But recent developments in this war suggest that military planners have finally realised the risks of this most dangerous of relationships. Army chief Ashfaq Kayani recently noted that a Taliban society at home and in Afghanistan was not in Pakistan’s interests. In the past, Pakistan supported the Taliban in Afghanistan and its own tribal areas in a quest to achieve “strategic depth” against rival India. Now, Kayani concedes, a stable and friendly Afghanistan is sufficient strategic depth for Pakistan.

This is one of several signs that the military establishment has changed under his stewardship. His promise not to involve the armed forces in public politics as Pervez Musharraf had in the past was borne out by the army’s refusal to support President Asif Ali Zardari’s failed bid to oust Iftikhar Chaudhry, the independent-minded Chief Justice.

Their counter-insurgency capacity has increased from virtual non-existence in 2004 when a new `Pakistan Taliban’ compelled the state to sign a string of ceasefires in the tribal areas to an effective force that has resulted in the capture of important Taliban strongholds along the tribal frontier with Afghanistan.

The difference to years past when military planners heavily patronised the Taliban, says Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council, “is that Pakistan is now facing the spectre of (terrorism by) Taliban groups at home. The immediate enemy is internal now, not India.” In the past two years, about 5000 civilians and 1700 soldiers have been killed.

After Pakistan was compelled to make enemies of the Taliban in 2001, military operations in the lawless frontier with Afghanistan were initially unpopular. Most viewed them as a war pitting fellow Pakistanis and Muslims against each other at the behest of the US. That all began to change as army-led forces showed the resolve to achieve military victory in the Swat valley and adjacent tribal areas. As ordinary Pakistanis were increasingly targeted in the terrorism and security forces took significant casualties, authorities and the media were successful in branding this as Pakistan’s war.

Continued US pressure, tied more than ever to the delivery of billions in civil and military aid, has also played a role. Since last month, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies have facilitated the capture of about half of the senior Afghan Taliban leadership.

These captures have been praised by Washington. But questions remain. How were these senior leaders captured and why now? And will it attempt to eliminate Islamist militants targeting India and Iran, such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jundullah, with the same vigour and intent?

These unanswered questions point to the difficult road ahead. Even now, Pakistan’s security establishment feels it must tread a careful line between a belligerent US and the reality that it can’t exert its influence over the entire tribal areas through force alone.

There is a dark side to the military operations, too. In Swat, government rehabilitation efforts have been admirable but in other areas, such as Bajaur and the Waziristans, they have been poor. Security forces have also been implicated in atrocities including the kidnapping and murder of perceived Taliban sympathisers and indiscriminate bombardments that have killed thousands and displaced millions.

Obsessions over India also remain a problem. Although troop levels in the Kashmir region have slightly decreased and both countries have formally recommenced dialogue, observers in Islamabad remain alarmed by India’s growing influence in Afghanistan. India spent close to $US40bn on its armed forces last year, eight times as much Pakistan.

That imbalance means Pakistan cannot totally divorce itself from the Taliban if it is perceived as the only viable ally against Indian influence in Afghanistan once US-led forces leave. It is unclear how these contradictions will resolve themselves. Military success can only provide immediate stability. Maintaining it will require political leadership.

Mustafa Qadri is a journalist based in Pakistan

[This article appeared in The Australian newspaper on Monday March 8, 2010. Url: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/my-enemys-enemy-no-longer-a-friend/story-e6frg6ux-1225837937177]

The most spectacular evidence apparently in support of this claim is the capture last week of the senior most military commander of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Only weeks earlier, Pakistan authorities revealed that Hakeemullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, succumbed to injuries from a US drone strike in the tribal areas.

The losses come at a time when the US is spearheading a series of major offensives in the south of Afghanistan, the desolate heartland of the Taliban insurgency that has proved impossible to end in over nine years of conflict.

Already foreign forces claim to have captured the key Taliban stronghold of Marjah. They have also killed at least 17 civilians in two errant missile attacks. The deaths were a “very serious setback” admitted Britain’s senior most soldier, Jock Stirrup.

Policy wonks in Western capitals are hoping that, casualties apart, the string of military successes will force the Taliban to the negotiating table. As former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said in London recently, negotiations must occur from a position of strength.

