Not easy to isolate Pakistan

The Heart of Asia (HoA) conference in Amritsar on December 4 was most notable for the frontal attack by Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Pakistan. He addressed Pakistan's adviser on foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, by name at the conference to register his grievance at Islamabad's continuing support for terrorism directed at Kabul from its soil.

The Taliban would not survive a month without safe havens in Pakistan, he averred, quoting one of their leaders. In a stinging rebuff, he advised Aziz to spend the $500 million offered for Afghanistan's development on combating extremism inside Pakistan itself.

Frustration

Ghani was remarkably bold in venting his deep frustration with Pakistan before the 42 participants in the HoA conference, and pinpointing it as the real impediment in the way of a regional effort to promote political and economic stability in Afghanistan.

The HoA process needs Pakistan's full cooperation for success. It is from Pakistan's soil that the Taliban emerged and took control of Afghanistan in 1996, and it is from there that the Taliban are re-emerging again as a violent force.

The external threat to Afghanistan emanates today from Pakistani alone. It can only abate if Pakistan gives up its ambition to keep the Kabul government under its tutelage and circumscribe its sovereign right to determine the scope of its ties with India.

So far, Pakistan has withstood US pressure to rein in its strategic ambitions in Afghanistan and end its insidious support for the Haqqani group, even as Islamabad promises to facilitate the reconciliation process between Kabul and the Taliban.

The cost to Pakistan for its duplicitous conduct has not become unbearable till now because of US reluctance to impose meaningful sanctions on it.

China has a protective attitude because of its decades-long geopolitical investment in Pakistan. Initially this was to contain India, but now it has the wider dimension of gaining access to the Arabian Sea from East Turkestan, obtaining a naval foothold in Gwadar and consolidating China's increasing dominance of the broader Central Asian region.

Unless Pakistan concludes that it is being progressively isolated and that its Afghan policy is becoming unsustainable, it will not make the required course correction.

That course correction is, however, organically linked to its India policy which will not change in the foreseeable future because friendship with India will inevitably loosen the grip of the armed forces and extremist outfits on Pakistan's polity.

Terrorism

If India and Afghanistan found common language on the spread of terror by Pakistan eastwards and westwards, the surprise was the discordant notes from Russia's presidential envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, while speaking to the press.

He would normally have been expected to be sensitive to the concerns of both countries on terrorism, given Russia's own experience with that menace and its decision to combat such forces in Syria militarily before they spread closer to Russian territory.

Kabulov, who considers the Taliban a legitimate political force in Afghanistan, sees the Islamic State (ISIS) a greater danger there, though many believe that the ISIS threat in Afghanistan is exaggerated. It is not clear whether because of internal differences splinter groups of the Taliban are projecting themselves as the ISIS.

Pakistan's purpose would of course be served by playing up the ISIS threat as that makes the Taliban look moderate and improves Islamabad's case for accommodating them politically. Russia seems to have bought into this game, though why it believes it can trust Pakistan is unexplained.

Isolation

What prompted Kabulov to disapprove of India and Afghanistan scoring "brownie points" against Pakistan at Amritsar is difficult to comprehend. Drawing pointed attention to as serious a question as Pakistan's involvement in terrorism in India and Afghanistan is not intended to gain empty diplomatic advantage, as Kabulov seems to believe.

One understands that at the conference itself, Kabulov belittled the HoA process as "supplementary", presumably to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation where Russia and China would steer matters to the exclusion of US and others.

One hopes that Kabulov would be instructed to be more measured in his comments and avoid the risk of creating political confusion.

A day before the Amritsar conference, Iran's foreign minister underlined at an event in Delhi his country's excellent relations with Pakistan and offered to mediate on Kashmir if asked.

This, along with Russia's overtures to Pakistan, suggests that isolating Pakistan on terrorism will remain a major challenge.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)

Also read: Lessons for India from recently concluded Heart of Asia conference