Emporium Current Essays

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The Taliban's triumph in Afghanistan, with the capture of Kabul and the routing of the
Rabbani-Hikmatyar forces from the capital, is the single most significant development in
the region since the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

The Taliban's triumph changes the complexion of the region's politics, injects a certain
religious militancy that is bound to arouse fears from Ankara to Beijing and from Tehran
to Tashkent, plus raising the spectre of a proxy war in Afghanistan between Iran and
Pakistan, since the Rabbani-Hikmatyar combine was backed by Tehran" while the Taliban
have Pakistan support. It also makes U/.bek strongman, General Abdul Rashid Dostum,
which controls ix southern provinces including the city of Mazar-c-Sharif, a key political
player with the ability to tilt the current balance of power in Afghanistan. -

The Taliban's blitzkrieg capture of Kabul was immediately followed by banning all
women from going to school or working, and execution of the last Communist ruler,
Najibullah, whose body and that of his brother, hung in the capital's main square for a
couple of days.

I'he Pakistani government apparently feels a three-fold satisfaction over the iatest
outcome of the Afghan civil war: first, that "our boys" now control Kabul; second, that
the Iranians have been outflanked since they were "intruding in our domain" through, for
instance, brokering the Rabbani-Hikmatyar rapprochement plus planning a regional
conference on Afghanistan, an 'initiative which now, of course, has been overtaken by
events; and third, that the Saudis and the Americans, pleased by Pakistan's role in
supporting an anti-Iran regime in Kabul, will probably try to bolster the regime of Nawaz
Sharif which is facing economic crises.

Notwithstanding the short-sighted policies of the previous government of Benazir, the

crude manner in which she tried to promote and project the Taliban victory as a
"welcome develo76

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Afghanistan, Pakistan would be at odds with three of its long. standing friends with
whom it had always shared a common strategic worldvicw, namely, China, Iran and
Turkey.

These three countries, for their separate reason, would view the Taliban phenomenon as
being negative for their national interests. China has a sensitive Muslim majority
province, Xinjiang, bordering Afghanistan which Beijing fears could be "infected" by the
Taliban "virus".
Turkey, has a close rapport with the Turkic-speaking states of Central Asia, particularly
Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, both of whom have expressed their concern and reservation
over the Taliban victory. In fact, following the Russian-sponsored summit of Central
Asian states in Kazakhstan's capital, Almty, the leaders of the Turkic speaking states of
Centra! Asia, including Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzeshan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan
ami Azerbaijan, are scheduled to meet in Tashkent on October 21 to review developments
and it is likely that they would adopt a common position on this issue, which would
certainly be country to that of Pakistan. In any case, Pakistan's attempt to promote an
accord between the Taliban and Dostum has eqded in failure.

Iran, of course, has its own reasons to feel uncomfortable at an eastern neighbour whose
government, it is convinced, has been installed courtesy the covert collective
collaboration of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. And Iran has lost the proxy
civil war in Afghanistan. But Iran is as much to be blamed for the Afghan situation as the
policies of the Pakistan government, since Iran's own policy has neither been consistent
nor has it co-ordinated with Pakistan when Tehran chose to make strategic economic
overtures to-India, including offering India access to .Central Asia through Iran. *

Iran, for instance, had such a hard-line position on Afghanistan that it even rejected
talking indirectly to the Moscowbacked Najibullah regime in Kabul all through the period
that Pakistan was engaged in talks under the United Nations auspices at. Geneva. But the
moment the Red Army quit Afghanistan, Iran go into the act, sponsoring two
international conferences in Tehran on Afghanistan in January and October 1389, the
fatter one even including the representation from India, and then in a landmark visit to
Moscow in June 1989, the then Speaker who would soon be President Hashemi
Rafsanjani made a wide-ranging deal with the Soviet Union.

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77

As a result, the Iranian policy shifted on Afghanistan and Tehran developed a comfortable
and cosy rapport with the Communist regime in Kabul, which it had derided all along in
the oast. Had there been better co-ordination between Islamabad and Tehran on the
Afghan issue, such divergent and, indeed, conflicting perspectives on aa issue of common
security concern for both neighbours, would perhaps have been avoided.

