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| US, Britain stung by an Afghan temper |
| 28.01.08 13:29 |
Iraq War, "War on terror" |
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Admiral William Fallon, head of the US Central Command, traveled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan's capital, last Thursday. It was the first visit by a high-level US military officer since Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov evicted American troops from the Karshi-Khanabad airbase in Uzbekistan (used for ferrying supplies for Afghan operations) in retaliation for the covert American encouragement of the abortive Andizhan uprising in the Ferghana Valley in May 2005.
Central Asian leaders can be excessively polite. Karimov told Fallon, "We see your visit ... as a meaningful event in relations between the US and Uzbekistan." Karimov went on to say the visit was a chance to discuss "issues of common interest, first of all in the military and arms sphere". To be sure, Karimov knew his strategic defiance of the George W Bush administration has paid off splendidly well.
He will be justified in estimating that Washington is desperately keen to regain influence in Tashkent so it can effectively counter Russian and Chinese influence in Central Asia. He sizes up that the medium-term US objective will also be to consolidate a permanent North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) presence in Central Asia. In short, the Bush administration has learnt the hard way that Uzbekistan is a key country in Central Asia.
But in immediate terms, US Central Command is badly in need of Tashkent's cooperation for operating a second air corridor to Afghanistan so that the heavy dependence on Islamabad gets somewhat reduced.
Kabul rejects Washington's choice
What lends urgency to Fallon's mission to Tashkent is the criticality of the Afghan situation. Much thinking has gone into Fallon's mission and it was preceded by months of mediation by the European Union between Washington and Tashkent. Karimov took time to relent. Yet, ironically, the fragility of the overall situation in Afghanistan is such that the thaw in US-Uzbek relations was overtaken within 24 hours of Fallon's mission by dramatic developments in Kabul.
In a series of statements over the weekend, President Hamid Karzai's government rubbished a major decision taken by Washington and London on the appointment of Lord Paddy Ashdown as the United Nations' super envoy in Kabul.
Kabul knew for months about the impending appointment of Ashdown as a key step in a new NATO strategy spearheaded by the US and Britain, aimed at stabilizing the Afghan situation. Karzai knew detailed planning had gone into the move involving NATO, the EU and the United Nations Security Council. But Karzai waited patiently until the eleventh hour before shooting it down publicly on Saturday in a interview with the BBC while attending the World Economic Forum meet in the Swiss resort town of Davos. The move was pre-planned and carried out in a typical Afghan way with maximum effect.
Karzai insists there has been a serious misunderstanding of motives because Kabul had never taken a "decision" on Ashdown's appointment. He is perfectly right in saying so. But in actuality, Karzai has put on display his proud Afghan temper. He has taken umbrage that Washington and London took the decision on Ashdown's appointment in consultation with Brussels and thereupon got UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to execute it, all the time taking Kabul's agreement for granted.
Karzai had fired a warning shot recently by expelling two diplomats from the UN and European Union. But Washington failed to take notice. US commanders have routinely ignored Karzai in the conduct of the heavy-handed war. On a number of occasions, he cut a lonely figure, left to pick up the debris after coalition forces behaved like a marauding army in Afghan villages where three quarters of the people live. Each instance humiliated him and eroded his credibility, especially among Pashtuns. Now, by saying no to Ashdown's appointment, Karzai settles scores. Washington and London should have known Karzai's Afghan snub was long overdue.
At the same time, it is much more than a snub. An Afghan snub is never one-dimensional. Karzai knows his rejection of Ashdown's appointment is bound to go down well with the Afghan elite.
Second, Karzai anticipated that Ashdown, true to his reputation in the Balkans, would function like a colonial viceroy. Karzai knows that the Western agencies and organizations operating in Afghanistan lack coordination. But a "unified command" under Ashdown would create a counterpoint in Kabul to Karzai's own authority. Karzai didn't want that to happen.
The bottom line concerns Karzai's political future. He sizes up that Ashdown is part of a political package leading toward a post-Karzai era. There has been persistent chatter in recent weeks that Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to the UN - an ethnic Afghan - is in the mix for a run as president of Afghanistan. According to Washington Post columnist Al Kamen, Karzai took the rumor seriously and point-blank asked Khalilzad about it when the two met in London in October, but Khalilzad "didn't give a Shermanesque response".
At any rate, no matter Karzai's own motive, his act of defiance will have serious consequences at different levels. The UN has certainly taken a beating. Ban made a last-minute personal intervention with Karzai. Evidently, Ban had no clue about Afghan character. The UN's capacity to spearhead the political process in Afghanistan now stands seriously impaired. This deprives Washington of a neutral international bridge - but under its control - leading toward the Taliban camp, which is a pre-requisite for commencement of any meaningful intra-Afghan dialogue.
