By M D NALAPAT
Although Trump made several strong statements on Pakistan, in practice there appears to be growing congruence between the US and Pakistan, as shown by the fact that Pompeo will pay a courtesy call on the new PM of Pakistan in Islamabad before sitting down for talks in Delhi.
Those familiar with the planners active within GHQ Rawalpindi,
including within the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), claim that Prime
Minister Imran Khan is “doing brilliantly” in fulfilling Phase I of an
“integrated strategy for Afghanistan and India”. Planning for this began
26 months ago, and went into high gear about eight months ago, the
preliminary stage being the selection as Prime Minister of former
Pakistan cricket captain and heartthrob of several well-connected women
in India and the UK, Imran Khan. From that time onwards, key
institutions within Pakistan and overseas “got the message” as to who
would be the next formal Head of Government in a country where the
military has been holding the reins of authority directly or otherwise
since 1953. Khan was told to “concentrate on US policymakers, especially
through influential contacts in the UK” so as to convince Washington to
accept a greatly expanded role for the Taliban in the dovecotes of
power in Kabul. From around mid-2015 onwards, GHQ Rawalpindi had been
ensuring a plentiful supply of weapons and cash to Taliban elements in
Afghanistan, with the result that forces loyal to President Ashraf Ghani
have steadily lost ground to the extremist militia. GHQ’s “Imran card”
has been in operation since mid-2015, with the result that the US
administration has killed off most of the key Pashtun militia leaders
hostile to GHQ Rawalpindi, leaving mostly those amenable to instructions
from the Pakistan military. The Barack Obama administration was in a
hurry to get its troops out of harm’s way in Afghanistan, and was
tempted by the ISI’s offer to facilitate a situation whereby attacks by
the terror militia would be concentrated on the Afghan National Army and
police, rather than, as was the case previously, on US forces.
Meanwhile, aware that President Ghani “listens only to the US
administration and to no one else”, the Pakistan military has
intensified its off-camera discussions with US counterparts on
Afghanistan, mainly on inserting the Taliban into the Afghan government,
thereby creating a Trojan horse that would quickly ensure the
replacement of the Ghani government with that run by another Pashtun
leader, but who this time would be a client of the ISI as was the case
in the past, before 9/11 altered the situation.
Being a Pashtun, it is expected that Prime Minister Khan’s carefully
cultivated pro-Taliban image will assist in making the militia coalesce
around GHQ in the manner that they did during the 1990s under the
direction of the Clinton administration, whose affinity for the militia
was on public display rather than hidden. Over the past seven months,
Imran Khan has established contacts with more than 30 Taliban
functionaries, and seems to have done as expert a job of winning their
trust as he has with policymakers in the US and the UK. Ex-wife Jemima
Khan, who converted to Islam to marry the cricketer, “is still close to
him”, and as a consequence, “Imran is welcomed into high society in the
UK with an access not available to any other Pakistani”. His UK contacts
have worked hard at linking Khan to policymakers and think-tankers in
Washington, which is probably why the Trump administration seems to be
following a line on Pakistan very different from the no-nonsense tone
set by the 45th President of the United States early in his term. The
National Security Council in particular seems to have (according to
those involved in GHQ Rawalpindi tactical planning) “accepted Imran’s
arguments”. There has been a period of worry for the ISI when first the
Obama and later the Trump administration moved towards accepting the
Indian position on Afghanistan, which was almost identical to the views
privately and to a lesser extent openly held by key members of the
Ashraf Ghani administration in Kabul, including NDF chief Masoom
Stanekzai, who is known to be close to the UK. Almost as soon as he was
sworn in as Prime Minister, Imran Khan began continuing rounds of
consultation with Chief of Army Staff General Bajwa and ministers known
to be fully within the ambit of the military, such as Foreign Minister
S.M. Qureshi and Defence Minister Pervez Khattak, who backed the
Pakistan army’s brutal crackdown of Pashtun nationalist elements in
Khyber Pakhtunkwa, especially since 2013, when he took charge of the
province as Chief Minister. The link between the army and Khan is
illustrated by the fact that 12 out of the 21 ministers appointed by him
previously served “Kargil Commando” Pervez Musharraf, who too “managed
to charm the US into adopting a policy that preserved the prerogatives”
of the Pakistan army. GHQ expects that Imran Khan will persuade Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to go the way of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who gave
international legitimacy to coupmaster Musharraf by inviting him to
talks at Agra in 2001, when the military rulers of Pakistan were being
condemned across the globe for destroying what little democracy there
was in Pakistan till the military coup against an elected Prime
Minister, Nawaz Sharif. While PM Modi has welcomed the swearing in of
Imran Khan, he seems in no hurry to trust the word of interlocutors that
the new civilian government in Islamabad represents a genuine change
from the India-phobic policies that have long been the staple of GHQ
Rawalpindi.
Once a GHQ-controlled Taliban seizes power in Kabul, the next stage
of the “Af-Ind” strategy worked out by ISI planners will focus on
Kashmir, and will be designed to ensure that the civil and military
administration across much of Jammu & Kashmir (that part remaining
in India’s control after the 1949 ceasefire) “melts down” as a
consequence of violent unrest. The intention is to “ensure effective
control of (most of) J&K by agents of GHQ Rawalpindi, while
nominally the Central government in Delhi remains in (formal) charge
“but no longer in control”. While timelines have been decided for both
the Afghanistan as well as the Kashmir stages, those contacted were
ignorant of what these were, except that “it will be in years and not
decades”. It is no accident that civilian casualties in Afghanistan have
been higher during the past six months than during the previous period
in 2017. Although President Donald Trump made several strong statements
on Pakistan, in practice there appears to be growing congruence between
the US and Pakistan, as shown by the fact that Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo will pay a courtesy call on the new Prime Minister of Pakistan in
Islamabad before sitting down for talks in Delhi with External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj. The Pakistan-friendly policy first championed by
Trump’s former National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster seems to have
returned. The US administration has even agreed to direct talks with the
Taliban and “these are taking place with increasing frequency” with the
blessings and assistance of GHQ Rawalpindi. Signals appear to have been
given to interests and individuals in the Gulf Cooperation Council that
“it is once again all right to give large amounts of money” to the
Taliban. According to those contacted, the Trump administration “wants
to put the Afghanistan situation aside and focus on Iran”. The hope is
that GHQ will deliver on its promise that the Taliban will desist from
attacking US forces, so that most of the 6,000 active combat elements
there can be removed from the country in an atmosphere where US
casualties have come down to very low levels. What impact a Talbanized
Afghanistan will have on Central Asia and India seems to have been
considered as scantily as plans for the post-war situation in Iraq were
worked out by the Bush administration when it took out Saddam Hussein in
2003.
It may be that the folly of devising plans that see GHQ Rawalpindi as
the solution rather than as part of the problem facing Afghanistan may
yet dawn on the National Security Council and other agencies in the
Trump administration that are pushing for a US return to Musharraf-era
policies towards Pakistan. In the meantime, hopefully India will itself
deepen its security links with the US (while at the same time expanding
commercial links with China), including by signing the remaining two
Foundation Defence Agreements, an amended CISMOA and BECA. Once these
are out of the way, there needs to be a joint India-US surveillance
system located in the Andaman Islands that would keep track of
developments in the Indian Ocean segment of the Indo-Pacific. Despite
continuing Vajpayee-era hopes of reconciliation between Islamabad and
Delhi, it seems likely that the overall situation in the region will get
worse before it gets better.
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