Notwithstanding such hairy chested pronouncements, it is uncertain whether the Taliban have truly been vanquished.

Although the loss of senior commanders will undoubtedly affect Taliban strategy in the immediate future, similar losses in the past have not affected their overall strength.

When key Taliban commander in Pakistan Nek Mohammad was killed by a US pilotless aircraft in 2004, it eventually paved the way for Beitullah Mehsud his new strategy of increased, high profile suicide bombings throughout Pakistan.

After Beitullah was himself killed by yet another US missile strike, he was replaced by the younger, more abrasive Hakeemullah Mehsud. Hakeemullah was already feared for his virulently sectarian hatred for Shia Muslims – a minority sect of Islam – and strong sympathies for Al Qaeda’s notion of global holy war.

He is believed to have helped in Al Qaeda’s audacious raid on a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven American agents.

Incredibly the bombings inside Pakistan, already a virtual daily occurrence under Beitullah, also increased while Hakeemullah was emir of the Pakistan Taliban.

Yet it was only after the bombing on the CIA base in Afghanistan that the US decided to eliminate Hakeemullah.

In an apparent bout of revenge, it also massively increased its controversial pilotless drone missile strikes in the tribal areas, a powerful military asset with the advantage of killing people far from the scrutinising eyes of journalists.

With him gone, the insurgency appears to have lost its last high profile commander.

The overarching aim of these targeted captures and assassinations is to splinter the insurgency in the hope individual soldiers and commanders can be convinced to lay down their arms.

But the clear message in the recent, violent past suggests that rather than weakening the enemy, this strategy increases their resolve, much as Hitler’s London blitz steeled Britons against the Nazis in the darkest days of the Second World War.

The double irony is that whereas before the Taliban was a complex and disparate organisation – its major branch under Mullah Omar is opposed to foreign armies in Afghanistan, whereas Beitullah and Hakeemullah’s ‘Pakistan Taliban’ seek to overthrow the Pakistan Government – the upscale in attacks against it breeds a unity of purpose: survival.

Recently there have been increased attempts to curb the social alienation that enables the Taliban to recruit foot soldiers from remote, poor regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Dubbed the “civilian surge” it is a welcome step. But this civilian surge will take time and significant political will and cannot match the pace and destructiveness of military operations.

Most ominously of all, however, the tactic of eliminating senior insurgents creates opportunities for militant groups with more radical and internationalist agendas like Al Qaeda to step into the breach.

There was a time, just after the US invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Al Qaeda was totally dependent on Taliban refuges in Pakistan’s remote tribal areas for its survival. But with successive Taliban commanders lost and Pakistan Army encroachment into the tribal areas, the Pakistan Taliban have relied more heavily on Al Qaeda to undertake a string of deadly attacks in the major cities of Lahore, Peshawar and Islamabad.

Something similar could occur in Afghanistan.

There is a clear message in all of this. The tit-for-tat nature of the AfPak conflict where Taliban violence is met with overwhelming force – both of which kill and traumatise innocent civilians – continues to spiral out of control.

Escalating the conflict for the sake of immediate results will create long lasting divisions and animosity. All the while the spectre of international terrorism remains at large.

[This article was originally published in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Unleashed website. Url: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2824406.htm]

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 February 2010 18.30 GMT

At no point do world leaders look more diminished than after leaving office, and Pakistan’s former president and military dictator Pervez Musharraf is no exception. So when he addressed a London audience this week, it was perhaps ironic that much of what he said was a reminder that little has changed in the way the west relates to the “AfPak” region.

It was all very George Bush. The world must “stay the course” in Afghanistan and Pakistan because it is the centre of the greatest threat to international security in the post-cold war world, namely Islamist terrorism. US-led forces in Afghanistan must “saturate” insurgency-hit regions “with strength”. He added that the region must not be abandoned as had occurred after the Soviets were defeated in Afghanistan 21 years ago because it would remain a breeding ground for terrorism. The clear message was that Pakistan is a garrison state whose forces must be subsidised well into the future.

