AFGHAN CONFLICT ERODING STABILITY IN PAKISTAN

The Nation, Jan 21 1998

AHMED RASHID IN LAHORE. January 21, 1998.

PAK-AFGHAN POLICY CRISIS - PART ONE.

The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan's continuing lack of positive intentions to bring about a meaningful peace settlement is increasing the Nawaz Sharif's government's inability to deal with the economic,political,sectarian and law and order crises that the country faces.

As the government's lack of political will,to take and implement tough decisions to bring about some semblance of stability becomes more palpable by the day,so the ever increasing backlash from the Afghan conflict adds fuel to the spreading fire of instability in the country. Moreover Pakistan's illconceived and self-serving peace initiative - a meeting of Afghan ullema - has already collapsed under the Taliban's obdurate refusal to deal equitably with other Afghan factions.

In the 1980's the fallout from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to the well known and still pervasive ''heroin and kalashnikov culture'' that has swamped the political process in the country and undermined the economy. Today after seven years of inter-Afghan factional warfare, that backlash is now undermining the fabric of the Pakistan state. Pakistan's economy is on the verge of collapse partly due to the stupendous increase in the smuggling trade, the country's foreign policy faces isolation and sectarianism,while the breakdown in law and order and the madrassa phenomenan are being fuelled by the Afghan conflict.

The sectarian bloodshed that has paralysed the country and is now fuelling a much wider rift between the country's Sunni majority and Shia minority is being partly fuelled from Afghanistan. After the Lahore massacre last week intelligence agencies scoured the land to search for a handful of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists who carried out the killings.Yet hundreds of SSP and Lashkar leaders and activists have sought military support,training and a much needed sanctuary from periodic Pakistani police crackdowns in Taliban controlled Kabul.Yet the same intelligence agencies continue to back the Taliban while the Foreign Ministry has made no demand,no protest and no demarche on the Taliban regime to return wanted terrorists to Pakistan.It's either a case of one hand not knowing what the other hand is doing or a deliberately provocative policy. More likely it is a reflection of the continuing lack of will to think through a policy that would give Pakistan security and stability.

SSP activists arrived in Kabul as early as December 1996 and were interviewed by this correspondent after taking part in the Taliban offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif in May 1997.Last week Qari Wassaya,who was wounded and arrested in the gun battle which resulted in the escape of 5 terrorists from Dera Ghazi Khan jail on December 26,admitted that he had spent months in Kabul with other Lashkar-e-Jhangvi activists at a camp run by Harkat-ul Ansar. The fact that Pakistan's ostensible Taliban allies and receivers of massive quantities of Pakistani military and economic support continue to harbour such terrorists point to a virtual collapse of policy of the government.

Meanwhile between 10,000 - 15,000 Pakistani madrassa students have faught with the Taliban since 1996.Hundreds have been killed, hundreds more captured and killed while under arrest by the anti-Taliban alliance and thousands have returned home to carry out a Taliban style Islamic revolution in Pakistan. While the military guarding the border appears to have made no attempt to stop this continual flow of madrassa students,the Foreign Office pretends the phenomena does not even exist.These madrassa returnees have been instrumental in fuelling Islamic fundamentalist demands,sectarian violence and destabilising the country's institutions and democratic system of government.But not a single state body,either military or civil acknowledges their existance in public or makes amends to stop the flow.Meanwhile Taliban ministers now adresse madrassas in Karachi,the NWFP and Baluchistan with regularity calling for an Islamic movement in Pakistan.If Iranian or Saudi ullema were to make such provocative speech,they would have been deported.The collapse of law and order in Pakistan remains the most detrimental inheritance from the Afghan civil war.

Pakistan's economic crisis has been heavily fuelled by the war.The World Bank now estimates that the Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) or cross border smuggling is now worth US 2.5 billion dollars,not including the drugs trade which adds another US 1 billion dollars.Pakistan collects no excise revenues from this trade which only adds to the country's chronic loss of revenues.Domestic industry for consumer goods has been crippled as smugglers import duty free foreign brand goods,periodic food shortages because of the smuggling to Afghanistan inflate the prices of food in Pakistani cities,shortages of atta cause riots at home and the country's import bill for foodstuffs cripples foreign exchange reserves.Some economists estimate that the ATT adds at least 2% to Pakistan's rate of inflation.

