US should further Afghan peace talks

Knowing how to distinguish “good” terrorists from “bad” terrorists is an essential feature of state sponsorship of terrorism. Till Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was successfully targeted in a drone strike, it seemed that Pakistan had mastered this art.

The elimination of Mansour has, however, come as a severe jolt to Pakistan’s security establishment, as expressed by the country’s foreign policy advisor Sartaz Aziz, who feels that Mansour’s killing has not only “added to the complexity of the Afghan conflict” but also “undermined the Afghan peace process.” This could not have come at a worse time for Pakistan. Not surprisingly, it is furious over American action.

Pakistan had invested a great deal of its energy and resources in helping Mansour win the succession battle within the Taliban after the death of Mullah Omar, which complicated rather than eased the security situation in Afghanistan.

Rawalpindi, obsessed with gaining ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan, has always manoeuvred to undermine the legitimacy of the democratically elected government in Kabul in the eyes of its own people, and Mansour was more than willing to oblige the Pakistani generals. 

Pakistan made no secret of the fact that it was complicit with Mansour in withholding the news of Omar’s death from illness for two years, as reflected in Aziz’s frustration about the leak of the news to media in 2015. America’s relentless drone strikes inside Pakistani territory have often led to intense tension between Washington and Islamabad. The latter openly denounces the drone strikes despite constant revelations that it secretly permits them.

In fact, the incoherence and inconsistency of Pakistan’s approach is an important reminder that readers must be very cautious about reading too much into Islamabad’s proclamations. However, the complex relationship between the United States and Pakistan has now reached a turning point.

Mansour’s stubborn refusal to engage peacefully with the Ashraf Ghani administration was proving to be the biggest hurdle in taking the Afghan peace process in a meaningful direction. His vitriolic and pro-vocative rhetoric against the US-led forces could have been igno-red but not his mindless killing spree across Afghan territory which made the government forces appear too impotent and submissive in the face of a hostile and threatening Taliban.

Mansour’s death provides a rare opportunity to those Taliban leaders who want the conflict in Afghanistan to come to a final end through dialogical engagement with the Afghan government. But if the dreaded Haqqani network, led by the deputy leader of Taliban, Sirajuddin Haqqani, manages to tighten its hold within the Taliban, it would make reconciliation efforts even more difficult to succeed.

Show of strength
Though there does not seem to be any possibility of a letup in the fighting, nor is there any visible chance of immediate paralysis within the Taliban. The targeted killing of Mansour is the spectacle through which the US has again announced itself as exceptional and powerful since assassinating Osama bin Laden.

By successfully wiping out the senior-most Taliban leader in Pakistan’s restive province of Balochistan, the US has clearly demonstrated its strength to those insurgents who are still vacillating or unwilling to come to the negotiating table as well as to those in Pakistan’s security establishment who think that the safe havens they have crafted for “good terrorists” are impregnable.

The depth and extent of Pakistan’s support for spreading violence and terror in Afghan-
istan is not a secret. Pakistan has been fortunate in its Afghan misadventures because the US seems to have exhausted its enthusiasm and will to confront the Taliban militarily, and is too dependent on Pakistan to help find a face-saving exit route from the Afghan quagmire.

The time has come to dispel the strong perception that the US has abdicated its strategic responsibility in Afghanistan. The US must continue to be a solid supporter of peace process through Afghan-led peace negotiations with the Taliban and other insurgent groups.

There is no doubt that peace in Afghanistan cannot be ensured without a politically negotiated settlement as was affirmed in April in the latest meeting of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) comprising Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China. Therefore, those who oppose peace must be targeted so that innocent lives could be saved.

(The writer is Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Sardar Patel University, Jodhpur)