Almost no one would disagree with this thesis, or at least the idea that regions devastated by wars and foreign interference ought not to be left to their own devices once the dust settles. But the deafening silence over Musharraf’s personal responsibility for the devastation remains. What is especially troubling is the way that his still-fresh tenure – after all, he resigned as president of Pakistan less than two years ago – has already been swept into the history books.

That history refuses to lay dormant.

Gordon Brown’s government has been rocked by the Binyam Mohamed torture scandal. We now know that Mohamed was tortured in Pakistan. In fact, Musharraf’s Pakistan was a key conduit through which thousands were kidnapped and tortured, often under intense pressure from Britain and the US. Did the general collude in this? Did he facilitate the disappearance of thousands of his own citizens too? These important questions remain unanswered, thanks in part to Whitehall’s equivocal stance over Mohamed’s torture.

Much like Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry, Musharraf defended his record as commander-in-chief. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of his rule was his perceived double game of appeasing the Taliban by, among other things, signing ceasefires with them in the tribal areas while talking tough on the White House lawn. Now, he countered, the reconciliation approach is exactly what is being attempted in Afghanistan. In contrast, he rationalised inaction against non-Taliban militancy in the Punjab on the basis that it was a delicate matter that would take time to solve.

Neither response was particularly convincing, but the fact that he fought for his reputation nevertheless spoke volumes.

Musharraf has frequently if indirectly hinted at making a comeback to Pakistani politics, but only if the “people of Pakistan” want him – a familiar euphemism for drumming up support through back channels. Musharraf remains popular in many quarters of Pakistan society, as demonstrated by an online fan page replete with hagiographic comments and over 130,000 members. Musharraf proponents point to his international standing. No living Pakistani is as internationally recognisable as the former army chief, just as no serving head of state has brought with them as much pre-existing controversy as the incumbent, president Asif Ali Zardari.

With Pakistan facing fresh crises almost every week – the latest being anongoing dispute between an empowered judiciary and the government of president Zardari – now is as good a time as ever for Musharraf to stake his credentials with Pakistani and international audiences.

Like former prime minister Benazir Bhutto before him, Musharraf is an eloquent and confident speaker. That might explain why he remains a frequent guest in the lecture circuit. But, also like Bhutto, there is a profound gap between rhetoric and reality. All of our politicians decry the appalling poverty in Pakistan, yet none have taken significant steps to end the corruption and inequality that fuels it. Musharraf’s Pakistan was showered with billions of pounds that were almost totally unaccounted for. Many wonder why so little – even less than a trickle – was spent on the schools, infrastructure and hospitals he now claims are vital to vicariously defeating extremism in Pakistan.

There is renewed hope that will change with the Obama administration’s package of non-military funding – $7.5bn over five years – which has significant strings attached to it. In Pakistan too there are subtle signs that things may be changing.

Musharraf’s successor as army chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, has gone to great lengths to avoid the media. Although impossible to predict, army insiders say he has no interest in formal politics and is looking forward to retirement later this year. The contrast with Musharraf could not be clearer. Perhaps the army has learned from his mistakes.

The dangerous supply routes through Pakistan that this correspondent reported on last year have become a lifeline for international and national forces in Afghanistan. But, as last month’s London conference on Afghanistan’s future demonstrated, Pakistan is set to play a role that extends far beyond mere logistics.

At the conference, world leaders effectively agreed to begin preparations for an eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, with responsibility for the country’s governance and security to be handed back to the Afghan authorities over a five-year period starting next year. This in itself would be a major step. But the story that grabbed many of the headlines was one of the ideas being floated to help achieve this security–engaging in dialogue with ‘moderate’ Taliban.

Calls to reach out to these less ideologically-driven members of the insurgency are still understandably sensitive. But a look at the challenges in creating a stable Afghanistan gives some indication as to why such measures are apparently being considered.

At the heart of the US-led drive for stability is its surge of 30,000 troops and an ambitious plan to increase Afghan National Army troops from present levels of about 86,000 to 170,000, and to bolster its police force over the next two years. But meeting these targets will be a formidable challenge. Like the Afghan police forces, the ANA has a high attrition rate, with the US Defence Department noting one in four recruits quit the army last year. Another problem with the army is that few recruits come from the Pashtun heartlands of the south and east where the Taliban are based.

