Mr Richard Holbrooke is bound to feel elated at the supreme confidence reposed in him by President Obama. However, he will soon realize that his job is not exactly a bed of roses.
He has been asked to clear the terrible mess American interests are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. USA has two primary goals in that region. One is to destroy completely the training camps and leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban. Second goal is to ensure that the nuclear assets of the Pakistan do not fall in the hands of extremist elements.
It is easy to see that both these goals do overlap, making this region a veritable nightmare for the Obama administration.
Holbrooke's mission is much more than an uphill task. In Pakistan he is facing at least three main power centers at the federal level. One is the civilian government, another is the army, and yet another is Inter- Services Agency called ISI. They have different perspectives as to what the national interests of Pakistan are. In theory, army is subject to civilian control. In actual practice, it is the other way round. Government cannot take any crucial policy decision without taking army chief into confidence. In May 1999, the Pakistani army took the decision to rattle India by initiating what is known in the contemporary history as Kargil War. It is widely believed that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was kept in total dark and he came to know only after the attack on the Indian positions by Pak army units actually began. Similarly, ISI is supposed to be a part of Pakistani defense establishment. But in actual practice it is an autonomous body who has its own foreign policy goals and own views on domestic politics. It believes brass of Pakistani army to be too soft and naive to understand the realpolitik. The head of the ISI is always a senior officer of the rank of Lieutenant General of the army who after being appointed to the post falls in the tradition of asserting ISI's Independence from the army headquarters. Before Ashfaq Parvez Kayani succeeded General Parvez Musharraf as the Chief of the Army Staff he had been the Director General of the ISI for three years. The attack on the Indian embassy at Kabul on July 7, 2008 was engineered by ISI presumably without the knowledge of Pakistani army or the Pakistani government. Taliban provided only the fig leaf for that attack. It is also believed that the dastardly attack on Mumbai in November 2008 was done by an extremist Pakistani outfit Lashkar-i-Taiba with the active support and professional training of ISI. Much of the power of ISI stems from the fact that it keeps dossiers on most of the politicians, many of whom have many skeletons in their cupboards.
There is yet another aspect of the fractured polity of Pakistan. Pakistan has four major provinces. Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Between NWFP and Afghanistan lies an area called Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). Its area is more than 27000 square kilometers and its population more than three million. FATA is nominally a part of Pakistan but the writ of the Pakistani government does not run there. It is controlled by fiercely independent Pakhtoons. Culturally they consider themselves Afghans and are happy thriving on narcotic and arms trade. It is irony of history that they fall in east of the Durand Line which is the international border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Durand Line was drawn arbitrarily by the British Government in the year 1893 between the then British India and Afghanistan's the then ruler Amir Abdur Rehman Khan. The treaty formalizing the Durand Line was for one hundred years and has lapsed in the year 1993. The Afghan govt has refused to renew the treaty. No Afghan government has ever accepted Durand Line as the international border between them and British India (or its successor state Pakistan). In fact the Loya Jirga of Afghanistan has repudiated in 1949 the Durand Line as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, Pakistan does not feel itself obliged to renegotiate the treaty. It believes that Durand Line is the international border in perpetuity. Even during the Taliban regime when Pakistan was extremely friendly with it, Afghan government did not agree to the legitimacy of Duranad Line. It is felt by Pakhtoons that it artificially divides Pukhtoons living in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Durand line has been a continuous source of tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
FATA which is politically a part of Pakistan has become adopted home of Al Qaeda. American intelligence agencies believe that Osama bin Laden and his top operators are hiding in FATA. The mountainous and rugged terrain of FATA also helps the Al Qaeda fighters. American pilotless drone aircraft are repeatedly bombing the suspected hideouts of Al Qaeda as and when they get actionable intelligence. Americans do not share their intelligence with Pakistan, because they suspect their intelligence might be clandestinely passed by the ISI to the Taliban or maybe even to Al Qaeda.
The chief reason of Pakistan facing problems in FATA is the fact that inhabitants of FATA think themselves as more of Afghans than Pakistanis. Kabul has always claimed that NWFP as a whole belongs to Afghanistan as it is inhabited by Pakhtoons. The name NWFP itself is not an ethnic name unlike Punjab, Sindh or Baluchistan.
The story of Swat is intriguing. It is an administrative district in th NWFP and home of Swat Valley, which is popularly known to be the Switzerland of Pakistan. It is a place of exquisite natural beauty and home to a number of skiing resorts. Since December 2008, practically the entire Swat is under control of Talibans. They have banned female education, watching TV, listening to music. Men are obliged to keep beards. They have burnt down more than 170 schools for girls. Swat is hardly 100 miles away from the capital of Pakistan, and its falling into the hands of Taliban militants has introduced a new equation in the already tangled political and military situations in Pakistan.
Situation in Afghanistan is no better, if not far more worse. The writ of Hamid Karzai government does not run beyond Kabul. The functionaries of his government are steeped in corruption and the governors of Afghan provinces do not care for the central authority. The Afghan army is ill-trained and poorly organized and virtually ineffective as a fighting force. Present position is little short of pathetic. Presently there are deployed troops from the USA and other NATO countries. They have dual function of supporting the Karzai government and hunting Taliban and Al Qaeda. There is a United Nations Military force International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stationed there since December 2001. Presently it is commanded by Eurocorps since August 9, 2004. The function of this 6500-strong force is to help the Afghan administration reconstruct the country in all fields of public life. Unlike NATO forces, it is supposed to be politically neutral.
Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic society. Pakhtoons are the most prominent group. Then there are Hazaras, Tajiks and Ujbeks. All these groups have their own political agendas. Hazaras are supported by Iran, because they are shias like Iranians. Not only this, almost the entire opium produced in Afghanistan is exported via Iran. All these factors make the role and authority of Kabul utterly diminished. The American envoy might find it difficult logistically talk to the leaders of the major ethnic groups who are corrupt and do not care for anybody in Kabul or Washington, but without whose support the Afghan imbroglio cannot be untangled.
Holbrooke is a great negotiator and has unquestionably profound skills of a star diplomat. However, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is tangled, messy and full of so many power centers that the distinguished American envoy may not find it easy to solve the twin Rubik cubes of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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