Yet Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz has said that Pakistan should now treat Afghanistan as Pakistan's fivth province in economic terms.With Pakistan's first four provinces on the verge of economic collapse,Aziz's adoption of a fivth province boggles the imagination.In two years of Taliban control,Pakistan has succombed to every Taliban threat to keep the ATT open under Taliban terms,as the country's neo-Taliban policy makers prefer to favour the Taliban than Pakistan's own citizens and the economic crunch they face.

Pakistan also continues to feed and fuel the Taliban armies.Last year the Sharif government agreed to import - at Pakistan's expense - 600,000 tons of wheat for the Taliban,which has still not been paid for.The cost of foreign exchange needed for wheat and fuel purchases for the Taliban continue to be met by the Pakistani consumer.Nor does this include the millions of Rupees that has been poured down the throats of various Afghan warlords by a country that is near bankruptcy.

The backlash of Pakistan's pro-Taliban foreign policy has antagonised every neighbour,shattered decades of a close alliance with Iran,alientated the Central Asian Republics, annoyed China,increased Russia's beligerence and links to India and is now alienating Pakistan's Western allies particularly the US.Pakistan is now the most isolated and alienated country in the region,given a virtual pariah status by its Muslim neighbours.Yet none of this appears to trouble Foreign Minister Gauhar Ayub or the Foreign Ministry.Pakistan's attempts to serve as a pipeline route for Central Asian energy have been indefinately deferred as Islamabad tries to convince the world that the Taliban will better manage gas pipelines across its territory,rather than a broad based government and a genuine peace settlement in Kabul.

In a more coherent government,all the relevant ministers and their ministries directly affected by the continuing Afghan conflict would be acting as a persuasive lobby with the ISI and the Foreign Ministry in pushing for a quick solution to the Afghan conflict so that Pakistan can get on with nation building.Interior Minister Chaudry Shujjat (crumbling law and order and sectarian bloodshed),Foreign Minister Gauhar Ayub (an isolationist foreign policy),Petroleum Minister Chaudry Nisar (oil and gas pipelines), Sartaj Aziz (the cost of the war to the economy) should be at the forefront of demanding a change in policy. Instead there is only studied indifference,lack of action and policies and complete oblivion of the costs incurred to their ministries and personal credability.

Meanwhile Pakistan's initiative to call a meeting of Afghan ullema has virtually collapsed. The Taliban's pre-conditions have ensured that the attempt would lead nowhere.The Taliban insist that the opposition alliance nominate their ullema first and the Taliban would then vet them, the Taliban refuse to sit with the Shia ullema of the Hazaras and the ullema's decisions would be binding as though the political and military leaders of the anti-Taliban alliannce would abdicate their powers in favour of the ullema.

Since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in September 1996, Pakistan has ensured that every peace initiative and diplomatic shuttle it has undertaken was on the Taliban's own terms and Islamabad has allowed them to shoot initiatives down.Everyone of Islamabad's peace attempts have been dubious, self-serving,deeply one sided,flawed and yet blaetently transparent to all other regional players. Islamabad's failed strategy has been two fold.First,as in October 1996 (the fall of Kabul) and May 1997 (the defection of General Malik) to try and divide the anti-Taliban alliance to allow the Taliban to cut a deal with one warlord and isolate the others.Or secondly to set up an initiative which would give the Taliban a veto or stranglehold over the negotiating process as the exchange of prisoners process in November 1997 and the ullema plan in January 1998. Yet if the ISI and the Foreign Office continue to believe that these initiatives,so baltently transparent and so obviously one sided would succeed in throwing the wool over Iran or Russian eyes,or Dostum and Masud's deep experience with Pakistan's policy makers,then it has been little more than self-delusion.

Self-delusion has become the hallmark of the Sharif government in dealing with all such realities,such as the sectarian crisis or the economic crunch,but even more so in Afghanistan.The ''all is well'' syndrome emanating from every cabinet minister serves only to destabilise the country furthur,increase public apprehensions and avoid the reality of giving real solutions to real problems of governance. For an Afghan peace,Pakistan's self-delusion has become the preferred policy.

To be continued