If coalition countries, which are under intense domestic public pressure to withdraw their forces, are going to address this challenge including through holding talks with the Taliban, it makes sense to turn to Pakistan. After all, the country has historical links to key Taliban commanders stretching back to the 1980s and the period after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, when it sought a reliable client regime in Kabul.

Indeed, according to veteran journalist Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan’s army has already approached some commanders in the pro-Afghan Taliban resistance with bases in the lawless tribal areas nominally within Pakistan’s borders. Based on interviews with members of the insurgency, Shahzad claims that Pakistani officials sought assurances that, in the event of a US withdrawal, Pakistan is viewed as a friendly Muslim nation.

‘The key is to return to the traditional tribal setup,’ says North West Frontier Province Gov. Owais Ghani, a veteran Pakistani Pashtun politician who says that gaining the trust of tribal groups is essential. He adds that doing so will mean negotiating a ceasefire with key players such as powerful veteran warlord Gulbadin Hekmatyar. ‘He was paid a big price for protecting Osama, so there’s no reason why he can’t be bought back,’ Ghani says.

Gen. Tariq Khan, current head of the Frontier Corp, a key paramilitary outfit that has been spearheading Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts in the tribal areas, concurs that many of those fighting US-led forces have no particular ideological affinity with al-Qaeda, and he says he believes the insurgency is in fact a direct response to the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan.

He also believes that it is inevitable that the Taliban will play some role in Kabul’s political future. ‘(The Afghan Taliban) will keep fighting until they find a way back into power,’ he says.

Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar has publicly ruled out negotiations with US-led forces until all foreign troops leave Afghanistan, a demand he has made ever since US forces invaded in late 2001. However, with the US building a massive new embassy in Kabul and an extensive network of military bases, it is questionable whether they do in fact intend to ever leave the country entirely.

But either way, there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that Mullah Omar is actually more flexible than his rhetoric indicates.

According to Sultan Amir Tarar, the retired Pakistan military spy chief considered Omar’s mentor when the Taliban was patronised by Pakistan in the 1990s, he is ready to talk. Since last year, media reports have suggested that Omar has indicated the possibility of a renegotiation of the national constitution with other Afghan leaders (the Taliban considers the current one illegitimate owing to Western involvement in its drafting). Another demand is the integration of ethnic Pashtun Taliban forces into the Tajik-dominated Afghan National Army. But most significant of all was Omar’s statement last November during the Muslim holy festival of Eid, that a future Taliban government would not pose a threat to neighbouring countries, a clear suggestion that al-Qaeda would no longer be welcome.

For Pakistan, this has made disarming the Afghan Taliban within its borders even less appealing than it already was. For a start, Pakistani security forces have had to rely heavily on pro-Afghan Taliban commanders in North and South Waziristan to capture the main sanctuaries of the Pakistani Taliban. Unlike its Afghan cousin, the Pakistan Taliban movement has sought to overthrow the Pakistan state, an existential threat to Pakistan that has meant current operations have been aimed at eliminating this branch. Even so, the Army, which is co-ordinating operations (although much of it has been undertaken by the paramilitary Frontier Corp) has chosen not to expand the fighting into neighbouring tribal areas such as North Waziristan and other areas of the South, arguing any such a move would be highly destabilising. According to senior spokesperson Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan is looking to consolidate its gains in those two regions rather than open new fronts, because security forces are already ‘overstretched.’

Gen Tariq Khan, one of Pakistan’s most experienced field commanders and currently Inspector General of the paramilitary Frontier Corp, which has been heavily involved in counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban, echoes those concerns. In Afghanistan, US-led forces are expected to engage the Taliban in an attempt to force them to the negotiating table. If and when that occurs, Khan argues, it will be difficult for Pakistan to retain the sensitive ceasefires that enable access to strategic regions of the tribal areas and ensure that the Afghan Taliban don’t join the insurgency in Pakistan. ‘Pakistan can’t fight on all fronts [at once],’ Khan says.

