Three weeks ago, we featured an opinion article in the New York Times that argued America’s framework & policies in Af-Pak have been inherited from the colonial British regime. That was the first admission we had ever read in mainstream American media. We discussed it in our article Afghanistan – Read this New York Times Article on October 15, 2011. Our opinion was:
- We
concur with the basic argument of this article in the NYT.
Unfortunately, the article is incomplete. It addresses the symptoms
rather than address the cause. And the cause is the original sin
committed by the Colonial British.
The original sin we described was the partition of Afghanistan into North or today’s Afghanistan and South Afghanistan or the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa inside today’s Pakistan (or North West Frontier Province as the British termed it).
(Green area is Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa – src BBC.com)
This week, we got another pleasant surprise from the New York Times – an article written by NYT reporters that discusses the above partition and the core problem in Af-Pak resulting from the partition. To our knowledge, this is the first ever article in the mainstream American media to talk about the British created border and the partition of Afghanistan.
The main topic of the article is the American pressure on the Pakistani military to take action against the Haqqani network that is America’s declared enemy in Af-Pak. Pir Zubair Shah & Carlotta Gall, authors of the article titled For Pakistan Deep Ties to Militant Network May Trump U.S. Pressure, write the following in explaining the reasons behind Pakistan’s refusal:
- Pakistan’s biggest nightmare is a strong, centralized, nationalist
Afghan state — just the kind the Americans have been striving to create.
Such an Afghanistan, Pakistani leaders fear, will lay claim to the
Pashtun areas that straddle a border that was drawn carelessly by the
British and that Afghanistan has never fully accepted. They also fear
that the Pashtuns might someday want a nation of their own. (emphasis ours). - So in the thinking of Pakistan’s military and intelligence
establishment, the Haqqanis make sense. They are Pashtuns but not
nationalists, and they are increasingly seen as being more reliable
partners than even the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban leadership
council based in Pakistan. And they provide a hedge in Afghanistan
against any encroachment by Pakistan’s chief rival, India.
We concur. In fact, these are the points we have been making since our first article in August 2008 titled Afghanistan-Pakistan – Will the Sins of England be visited Upon America?
Mr. Shah and Ms. Gall then proceed to poke holes in the misguided Pakistani belief about Haqqanis being “Pashtuns but not nationalists” and about the Pakistan’s fuzzy distinction between good Taleban (Haqqanis are good?) and bad Taleban:
- The
Pakistani military has always distinguished between the “good Taliban” —
meaning those who fight in Afghanistan, like the Haqqanis — and the
“bad Taliban” — meaning members of the Pakistani Taliban who are at war
with the Pakistani state. Among the Taliban this distinction does not
exist, however, said two militant insiders, one a former militant and
one a current fighter. Most
of the recent suicide attacks in Pakistan have been attributed to the
Pakistani Taliban, who share the Haqqanis’ stronghold in North
Waziristan. The Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqanis help each other with
money, intelligence and suicide bombers.
The Pakistani authorities know this as well, according to the article:
- Some in the Pakistani military have acknowledged this merging of
insurgent groups, yet the policy of support for the Haqqanis is
unchanged. “We know that the Haqqanis are playing a double game,” a
Pakistani military official in North Waziristan said last year. “We
support them and they support our enemies, the TTP,” as the Pakistani
Taliban are known.
But the article concludes the Pakistani regime will take no action against the Haqqanis:
- The reason the Pakistani military would take no action against the
Haqqanis was simple, she added with a capital-letter emphasis that
paraphrased the generals’ thinking. “The bottom line is: WE NEED THEM.”
The “she” in the above quote refers to Mehreen Zehra Malik, an editor at The News International, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper.
An Interesting Article Besides being the First Mainstream Article?
If Pir Zubair Shah is from the region, then he must be aware of the 1893 partition of Afghanistan and the enmity between Pakistani-Panjabis and Pakhtuns. Carlotta Gall has written extensively about Af-Pak. She has to be aware of the partition as well. In any case, any one with access to Mehreen Zehra Malik would have access to these basic historical facts.
So assuming the Shah-Gall duo has known what we have written for years, the question arises, Why Now? Why did they write this week about the “careless border drawn by the British” and the fact that Afghanistan has never accepted this British imposed border?
Their use of the adjective “careless” intrigues us. The New York Times is a superb newspaper. Their reporters are good and their editors are deliberate, especially about highly sensitive issue like the Af-Pak border. So when the New York Times describes the Af-Pak border as a “careless border drawn by the British“, we get intrigued.
We wonder, whether this article and this seemingly careless mention about British carelessness is a signal, a signal to Pakistan that American policymakers may not consider this border as legally sacrosanct as Pakistan thinks it is. Pursuing this chain of thought, we wonder, is this a first step towards declaring the border as “disputed” or declaring the entire Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa as “disputed territory”?
Crossing a border recognized by America as Pakistan’s sovereign border is a de facto declaration of war. We are convinced the Obama Administration has absolutely no plans for any such declaration. But if a territory is “disputed” and in fact claimed by Afghanistan (Afghanistan did so legally in 1949), then America would be entitled to send troops into Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa in pursuit of terrorists who attacked American troops and American embassy in Kabul.
This is why we wonder whether this NYT article is a signal of sorts.
Our Own Viewpoint
May be, we are just drinking our own Kool-aid. Way back in April 2009, we had proposed a stronger version of this strategy in our article Will The Obama Administration Occupy Pashtunistan Or All of Pakistan?
In Section III.a of that article, we proposed formal support by America of Afghanistan’s stand that the 1893 Treaty between Afghanistan and British India is ex parte (because British India does not exist). We then recommended that America formally push for the reunification of North & South Afghanistan in the United Nations.
In Section III.b, an escalation of III.a, we argued that such a reunification would enable America to take control of the Pashtun-dominated Frontier Corps now under Pakistan’s authority.
We stand by those recommendations. Had the Obama Administration followed the strategy we proposed, the Af-Pak conflict might have ended successfully by now. But it is too late for this Obama Administration to pursue this strategy now. That will be left to President Obama’s second term or to the next President.
But there is still ample time to declare Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa as “disputed territory” and to send troops into such disputed territory to eliminate terrorists and terrorist havens. Just a private threat that America is prepared to do this might bring Pakistani Army to its senses. Losing sovereignty over Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa is Pakistan’s worst nightmare as the NYT article correctly states.
Joining America’s war against the Haqqanies to keep Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa would be an American offer the Pakistani Military cannot refuse. They would turn on a dime and proclaim a new joint Pakistani-US military operation to eliminate terrorists.
So the question is whether this is our own day-dream or whether the NYT article is actually a signal of sorts to the Pakistani Military? The answer lies well beyond our pay grade.
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