Tim Wilsey is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London and a former senior British diplomat. An earlier version of this article first appeared in World Defence Systems, an independent publication of King’s College, London.
With the United States presidential campaign gathering pace the detail of NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan has again become the focus of international attention. The 2014 deadline is now fixed and the balance between NATO participation in combat operations as opposed to training and mentoring has been revisited again.1. National elections naturally make governments wish to reduce casualties and even withdraw early as we have seen in the case of France. However it would be unfair to characterise the NATO policy as ‘rushing for the exit’ and comparisons sometimes made with Britain’s hasty withdrawal from India in 1947 do not bear serious comparison. President Obama could have decided to leave much earlier instead of opting for the McChrystal “surge”; and the international community has pledged substantial financial assistance to Afghanistan post 2014. However there is much still to do before departure if the blood and treasure already expended is not to be squandered. Above all NATO must avoid any outcome that could destabilise Pakistan.2.
It is clear, for example, from the reaction to recent newspaper headlines over the leaked NATO report of Taliban prisoner debriefs, that many in the West, including governments, still do not understand the nature of Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan. 3. This is surprising after a decade of involvement and because Pakistani policy on Afghanistan has barely changed since independence and indeed reflects many of the features of British colonial policy prior to 1947.
It is often said that Britain had a disastrous record in Afghanistan. This is only half the truth. There was indeed the catastrophic end to the First Afghan War when, in January 1842, almost an entire British Indian army was destroyed as it withdrew from Kabul towards the Khyber Pass. However East India Company and, later, British imperial policy makers, never forgot the mistakes of 1842. Only once more did Britain get into serious difficulty inside Afghanistan. That was in 1879 and 1880 when the members of Cavagnari’s diplomatic mission to Kabul were murdered and a British Brigade was overwhelmed at Maiwand in the South. However General Roberts acted quickly to avert another disaster. He knew full well that invasions of Afghan territory should be quick and decisive and followed by withdrawal. He also knew something which NATO has also learned; that you can be a popular liberating army one year and feared occupier the next. His quotation (recently displayed on posters in London) reflects this wisdom “I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us,”4.
Indeed the debate about how best to manage the North West frontier of British India raged backwards and forwards for half a century after 1842. At that time the main British aim was to prevent Tsarist Russia gaining a foothold in Afghanistan and thereby threatening British India. This was the “Great Game”. The debate was between the proponents of the “forward policy”, who thought that Britain should have a military presence in Afghanistan, and the adherents of the “close border policy” or the “back to the Indus policy”, who argued that the mighty river should serve as the frontier of British India. For the first 30 years the “close border policy” held sway but in the 1870s Britain increasingly encroached onto Baluch and Pashtun territory.5. In 1893 the demarcation of the Durand Line provided the de facto, but still not officially recognised, border between Afghanistan and British India and now Pakistan. Whilst it had its military advantages, often following the mountain peaks and ridges, it also had the effect of dividing the Pashtun people. In 2011 there were estimated to be 29 million Pashtuns in Pakistan (15.42% of the population of Pakistan) and nearly 13 million in Afghanistan (around 42% of all Afghans). 6.
With the benefit of hindsight British policy towards Afghanistan between the defeat in 1842 and independence in 1947 was a remarkable success. There were numerous tactical setbacks but overall strategic success; roughly the opposite of what NATO has enjoyed since the successful removal of the Taliban government in late 2001. The Russians never did achieve a significant presence in Afghanistan and German attempts to pose a serious threat to British India from Afghanistan also failed during both the World Wars. The secret of British success was to invade Afghanistan as rarely as possible and for as short a period as possible, to maintain a client government in Kabul through the classic use of carrot and stick diplomacy, to understand tribal dynamics and wherever possible let the tribes govern themselves through their traditional elders, the maliks. This last point was the origin of what are now known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the “settled areas” of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) the latter renamed, only in 2010, as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).7.
Pakistan, as the successor to Britain in governing the frontier region, has adopted many of the same policies as the British. In fact the civil and military system used today would be immediately recognisable to a former Deputy Commissioner (DC) of the 1890s or 1920s. Pakistan retained the concept of the tribal areas and the complex of legislation which underpins them including the extraordinary Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) of 1901 which, amongst other measures, allows collective punishment of a tribe for the misdeeds of an individual. However, except for the period from 1980 to 1989 when, at Western behest, the Pakistanis helped inflict a military defeat on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, their purpose has not been to keep the Russians out of Afghanistan. It has been to preserve the territorial integrity of Pakistan both by minimising Indian influence in Afghanistan and by ensuring that Pashtun nationalism is held in check.
To understand this latter point we need to go back to 1947 and the hasty creation of Pakistan which was intended as a homeland for the Muslims of the region. Much of the intellectual and political dynamism came from the Punjabi Muslims and from the educated “Mohajir” migrants who flooded mainly into Karachi from Northern India in the chaotic and bloody weeks surrounding Partition. However some of the other peoples of the new Pakistan were rather less sure about the wisdom of the idea. The Islamists such as Maulana Maududi’s Jamaat Islami (JI) and even the more radical Deobandis argued against Pakistan, some even suspecting it was a British plot to divide the Muslims of the Subcontinent. Others too were less than enthused. The Khan of Kalat, the largest of the princely states in Baluchistan wanted independence for his landlocked domains. Pakistan’s refusal to entertain this idea was one of the factors that led to the Baluchi insurgency which continues to this day. In NWFP the people only approved joining Pakistan in a referendum by a slender margin. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as “the frontier Gandhi” and the most famous opponent of British rule in the North West, was strongly opposed to partition.