Yet such calls have created much consternation among US planners who still have reservations about Pakistan’s resolve to eliminate the Taliban and al-Qaeda aligned groups within its borders. The United States has scaled up its missile strikes on suspected militant strikes. In its largest strike to date, drone aircraft fired 19 missiles at a village in North Waziristan in an attempt to kill Sirajuddin Haqqani, operational commander of the powerful pro-Taliban Haqqani network. Once an anti-Soviet mujahedeen on the CIA payroll, Sirajuddin’s father Jalaluddin was a key ally of Pakistan during the 1990s when it was scouting for a proxy to exert influence over Afghanistan.

Retired intelligence officials in Islamabad told The Diplomat that Pakistan has continued to maintain contact with the Haqqanis, but it has only limited influence over them. Shuja Nawaz, author of the seminal text on the Pakistan Army and a long-time military insider, agrees with that assessment. But Western officials remain deeply suspicious of lingering Pakistani links to Haqqani and other members of ‘the big three’ of the Afghan Taliban–Mullah Omar and Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.

This month, US Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair told the US Congress that Pakistan’s conduct of military operations against the Taliban were praiseworthy. But the Obama Administration has continued to pressure Pakistani leaders to widen their efforts to include the senior leadership of the Afghan Taliban, known as the Quetta Shura because it is believed to be based in the capital of the large and remote province of Balochistan.

Last December, Pakistan Defence Minister Ahmad Mukhtar finally admitted that Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura did actually exist after several years of Pakistani officials denying any knowledge of the Afghan Taliban leadership’s whereabouts. Yet Mukhtar’s glib assurance following the admission, when he stated that the Shura had been ‘taken on’ by security forces and no longer posed a threat, gave Washington little confidence that Pakistan was finally, truly cracking down on the leaders of the Afghan insurgency.

Careful Balancing Act

Already fighting a politically sensitive war that makes much of the population feel their government has become ‘a US puppet,’ as several local newspapers describe it, Pakistan’s security establishment feels it must tread a careful line between a belligerent United States and the on-the-ground reality that it can’t exert its influence over the entire tribal areas through force alone.

The murder by Pakistan Taliban militants this month of eight people, including three US soldiers, three schoolgirls and a Pakistani soldier in the Lower Dir region highlights the continued sensitivity of Pakistan’s special relationship with the superpower. Although the United States had been discreetly giving Pakistani security forces counterinsurgency training under the Bush administration, the deaths of the soldiers represents the first public acknowledgment that US forces have indeed extended the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan. The fact that it was disclosed through an act of terrorism has added further grist to the national rumour mill that sees hidden US hands in the violence and political turmoil gripping the country.

And in Pakistani eyes, at least, India adds a further complication to the mix. Although India has slightly reduced its troop levels in the disputed Kashmir region and spoken of a willingness to recommence dialogue with Pakistan, observers in Islamabad have been alarmed by its growing influence in Afghanistan.

In addition, intelligence officials are convinced that India has been involved in the spate of terrorism that has rocked most of Pakistan’s major cities and is co-ordinating these efforts through a string of secret bases along the border in Afghanistan. Regardless of the veracity of such claims, it is common knowledge the Afghan Government has developed close links with India, particularly in trade and development, closer ties reflected in a recent poll that found that 71 percent of Afghans surveyed felt India was playing the most favourable role in their country.

This wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by Pakistan’s leadership. In a series of public briefings, the usually media shy Chief of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, reiterated that India remained Pakistan’s primary ‘concern’ at least until the dispute over Kashmir was resolved.

Prominent TV journalist Talat Hussain says Kayani’s stance is not just posturing. ‘You have to understand, India has increased its clout in Afghanistan… [Pakistan] still faces a hostile army in Kashmir [and] much of the insurgency in the tribal areas has been removed,’ Hussain told The Diplomat. ‘If America leaves Afghanistan [other foreign powers] will fill the power vacuum.’

For Pakistani planners, that means supporting whatever power will minimise Indian influence over Afghanistan. ‘We want strategic depth in Afghanistan,’ Kayani said. ‘But we don’t want to control it.’

Yet in truth, Pakistan lacks the capacity to control Afghanistan, even if it wanted to. Like everyone else, its leaders are still taking this battle one day at a time.

