Alwaght- Afghanistan is witnessing bloody days as blasts continue to rock the capital and other cities across the country. On Monday, a suicide attack targeting a bus carrying Ministry of Mines and Petroleum staff in Kabul killed at least 30 people and injured 50 others. A majority of the victims of the blasts has always been civilians.
Amid increased wave of violence in Afghanistan, the Pakistani army has announced that it seized the highest mountain on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borders, known as Berikh Mohamad Kandova, as part of its push, codenamed Operation Kheybar 4, allegedly against the ISIS terrorist group in the area.
Touching on Pakistani military's operation on the shared borders, the Afghan defense minister noted that the operation was of no avail in restoring stability. He further accused Islamabad of dividing Taliban into moderate and radical groups as part of its new scheme, with the moderates, led by Mullah Akhtar Mansour, being slowly pushing into reconciliation with the government of President Ashraf Ghani and the radicals continuing fighting Kabul under the flag of ISIS.
On the other side, Kabul has begun getting closer to India amid Islamabad-New Delhi's renewed dispute over Kashmir region. Afghanistan’s step is being taken as the Afghan leaders are increasingly growing disappointed with Pakistan's contribution to the peace process with Taliban. Many Afghan analysts argue that to support peace in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and majorly its Inter-intelligence Services (ISI), should quit aiding Haqqani Network as well as other terror groups that attack Afghanistan from the Pakistani territories.
It is widely believed by Afghans that Pakistan adopts double-standard policy in dealing with the Afghanistan's insecurity. Islamabad on the one hand voices support for the Afghan government’s peace steps with Taliban militants, Kabul believes, and on the other hand uses any opportunity to push the crisis-hit country back into violence.
If such an idea is true, what does drive Pakistan to seek Afghanistan instability and weakened government by use of terrorist groups?
Fear of Indian influence in Pakistan
Afghanistan reserves a crucial place in the contentious Pakistan-India relations as the two rivals' competition for decades proved so violent and led to wars. The rivalry started from territorial dispute between Islamabad and New Delhi and developed into a multi-fronted regional contest. The long-standing dispute has its roots in a mix of fear and hatred that has grown over time between the two countries. India in recent decades strengthened its military and economic power and so made new geopolitical successes in the region.
New Delhi fundamental power increase aroused the ire of Islamabad and sent the two regional powers into rejuvenated rivalry in the potential areas of influence. Pakistan struggle for bigger sway in Afghanistan by massively supporting Taliban mainly serves the ongoing contest.
Beside having conflicting interests with Pakistan, India argues that Pakistan policy in Afghanistan serves larger unconcluded policy against India in Kashmir and so the Pakistani military intelligence is unlikely to cease intervention in Afghanistan.
On the other side, Pakistan seeks strategic investment in Afghanistan’s Taliban to face both Kabul and New Delhi. The Pakistani leaders pursue a series of goals in Afghanistan behind the pro-Taliban policies. They want to install a friendly regime in the neighboring Afghanistan, restrict as much as possible India’s political toehold in Afghanistan, nullify the nationalistic Pashtuns' opposition to the Durand borderline between the two countries, and perhaps as a long-time goal manage Pakistan’s interests and influence in the Central Asia region.
Concerns over losing influence on Afghanistan
Afghanistan formed its national unity government after Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah signed power-sharing deal in September 2014 in an effort to tackle the insecurity across the country by bridging political gaps. But the bid proved a failure as nationwide security crisis worsened. President Ghani shifted to improving ties with Islamabad, breaking with policy of his predecessor Hamid Karzai who declined to build friendship with Pakistan. For Ghani, friendship with Pakistan could deprive Taliban of their safe havens on the Pakistani soil. The Afghan president cancelled a n arms deal with India in a bid to appease Islamabad leaders and so eliminate any Pakistani suspensions of Afghanistan collusion with India against its interests.
In fact, Ghani sought downgrading ties with India in favor of better relationship with Pakistan to make sure that he can scale down Islamabad hostility and thus pave the way for concluding the peace process with Taliban. But Ghani's good-faith in better ties with Pakistan brought him no success as violence even harshly continued in the country and negotiations with Taliban produced no promising results.
The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan Omar Zakhilwal several times, including last time on July 18, visited Pakistan’s Kheybar Pakhtunkhwa province and met with Maulana Sami ul Haq, the head of Darul Uloom Haqqania religious seminary who is known as the hotbed of Taliban. The meetings mainly took the Afghan ambassador to call on Sami ul Haq to bring to the negotiating table the Taliban to push the peace process in Afghanistan. Sources familiar with the meetings and from Afghanistan government said that Sami ul Haq passed the message to Taliban but the militant group as ever tied any conversation with Kabul leaders to foreign forces withdrawal from the Afghan territories.
Apparently, what Taliban insist on as a precondition to peace with Kabul is almost impossible. Pakistan and Afghanistan leaders are well aware of the fact that American-led forces' presence in Afghanistan under the cover of counterterror fight is part of a Washington’s long-term and major strategy in the region.
Besides, defeat of terrorism in Afghanistan will damage Islamabad’s interests. So Pakistan via its great sway over radical fighters seeks saving its influence in Afghanistan.
Serving US interests in Afghanistan
The analysts believe that 9/11 attacks marked end of the American foreign policy’s transitional period that started when its archrival, the Soviet Union, collapsed in the 1990s. Creating a new enemy like terrorism, the incident provided the US with a ground to take advantage of its international policies in relation to counterterrorism. Experts assert that forging a hostile force was crucial for the US-led West to pursue a policy of expansion.
That is why West Asia became a center of focus of the US foreign policy after the 2001 attacks. The US, finding its identity and values totally in conflict with those of the regional nations, sought to impose its hegemony on the region and so paint the Muslims and Islam as a big threat to the world peace. Following the Second World War, the US built an enemy from the Soviet Union by demonizing it. After 9/11, the same model was introduced to the region but this time under excuse of fighting the so-called Islamist terrorism. Afghanistan invasion and subsequent violence of terror groups across the region served Washington’s agenda to promote Islamophoia.
Terrorist groups' destabilizing Afghanistan provides the US and Pakistan with grounds to advertise and hypocritically justify their intervention and military presence in Afghanistan as anti-terror measures. Islamabad receives aids from Washington as an alleged anti-terror party in Afghanistan.
Pakistan and Afghanistan dispute outlook
As the current developments might show, Afghanistan and Pakistan rift has no winner. Pakistan could make short-term economic and security gains from fueling violence in Afghanistan but for three reasons, Islamabad will be the major loser in Afghanistan conflict:
1. The policy of nurturing and exporting terrorism runs counter to any goals for economic and political development, leading to resultant economic and social affliction to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
2. Certainly, costs of a weak Afghan government will exceed its profits not only for Pakistan but the whole region. Rise of ISIS in Afghanistan in the shadow of impaired Afghanistan government’s loss of control over territories in north and elsewhere will pose prospective risks to Pakistan too.
3. The greatest advantages of Pakistan-Afghanistan dispute are harvested by the US which seeks its interests behind escalation of tensions between the Muslim nations.