Shortly after Partition, in the war of 1947/48, Pakistan, partly through the intervention of Pashtun tribesmen, acquired a part of the princely state of Kashmir. The subsequent dispute over Kashmir has become the major bone of contention in the relationship with India. Inside Pakistan it has been partly responsible for the dominance of the Pakistan Army in all matters concerning India and the territorial integrity of Pakistan. However the most physically remote Pakistanis were the Bengalis of East Pakistan. Their decision to secede from Pakistan in 1971 after a bloody conflict was the most traumatic event of Pakistani history to date and is of key relevance even today. The Pakistan Army believes that it cannot afford to lose any more territory and has concluded that secessionist tendencies must be stopped at all costs.
Fortunately for Pakistan Pashtun nationalism has been inconsistent and confused for much of the time since 1947. The concept of a ‘Greater Pashtunistan’, which would unite the Afghan and Pakistani Pashtuns as one nation, has never been an imminent threat. 8. This is partly because tribal Pashtuns do not recognise the Durand Line and have been able to trade (and smuggle) across it with little difficulty. It is also because Afghanistan has usually defined Pashtunistan as the takeover of the Pashtun areas of Pakistan and not as the secession of its own Pashtuns. It seems rarely to have occurred to Afghanistan that it has more to lose than Pakistan from a true union of the Pashtun nation. Even President Karzai has spoken emotionally of leading a Pashtun march to the Attock Bridge on the Indus.9.
Greater than the fear of Pashtunistan, is Pakistan’s worry that India, assisted by its Tajik friends in the former Northern Alliance, some of whom have held senior positions in President Karzai’s government, has opened a second front in Afghanistan from which to destabilise Pakistan. There have been frequent allegations that India’s Consulates in such places as Jalalabad, Herat and Kandahar are used for intelligence purposes and for the support of Baluchi nationalists.10. From a Pakistani perspective, therefore, it makes complete sense to support Afghan Pashtuns in Afghanistan. The Pashtun majority provinces of Afghanistan hug the Pakistan border for almost all of its length. Many Pashtuns in southern and eastern Afghanistan are still suspicious of the Tajiks. Whereas there are numerous educated and politically moderate Pashtuns the sad fact remains that the most militarily powerful Pashtuns at present are the Taliban and, as devout Muslims, they can be expected to have little truck with any supposed or real Indian designs.
There is little doubt that the Taliban is a violent movement with an appalling human rights record. 11. Few Afghans genuinely want them back. However, contrary to the impression given by the Western press, and occasionally by the US Government, the Afghan Taliban are not international terrorists. In fact they were never much trusted by Al Qa’ida. The average Taliban fighter is tough, fiercely loyal to his tribe and devoted to a fundamentalist (Deobandi) brand of Islam. He uses ‘asymmetric warfare’ because it is the only way to win against an enemy equipped with satellites, helicopters, and drones. In 2012, apart from his satellite phone and his expertise in Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) he is little different to the Afghans which the British faced at Maiwand in 1880. That Pakistan supports the Pashtun should come as a surprise to nobody. That they support the Taliban is disappointing to NATO and possibly self-defeating (as we shall see) but is also little surprise. Indeed the consistency of Pakistan’s Afghan policy in the face of Western blandishments has been quite remarkable. So has Pakistan’s use of plausible deniability. Too often Western diplomats and soldiers, on visits to Islamabad, have allowed themselves to be persuaded that Islamabad is on the verge of a change of course whereas Pakistan’s policy is in fact deeply rooted in perceived self interest.
There is another myth about Pakistan and Afghanistan which needs to be lanced. This began in the late 1980s when General Aslam Beg, the Pakistani Army Chief, came up with the concept of ‘strategic depth’. His idea was that Pakistan, being long and thin, was vulnerable to an Indian armoured attack which could punch a hole through the centre of Pakistan cutting all the main lines of communication. Beg’s idea was that, in extremis, the Pakistan Army could retreat into Afghanistan before regrouping and fighting its way back into Pakistan. At its height it was a pretty fanciful idea, but, since then, Pakistan has acquired nuclear weapons and the short, medium and long range missiles with which to deliver them. In any future war in which India were to make significant incursions onto Pakistani soil, Pakistan would have to ‘use or lose’ its nuclear weapons. This is why Pakistan has developed a de facto nuclear first use policy. So the concept ‘strategic depth’ nowadays refers to nothing more muscular than a general need to prevent India from establishing too firm a foothold in Afghanistan.
