These days, there is nothing to cheer about in Peshawar as suicide attacks, bomb blasts and security check-points have spread gloom among the people. But those who sneak a glance at the editorial pages of the Daily Times will always find something to laugh about. Yes, the usual suspect is Muhammad Zahoor’s political cartoon found on the top right-hand corner of one of the two editorial pages. His cartoon published on 22 November must have kept many readers’ lungs busy on that gloomy weekend in the capital of the North West Frontier Province.
Irrespective of whether the report in The Washington Times claiming that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) helped Afghanistan’s Taliban leader Mullah Omar flee to Karachi is true or not, it comes at a time when US President Barack Obama is about to unveil his much-awaited review policy on Afghanistan. The American media’s forecast is that he will surge troop level to win the battle against the al-Qaeda-backed insurgency in Pakistan’s western neighbour.
The problem for President Obama is that his deadline for achieving victory in Afghanistan is close ahead. Something must happen there, and something positive, before mid-term US elections in December of next year, with a final solution no later than 2012.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US stand at crossroads today. Militancy is spreading, destruction and killings multiplying and a military solution is drifting away from range. All the while, retreat for the three countries would be suicidal.
While Barack Obama contemplates a way forward, an investigation into the past eight years of conflict reveals that the present crisis is a result of stirrings in all three countries.
I am not a supporter of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but he made a very good decision days after being installed as interim head in Kabul following the ouster of the Taliban in the wake of relentless US bombings to punish the conservatives for allowing the plotters of 9/11 to take advantage of Afghan soil. Karzai announced general amnesty for all, including the Taliban and other opponents, and looked set to follow the South African model of truth and reconciliation.
Regrettably, the very next day, the then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld roared from Washington: Who are you to make such an announcement. That was a terrible day for Afghanistan when an opportunity for laying a foundation for peace was dismissed.
Excluding one group or another from any equation in Kabul does not make sense if one is talking about peace and nation-building in Afghanistan. Excluding groups from the system simply amounts to inviting serious trouble and giving way to foreign interference.
There was a possibility of the blunder – not allowing Kabul a period of national reconciliation – being compensated by a complete bar on former warlords getting involved in poppy cultivation and corruption. Unfortunately, all these things were allowed to take deep roots in post-Taliban Afghanistan up to this day.
If decent alternatives to Taliban rule had been made available, the Afghan people would not have reverted to the same conservatives who had banned music, girls’ education and employment for women. Why would an ethnic Pushtoon continue to fight if better alternatives were offered him?
Despite all the blunders committed both in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the last eight years, there is still lingering hope if a sound political strategy alongside a military strategy were to be thought up, offering Afghans a better alternative to the insurgents. The return to a peaceful Afghanistan would have to include good governance by Karzai in his second term and a minimized role for India overseen by the United States. Otherwise, a mere troops surge will only see more spilled blood.
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