The second danger prosed by the Taliban's triumph is that probably for the first time in
Afghan history, there couid be a danger of a de facto division of Afghanistan due to the
Taliban's quest for total power. The contours of such a division are already evident in the
nine northern'provinces controlled by the new Opposition troika. Afghanistan is today
more unstable and more violent than before,1 and the only chance of peace in that strife-
torn country is either the Taliban are successful in total military conquest of all of
Afghanistan or they compromise with the new Opposition troika representing the Uzbeks,
the Taj iks and the Hazaras.
With the new accord signed in Mazar-e-Sharif on October
11 between Uzbek strongman General Dostum, whose Balkh province borders
Uzbekistan, former Afghan Defence Minister and prominent Tajik Jeader, Ahmed Shah
Masud and Uie major leader of the Hazara community, the Hizb-e-Wahdat Chief, Karim
Khalili, battle lines in Afghanistan are clearly drawn along an ethnic and sectarian
framework.

' Coupled with these dangers was the hypocrisy of the Benazir government which never
tired to talk of "threat from fundamentalism", even going to the extent of presenting
Pakistan as a "frontline state against Islamic fundamentalism." Concurrently, in the same
breath, Benazir lauded the Taliban as a "welcome development", despite the fact that its
policies on women have tarnished the image of Islam to the extent that even the Jama'at-
iIslami and Iran have expressed strong reservations on this count.

The moot question is: what has Pakistan really gained in pursuit of its long-standing
obsession of installing a "friendly government" in Kabul, Pakistan's own leverage on the
Taliban, as time would tell, will be extremely limited and they would require deft
handling through unconventional diplomacy.

Pakistan's obsession with a "friendly government" in Kabul ns>s followed a remarkably

predictable and familiar pattern of failure. Some examples: Pakistan welcomed the ouster
of Zahir khah since he was perceived to be "pro-India", but when Daud Khan took over
and he was perceived to be worse than Zahir Shah, 78

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Pakistan under Zulfikar All Bhutto tried to again install Zahir Shah in office in co-
ordination with Amvar Sadaat and the Shah of Iran, and the executor of that.mastcr plan
was none other than the then Frontier governor Naseerullah Babar, who is the architect of
the Taliban Card; Pakistan opposed Nur Mohammad Tarakai who came to power in a
Moscow-backet! coup in April 1978, but when he was ousted and executed by
Hafcezullah Amin, Pakistan lamented Taraki's exit since he was considered as "better
than Amin"; when Hafeczullah Amin was ousted by Babrak Karmal following the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Pakistan felt sorry for Amin since he was
now perceived "better than Karmal" and a "lesser evil" who was trying to free himself of
Moscow's stranglehold; when Najib was in power, Pakistan tried very hard to install a
"friendly government'* in Kabul through its Mujahideen friends whom it had supported
for almost 20 years, namely, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbadin Hikmatyar, but when
they came to power, Pakistan worked overtime for their removal since now they too had
somehow become "pro-India."

In fact, as the track record of Pakistan's policy on Afghanistan demonstrates, Pakistan has
made three strategic mistakes in the last decade. First, during 1986, wasting almost a year
by erroneously insisting on a date of exit of the Soviet Red Army rather than the more
sensible option of accord on an interim government in Kabul first, which was what the
Soviets had been demanding all along. Having wasted a year on this issue, the result was
that Moscow and Washington decided to have their own bilateral deal on the withdrawal
of the Soviet Red Army behind Pakistan's back, which suddenly decided to adopt the
Soviet position by now insisting that there should first be an agreement on an interim
government in Kabul prior to the date of the exit of the Red Army, but by then it was too
late.

The second strategic mistake was in 1993, when the Islamabad Accord on Afghanistan
brokered by the Nawaz Sharif government which included a coalition of Rabbani and
Hikmatyar with the hacking of Iran and Saudi Arabia, was allowed to collapse.

Finally, in 1994, Pakistan ended up sponsoring the Taliban, with consequences that are
now unfolding. The most unfortunate aspect is that had the Government of Pakistan
devoted the same resources for the Kashmir case that it did for the Taliban cause in
Afghanistan, the situation on the former would have been differentpment" to quote the
words of ex-premier Benazir, developments on Pakistan's western frontier pose three
different kinds of dangers. First, on this issue of the Taliban regime in