[This article originally appeared in The Diplomat magazine. Url: http://www.the-diplomat.com/001f1281_r.aspx?artid=393]

Thirty-one years ago this week a coalition of religious and secular Iranians ousted the pro-US Shah. The move from the Shah’s superficially modern, Western-centric monarchy to an independent Islamic theocracy in 1979 marked one of the biggest geopolitical shifts in the Middle East in recent history.

But the Islamic Republic of Iran that was created under the auspices of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini — the man known most widely in the West for his 1989 fatwa calling for author Salman Rushdie’s head — was not an immediate consequence of the revolution. Rather, as with all revolutions, it was the final result of a chaotic and violent period in the modern history of an ancient society.

History weighs heavily on Iran. Perhaps that is why, even now, historians continue to argue over the true significance of 1979. For some Iranians, last year’s country-wide protests following a widely disputed election represented the bridge between the promises of 1979 and the disappointments of the intervening decades. The Government’s heavy-handed response led to comparisons with the regime it succeeded three decades earlier.

The odds have not generally been in Iran’s favour.

Even in 1979, the new republic attracted widespread animosity in the region and internationally. It did not help that Khomeini decided to take US embassy staff hostage for 444 days. That folly aside, the revolution was greeted with fear. Shia Iran’s neighbouring Arab regimes — themselves autocratic dicatorships and monarchies with sizeable Shia populations — feared they were next in line. Along with the US, many of them rushed to support Saddam Hussein’s hubristic decision to invade Iran in 1980 on the assumption it would fall flat.

It didn’t. The Iran-Iraq war only strengthened the theocracy’s hand and rallied Iranians against a common foe — and left around a million people dead. The international community’s role in arming both Iran and Iraq should rank among the most shameful acts of criminality of the post-World War II era.

Instead this context, and how it might help to understand today’s deeply suspicious and autocratic regime, has largely been expunged from the record. It has been replaced by the monotonous refrain that Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear menace.

Although this year and last year many Iranians have taken to the streets demanding greater freedoms, there is deep cynicism regarding international pressure ostensibly aimed at dissuading Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Add to this the fact that the Iranian Government is far from universally loathed within the country. As President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad rose to speak in Tehran’s Freedom Square this week, he may not have been greeted by “millions” of supporters, as officials claimed. Nonetheless the turnout was large — as were the pro-regime rallies organised last year in response to election protests.

Since last June’s elections many of the leaders and ordinary members of the protest movement — dubbed the Green Movement — have been jailed. According to Human Rights Watch, the movement has given Iranian authorities cause to unleash a “human rights disaster”.

The clampdown continued this week as authorities prevented protesters from congregating or shouting pro-Opposition slogans while a huge blackout of the nation’s media and telecommunications networks was under way. Stalwarts of the Green Movement from within the establishment, including a former Presidential candidate and senior clerics, were reportedlyattacked by security forces while attending rallies in Tehran.

Diplomatic pressure from the US and the international community hasn’t helped. The highly confrontational approach to Iran’s nuclear ambitions has been a boon for hardliners who have been all too happy to label the Green Movement a foreign conspiracy to destabilise the country.

There is plenty of fuel for the claims of the clerics. While the world’s attention is squarely focused on Iran, there is virtually no discussion of Israel’s already existent nuclear stockpile, or attempts by the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect them.

While many countries decry the oppression in Iran, other Middle Eastern states guilty of similar restrictions like Saudi Arabia and Egypt face no diplomatic repercussions and are, on the contrary, termed “moderate” states and key allies.

Most ominous of all, however, is the similarity between the treatment of Iran today and that of Iraq in the lead up to its invasion in 2003.

The US recently called for a new raft of sanctions against Iran for continuing to enrich uranium, a move seen as a major step toward the development of nuclear weapons.

The Obama Administration has said it wants to compel Tehran to stop its nuclear energy program — and not punish the people of Iran. Using language that could well have been broadcast from the UN building in New York before the invasion of Iraq, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates referred to the “multiple opportunities” the international community had given Iran to stop its nuclear program, leaving no option but to use sanctions. Washington’s words and actions are, in the words of academic Jake Lynch, “reminiscent of the squeeze on Iraq” from 1998 until its invasion five years later.

These parallels — not to mention the recent very public decision of the US to establish a missile shield in several Arabian Gulf states aimed at protecting against an Iranian missile strike — only give Iranian leaders extra incentive to increase their stockpiles of missiles and other weapons.

