VIEW: Pakistan’s new Afghanistan outlook —Syed Talat Hussain

Because Pakistan was not in control of its border, dealing with militarily strong Taliban commanders was not possible. These black holes of the past have increasingly disappeared ever since Pakistan’s forces have advanced to the country’s northwestern borders, hoisting the national flag that previously flew only in name

The upcoming visit to the US by Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — only partly related to the strategic dialogue process that the Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi is heading — will afford him the opportunity to most comprehensively detail Pakistan’s security interests before the entire spectrum of the US leadership. The army chief will have one-of-a-kind bilateral engagement that would cover not just operation plans in Afghanistan but also the peace regime in South Asia.

Specifically on Afghanistan, it should not surprise anyone if General Kayani and his military assistants speak their minds about the situation in a manner that is jarring to some ears in Washington. Pakistan’s security establishment is sensing a widening opportunity in Afghanistan to have a greater, louder voice. It is far more confident and clear about the centrality of role in its vast backyard than ever before, and is likely to use this important forum in Washington to state its case.

This case is shaped by the new realities informing Pakistan’s Afghan policy, which, in more ways than one, is different from the policy of physical and proxy engagement of the 1980s and the 90s. The first and most visible change can be illustrated by recalling two terms from the days of the British Raj in the Subcontinent: the ‘forward policy’ and its opposite, the ‘closed border policy’.

After 1872, the British administration, fearing that instability in Afghanistan might cause the Russian influence to spread into the realm of their influence, became hands-on in dealing with the affairs of the lands that now form Balochistan and NWFP. They were involved in pretty much everything that happened there: from the feuds among the sardars to their resolution, from the goodwill of the Khan of Kalat to its relations with the local population; and from building alliances and dispensing patronage in the borderlands to the favourites while punishing those who resisted control.

Pakistan treaded the ‘forward policy’ path in the 1980s and the 90s and the result was a border with Afghanistan that, aside from historical reasons, became a complete thoroughfare for militant activity and covert operations. This has now changed, and effectively Pakistan is now pursuing the equivalent of the ‘closed border policy’ of the British, which had argued for softer control through more deliberate interaction, but never leaning too much towards the northwest.

For Pakistan, the Pak-Afghan border has acquired a new and added sanctity and strategic significance. While Islamabad continues to wield influence, it is doing so from the baseline of a well-demarcated and tightly controlled border, marked by miles-long ditches, hundreds of check-posts and regular patrolling with the help of horse-mounted sentries and gun-ready vehicle-borne paramilitary troops. This is a huge shift from the days when a deliberate attempt was made to erode the borderlines and allow the monitoring along this long stretch in the northwest to become non-operative.

The present comprehensive border planning, whose implementation is going to speed up in the coming months, would not have been possible without the Pakistani state’s practical writ getting extended to these areas. FATA operations have allowed the Pakistan Army to physically occupy this strip of Pakistan’s land. The US surge in the south of Afghanistan has forced the Pakistani military establishment to enhance its border footprint in Balochistan.

The impact of these two factors on Pakistan’s Afghan policy needs to be properly understood. For the first time in 62 years of our history, Pakistan’s security policy makers are in a position to plan and execute strategies in the northwest from a position of actual strength and real life presence on the border. This changes almost entirely the previously available range of options open to them. In the past, the absence of a functioning force in control of the contours of the border required the establishment to extensively rely on shady interlocutors. Religious parties, their madrassa affiliates, local khans, thugs and fixers for rent became strategically relevant. Also, intelligence officials, whose covert presence and influence was used as a substitute for actual control of the border situation, became policy drivers, whose agendas sometimes second-guessed and surpassed those of their bosses sitting in Islamabad. And, finally, the Taliban had a free run in carving out their zones of influence in and across this entire region. Because Pakistan was not in control of its border, dealing with militarily strong Taliban commanders was not possible. These black holes of the past have increasingly disappeared ever since Pakistan’s forces have advanced to the country’s northwestern borders, hoisting the national flag that previously flew only in name. The Pakistani establishment is increasingly confident of its ability to make policies that are purely its own and are not derailed by interlocutors or hijacked by intelligence operatives who think themselves super patriots and pretend to know the world better than anybody else.

It is this determination that actual control of a situation brings which is informing the new confidence General Kayani and his military assistants have as they set out for Washington. They think they can make things happen and can prevent things from happening far more directly and decisively than before in the northwest of Pakistan. But still they will have a lot of talking to do in the US. The country’s media elite is caught in a time warp. Farid Zakaria of Newsweek and CNN fame proved last week that the best selling is not always factually the most compelling. In his opening remarks to the interview of Richard Holbrooke, US’s ageing czar on Afghanistan and Pakistan, he admitted that there is a “shift in the approach of the Pakistani military”. But he levelled the admission to the ground with the second part of his sentence. “How big a shift, we don’t know, but it is a shift...”

Unfortunately, analysts like him who sit thousands of miles away from the subjects and areas they build their expertise and fame on, are still determining the discourse in the US about Pakistan’s policy in this region, which, in essence and in form, has changed much more than the world realises.