So what will happen in 2014 and how will Pakistan react? It is just possible that the Afghan Government will surprise us and survive in much the same way that President Najibullah defied expectations and remained in power for nearly three years after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. With a large Afghan National Army (ANA) probably backed by some remaining Western assets Afghanistan should hold together for a time. However a number of tactical factors suggest that Afghanistan could begin to develop once again into two separate ethnic power blocs. It will not be comfortable being a Tajik, Uzbek or Hazara member of the Afghan National Army (ANA) based in, say, Kandahar or Helmand after NATO withdrawal. The temptation to head northwards to safer territory will be hard to resist. Pashtun members of the ANA would also be wise to have reached private understandings with local Taliban commanders before that date. Even if the Taliban do not actually ‘take over’ southern and eastern Afghanistan, there can be little doubt that many fighters will return to Afghanistan and that Taliban influence will be significantly enhanced at local level. Other governments in the region will also make their own arrangements. The Central Asian Republics (CARs) will wish to create a cordon sanitaire against the infiltration northwards of extremist groups and they will probably provide support to Afghans of Tajik and Uzbek origin. Indeed there is a good chance that we shall see the recreation of the old Northern Alliance which would also garner support from Iran, Russia and India.
If Afghanistan divides into two blocs it does not necessarily follow that there will be civil war. It is possible that the Pashtuns and the Northern Alliance can co-exist in the sort of distrustful proximity that we saw for periods in the 1990s. Nor is it likely that Al Qa’ida will return to Afghanistan. What is left of them after the US campaign of drone strikes would probably be safer in the FATA on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line.
But what of the Pashtuns? Pakistan’s hope must be that the idea of ‘Greater Pashtunistan’ will not gain momentum from the NATO withdrawal but this may be seriously mistaken. Unless the Taliban feel that they have a significant stake in regional and national government they will get restless. A civil war with the renewed Northern Alliance might provide an outlet for their grievances but, in the absence of a war, they may look back towards the Durand Line and Pakistan. Just because the Taliban have accepted support from Pakistan in the past does not mean that they will take orders from largely Punjabi Pakistani elite. They are bound to feel more empathy for their Pashtun cousins in the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) thereby risking the very secessionist tendencies which Pakistan’s Afghan policy was designed to prevent. They may also find common cause with other extremist groups such as the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Pakistan may continue to play British era frontier politics. The Pashtun people are riven with ancient and modern feuds and rivalries but such conflict, particularly sin
ce the replacement in recent years of the tribal malik by the islamist cleric, also has its dangers and hardly fosters Pakistani national unity.
The break-up of a Pakistan with nuclear weapons is the nightmare scenario which the whole world needs to avoid. There is just enough time over the next two years to construct a regional consensus on Afghanistan. Whilst Iran may not be in the mood to cooperate there are some other potentially willing participants. India under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh now fears Pakistan’s collapse more than it fears a stable Pakistan and it may be prepared to take measures to allay Pakistan’s fears of encirclement and destabilisation. The Taliban themselves, having taken heavy casualties in recent years, may be willing to come to some agreements with the US and Kabul. And Pakistan too has learned lessons from its tortuous history since 2001. It is certainly more anti American than it was but it is also more wary of the extremist groups, both Pashtun and Punjabi, which have grown ever more violent and less controllable. Whether these groups can be brought under control at this late stage is a matter of debate but the stabilisation of Pakistan is an objective which the West shares with India, Pakistan, China, Russia and the Central Asian Republics. That could be a powerful combination but it would need the sort of diplomatic heavy lifting which we have not seen in region since 2001.
Tim Willasey-Wilsey is Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a former British diplomat.
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FOOTNOTES
- When referring to NATO throughout this article it is clear that the key decisions are taken in Washington. See for example Bob Woodward “Obama’s Wars” (Simon and Schuster 2010)
- See for example “Afghanistan conference promises support after troop withdrawal” The Guardian 5th December 2011. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/05/afghanistan-conference-support-troop-withdrawal
- See for example ‘Afghanistan: India’s Uncertain Road’ by Jyoti Thottam in Time Magazine 11th April 2011 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062364,00.html
- For Roberts’ thinking on Afghanistan see “Forty One Years in India” by Field Marshal F.S. Roberts (MacMillan 1897).
- There are several spelling options but I have chosen Pashtun over Pakhtun and Pathan and thus Pashtunistan over Pakhtunistan.
- Population figures taken from CIA World Factbook but there has been no Afghan census since 1979. The planned 2007 census was cancelled. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/pakistan/
- There are numerous sources on British frontier policy but the most succinct is Philip Mason “The Men who ruled India” (Jonathan Cape 1985).
- On the Pashtun people and Pashtunistan Sir Olaf Caroe “The Pathans” (OUP 1958) and James Spain “The Pathan Borderland” (Mouton 1963) and “The Way of the Pathans” (OUP 1962).
- Quoted by Sherard Cowper-Coles in ‘Cables from Kabul’ (Harper Press 2011) page 69.
- See for example ‘Afghanistan: India’s Uncertain Road’ by Jyoti Thottam in Time Magazine 11th April 2011 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062364,00.html
- 11. On the Taliban see Ahmed Rashid “Taliban” (Yale 2000) and “Descent into chaos” (Allen Lane 2008)