And as this international drama plays out, ordinary Iranians continue to struggle under the weight of a regime that can’t come to terms with the demands of an open, modern society.

Source URL: http://newmatilda.com/2010/02/12/revolutionary-republic-becomes-nuclear-state

Mustafa Qadri
guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 February 2010 08.00 GMT

Memory spans are short in modern politics, but even by those standards the relative ease with which the discourse on Afghanistan has shifted from fighting the Taliban to negotiating with them is remarkable.

Even more incredible is our collective refusal to admit the obvious. The Taliban are stronger than ever because the US chose a heavy-handed, unilateral military response to the 9/11 attacks. What’s more, the insurgency is now more ideologically aligned with al-Qaida than ever before. Thanks to bin Laden’s network, the Taliban have changed from rag-tag army to deadly insurgency and, most ominous of all, they believe they are more than a match for the world’s only superpower.

Some will say that the climate following the deadly attacks on the US nearly nine years ago made it impossible to take the more nuanced approach now being attempted. Diplomacy back in 2001 was left to the Taliban. As the US began its carpet bombardment of Afghanistan, however, Mullah Omar expressed a willingness to hand bin Laden over provided the US gave evidence of his culpability. Any extradition, he added, would have to be to a neutral country and not the US.

The offer was flatly rejected in October 2001, along with an earlier suggestion to try bin Laden in a domestic or international tribunal. It is impossible to judge in hindsight the veracity or practicality of these overtures. But as US-led foreign and Afghan forces meander through an increasingly violent and destabilising war that has killed thousands of Afghans and hundreds of foreign nationals, including 253 British soldiers, the decision to favour unilateral war over diplomacy has proved disastrous.

The Afghan war is also a political liability for foreign governments embroiled in it. A majority of voters in most countries involved in the International Assistance Force for Afghanistan, including Britain, want their troops to return home. Western planners have realised that there can be no hope of a withdrawal in the foreseeable future unless there is dialogue with the Taliban.

This is no simple task. On the one hand, negotiating with the Taliban is a victory for realism. They may represent one of the most fanatical and oppressive streams of Islam, but the Taliban are now the dominant social movement in Afghanistan’s Pashtun population, the country’s largest ethnic group who inhabit the regions of the south and east – major frontlines in the current conflict. Support for the Taliban among Pashtuns, far from universal before 2001, has increased because the US and its allies decided to invade their country.

But these facts should not detract from other truths. There can be no doubt that the Taliban and the warlords backing the pro-US regime in Kabul pose a long-term threat to the development of Afghanistan, particularly for its women and minorities. New research suggests that support for the Taliban is based not on ideology but social ties, cultural affinities and the hope that the insurgents can improve living conditions more than President Karzai’s hopelessly corrupt administration.

Karzai is a product of the US decision to unilaterally invade Afghanistan. Along with resentment towards the US for installing the Karzai regime, however, many Afghans are also openly hostile to regional powers, especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for promoting conflict in their country even after the Soviets left in 1989. Interestingly, Afghans view India more favourably than any other foreign presence in their country – up to 71% of them according to one recent opinion poll – including the UN. It cannot be a coincidence that there are no Indian soldiers in Afghanistan. India has invested billions of dollars in developing the country’s civil infrastructure. India’s involvement in Afghanistan is not an act of charity and it has a long history of supporting former Northern Allies warlords widely implicated in atrocities. But in post-2001 Afghanistan, the soft power of Indian development assistance has accrued enormous goodwill.

An extensive survey carried out by the Asia Foundation last year found that the central thing on Afghan minds is not the Taliban or the US, but access to education and employment for both men and women. And as Khalid Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, points out, poverty is a far greater cause of death in Afghanistan than war.

In the rush to end our participation in the Afghan war it is important to remind ourselves that what Afghanistan needs is not an end to foreign involvement but an acceptance that it was a victim of the international community’s collective interference long before bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks.

Talking to the Taliban should not mean appeasing extremists in exchange for a quick withdrawal. Rather, solving this morally ambiguous conflict will require a commitment to engage with all Afghans over a long period of time.