Meanwhile, the war hangs perilously on the edge of an abyss. Almost everyone is talking to the Taliban one way or another. Confusion is near-total. All this is happening at an awkward time when NATO lacks a counterinsurgency strategy. In particular, Britain, which lately assumed a lead role within NATO, has been embarrassed.
Karzai singled out British operations in Afghanistan for criticism in an interview with the Times newspaper of London on the eve of his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Davos on Friday. Karzai alleged that Afghan people "suffered" from the coming of the British. He had little praise for the 7,800 British troops deployed in Afghanistan. He said, "Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And, when they came in, the Taliban came."
There was an angry rejoinder from No 10 Downing Street. The very next day, Karzai went public with his rejection of Ashdown's appointment. This spectacular Afghan-British falling-out goes beyond a mere blame-game. At the root lies Karzai's insistence that it will be his sole prerogative to decide on the appointment of key provincial officials and that he will not brook top-level requests from NATO commanders and diplomats. (But Karzai also knows in the Afghan bazaar, any snub to Britain will enhance his stature, given the complicated history of Afghan-British relations.)
As The Times commented, "British forces believe that, in many respects, their Afghan allies pose more of a challenge to their mission than the Taliban ... It is the Afghan government that is now proving more of an obstacle to stability in an area where a mixture of official corruption, ineptitude and paranoia are stymying British efforts." There is bound to be questioning in Britain about the government's policy. After all, a total of 87 British troops have died in Afghanistan since 2001 and Britain has spent US$3.2 billion on its military campaign there.
The setback to Britain's leadership role will impair Washington's effort to drum up greater NATO involvement in southern Afghanistan. Hardly 10 weeks lie between now and the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania. Again, Washington's monopoly over the political process in Afghanistan itself has got frayed at the edges. How long more will the monopoly be sustainable when the war has been almost lost already? Reports indicate Russia has been pressing for Turkey's Hikmet Cetin in place of Ashdown.
On a broader geopolitical plane, it remains to be seen how long Washington can keep Karzai away from the reach of the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Russia and China-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization. From the Ashdown saga, Karzai must have realized his capacity to shake up US strategy in the region. In an interview with CNN in Davos on Thursday, Karzai said, "We have opened our doors to them [Iran]. They have been helping us in Afghanistan." Karzai then insisted that the Bush administration has "wisely understood that Iran is Afghanistan's neighbor". Karzai was speaking hardly two days after the latest attempt by Washington to isolate Iran over its nuclear program at the meeting of the "Five plus One" (US, UK, France, Russia and China plus Germany) in Berlin on Tuesday.
Musharraf wards off US pressure
But it is in Islamabad that the reverberations of Karzai's mini-revolt will be most keenly felt. The impasse in the "war on terror" weakens Washington's capacity to further undermine President Pervez Musharraf or to pressure the Pakistani military. Conversely, Musharraf will know that his own defiance of Washington's recent attempts to dictate the nature of the political set-up in Islamabad now enters a conclusive phase. He will know that with such a first-rate mess-up in the war in Afghanistan, Washington is hardly in a position to be intrusive, let alone dictate terms of engagement to him. In a curious way, Karzai has considerably smoothened for him the passage from now until the elections in Pakistan on February 8.
In all probability, Pakistan, which has excellent intelligence outfits in Kabul, knew in advance that Karzai was about to give shock-and-awe treatment to Washington. Clearly, Musharraf has begun finger-pointing at anyone who will even remotely suggest the need of deploying US troops on Pakistani soil.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates virtually challenged Islamabad in his sensational press conference in Washington last Thursday where he made the unsolicited offer - despite Islamabad's repeated rejection of the idea - that "we [US] remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them, to provide additional training, to conduct joint operations, should they [Pakistani military] desire to do so". But Musharraf's speech at the Royal United Services Institute in London on Friday vividly brings out that he can afford to ignore Gates' veiled threat. In essence, Musharraf knows he may have put a particularly difficult period behind him.
Timely backing from China has also strengthened Musharraf's hands. In an extraordinary commentary titled "No more turmoil in Pakistan is permissible", China's People's Daily has come out with a whole-hearted endorsement of Musharraf's leadership. It said, "President Pervez Musharraf has resorted to a host of viable measures ... Pakistani government has been making unremitting efforts in defense of the supreme national interests ... Some opposition forces at home and a few powers overseas impose pressures or punitive measures against Pakistan in the name of 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'opposition to terrorism'. So the nation is currently in very complex and stark circumstances and its government is confronted with unprecedented challenges."
