we need to watch out for the third countries exploiting our conflicts; so on and so forth. The Durand Line, after all, was not impervious to the right ideas.
The principle of dialogue on multiple tracks, even with different speeds, was always unexceptionable. It’s clichéd version, “people to people contact”, helped us synergise the peace process with India. That reminds me: didn’t we often blame India for being a “stingy big brother”? So how about showing a bit of magnanimity to our little brother in distress?
And while still on India; why so much fuss over the Indian consulates? Of course, they are up to the usual mischief. But since it is the “done-thing”, it might as well be done through the consulates. We can then keep track. Or else, we will have to track down all the NGOs, construction companies, and every Afghan who learnt Hindi from the Indian films. Let us play the game that we are good at, and leave Buzkushi and Hindukushi to the Afghans.
