Talk to your
enemies:
Win the peace in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF
Associate since 1991
Comments directly to
JonatPower@aol.com
January 25, 2007
LONDON - Pervez Musharraf, president and military
strong man of Pakistan, opened his eyes wide, sat bolt upright on his
sofa, and said, “I never thought of that”. He repeated the
phrase and looked, I dare to suggest, a little bewildered. In many years
of interviewing top leaders I have never before felt the sensation of
catching someone totally off balance. Yet all I had asked was, “Why
don’t you talk to your enemies, the Taliban and Al Qaeda?”
In two hours of conversation there was no effort, as is usual with senior
Pakistani officials, to persuade me that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were
being defeated or that the war in Afghanistan was going well. Indeed,
there was an absence of bravado and a receptivity to new, so far unconsidered,
ideas.
Pakistan is the hub of the Anglo-American/Nato war against Al Qaeda and
the Taliban. The British have here their largest embassy in the world.
The city is full to the brim with American secret agents and senior military
people.
But the truth is the war in Afghanistan is going badly. The Taliban are
gaining the upper hand, financially fuelled by proceeds from poppy growing,
which they now encourage in a reverse of policy when they were in power,
when they ruled that it was unIslamic. Al Qaeda, too, high up in the mountains
of Pakistan, is re-building its strength.
In different ways both the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan are
besieged. President Hamid Karzai appears to realize that the Western forces
are losing ground to the Taliban and that he is unable to do much about
the infiltration of fresh warriors from Pakistan.
Musharraf for his part is throwing troops into the
frontier areas, some 80,000. But with the militants finding it all too
easy to hide in the refugee camps on Pakistani soil where 2.5 million
Afghan refugees live, mainly Pashtuns, and with both Afghanistan and the
West pouring scorn on his suggestion that he mine and fence the border,
the battle is uphill with heavy losses on the Pakistani side. Meanwhile,
support in Pakistan for the militants grows. As a former Pakistani ambassador,
Tariq Fatemi, wrote recently in the Karachi newspaper, “Dawn”,
brute force tactics which have often killed women and children and destroyed
homes and crops have been counterproductive. “The impression has
gained ground among the tribes that we are oblivious to their lives and
interests.”
On both sides of the border are the Pashtuns, arguably the world’s
most adept fighting people. They call the shots. The Pashtuns have been
the standard bearers of Afghani nationalism ever since the state came
into being 250 years ago. One invasion, British or Soviet, is just like
another, American. It is mandatory in the Pashtun code of honour for an
insult to be avenged. As the saying goes, “A Pashtun waited 100
years and then took his revenge - it was quick work.”
Only by entering into negotiations to compensate for lives and dishonour
done to the deceased, the maimed and insulted can the mutual reinforcing
cycle of violence be curtailed. A jirga (tribal council), which brings
together the Taliban, Kabul, Islamabad and Pakistani’s northern
tribes, each with equal representation, must begin a dialogue towards
a ceasefire. The Taliban will insist on a timetable for withdrawal of
US/Nato troops.
We should not fear the Afghani Taliban. Mullah Omar’s interview
in January suggests he is distancing himself from Osama bin Laden. Not
one Afghan has been associated with any terror attacks in the West. Bin
Laden, assuming he and his men are in Pakistan, can no longer easily finance
or mastermind terrorism from a remote cave. He should be finished off
by careful police work. Al Qaeda operatives are paying locals in dollars
for protection, Musharraf told me. That makes a kind of paper trail. As
for the harsher side of would-be Taliban rule - let Pashtun culture work
on that over time. The Pashtun Zeitgeist, as another “Dawn”
writer, M.P. Bhandara, suggests, “does not offer democracy but it
does stress personal autonomy and equality”.
This is why I suggested to Musharaff that he talk to the Taliban, even
to Al Qaeda. “No one has ever suggested that”, he added. “You
have a point. I must think about it”. I also suggested that he engage
in less “bang bang” and more economic and social development
in the alienated border villages. He did not demur. Finally, I said, quoting
a column by Maia Szalavitz in the International Herald Tribune from January
last year, why not persuade the international community to buy up the
poppy crop direct from the peasants and use it for badly needed medicinal
purposes, undercutting both the mafia and the Taliban’s source of
funds. “ I have never thought of that either”, he said. “Yes,
perhaps we could. Let’s cost it and see if it is practical”.
Thinking the unthinkable would be a useful start.
Copyright © 2007 Jonathan
Power
Last 
Next
Jonathan Power can be
reached by phone +44 7785 351172
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Follow this link to read about - and
order - Jonathan Power's book written for the
40th Anniversary of Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
Tell a friend about this column by Jonathan Power
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
Get
free articles & updates
|