The commentary went on to laud Musharraf's leadership: "Thanks to the effective leadership of the Musharraf government along with joint efforts of people from all walks of life, Pakistan has on the one hand worked to coordinate with the struggle of the international community against terrorism. On the other hand, the nation has scored remarkable successes in socio-economic development, and also eased off its strained relations with its neighbor India."
The commentary concluded with a warning against any outside attempt to destabilize the existing political order in Pakistan. It said, "Major policy measures taken by the Pakistani government with the aim of safeguarding internal stability and social order will surely be understood and accepted by the people in the nation and subsequently win their support. Likewise, the international community should also have a sober-minded awareness and understanding of these related useful measures being implemented there as Pakistan will absolutely not be the sole nation to suffer provided its stability is not fully guaranteed."
Musharraf must be greatly relieved that Beijing has finally broken its silence and come down unequivocally in support of him at a crucial juncture in his desperate resistance of the US game plan to remove him from power and to disgrace the military by deploying American troops on Pakistani soil.
Karzai and Musharraf on same side
What outsiders often overlook is that Afghan-Pakistani relations have different templates, including some strange templates. The fact is the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani establishment has largely accommodated the Pashtun elite. Thus, the real issue today is Pashtun alienation in Afghanistan. Conceivably, there can be a commonality of interests between Karzai and Musharraf. It is not something being deliberately fostered by either side - at least, not yet - but it is there somewhere just beneath the surface. In the period since his last visit to Islamabad in November, Karzai has been extremely careful not to criticize Pakistan.
In his interview with CNN last week in Davos, Karzai touched on his expectations from Musharraf. Karzai said, "I had a very fruitful talk with President Musharraf last time. From that respect, I hope there is more recognition of [terrorist] dangers there and of the dangers of the future of both countries and the region. Based on that, I hope there will be a stronger effort in Pakistan and the region, and help from the rest of the world."
Increasingly, Karzai and Musharraf find themselves in a somewhat similar predicament. They cannot do without American support, but they do not accept US pressure tactics. They know US regional policies are part of their problem within their own countries and, therefore, they need to differentiate themselves for their political survival. Paradoxically, their attempt is to perpetuate the US's dependence on them while they work at consolidating a political base of their own, which is independent of US control. In Karzai's case, the 3-4 million votes that Musharraf can mobilize from the Afghan refugee population in Pakistan will always remain a decisive factor in his re-election as president.
Besides, there are regional powers - China and Iran in particular - which are keenly watching the geopolitics surrounding Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Iranian thinking is that there is a concerted US-Israeli plot to destabilize Musharraf's regime with the twin objective of the US establishing a base in Pakistan for its military intelligence operations directed against Russia and China and at the same time for neutralizing Pakistan's nuclear capability.
In the Iranian perception, after some dangerous brinkmanship in recent weeks, the US and Israel have somewhat backed off, but a systematic US attempt continues to undercut the Musharraf regime. In a recent commentary, the Tehran Times, which reflects official thinking, warned that Washington is using its "minions" in the region to weaken the authority of Musharraf's government and to create tensions within Pakistan's federal structure. It called on the Pakistani people to understand the "gravity of the situation" and to "confront the hidden hands" destabilizing their country.
The Iranian commentary has been much more forthright than the People's Daily, but essentially, there is a similarity of views. Both China and Iran are keen on the stability of the Karzai government. Both would like Karzai to continue to explore the parameters of a neutral, independent foreign policy free of US manipulation. Both visualize that Afghanistan can serve as a vital land bridge between them, playing a strategic role in the rapid expansion of Sino-Iranian relations. To quote the Tehran Times, the primary reason behind the US mounting pressure on the Musharraf regime has been for consolidating its control over Pakistan, which is "situated at a strategic crossroads in South Asia bordering West Asia and Central Asia and within proximity of China's western frontier".
Interestingly, the People's Daily took a broadly similar line - in innuendos, though - when it commented, "As is known to all, Pakistan is a fairly sensitive nation ... Its unique, specific geopolitical factor proves [that] if its situation is out of control and the entire nation [is] in unrest and turmoil, the scope of negative influences would outreach its adjacent areas and negatively impact the global situation ... stability in Pakistan's surrounding areas is sure to be menaced, and new variables will add to the war on terror being waged in Afghanistan and, consequently, the hard-won situation in South Asia featured with peace, development and cooperation could possibly get lost."
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001). |
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