Opinion Pak training for Afghan Army?
At a rare press conference this week in Rawalpindi,Pak Army Chief has offered to train the Afghan National Army.
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At a rare press conference this week in Rawalpindi,Pakistan’s Army Chief,Gen Ashfaq Kayani has offered to train the Afghan National Army. This is a bold move that puts Pakistan’s cards on the table in what many see as the approaching end-game in Afghanistan.
On the face of it,the Pak Army’s offer to train the Afghan security forces seems laughable. After all is not the Pakistan Army the biggest patron of the Afghan Taliban that is seeking to overthrow the current government in Kabul? Would the world want to put the fox in charge of the chicken coop?
Stranger things have happened in the northwestern frontiers of the Subcontinent. And make no mistake; Gen Kayani is deadly serious about positioning the Pak Army to take full advantage of the rapidly evolving situation in Afghanistan.
Gen Kayani wants the Pak Army and the ISI to become the main interlocutors between the international community and the Taliban that has its sanctuaries in Pakistan. At the same time he also wants the Pak Army to be involved fully in fashioning the instruments of force inside Afghanistan.
These two need not necessarily be contradictory,if Gen Kayani’s political objective is to integrate the Taliban fighters into the Afghan Army and promote a power-sharing arrangement between the Taliban leadership and the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul.
It is no surprise then that Gen Kayani is trying to convince the international community that his Army is not hostile to Kabul,it has no interest in promoting extremism in Afghanistan,and that it is prepared to work with the United States and the international coalition in rapidly expanding Afghan army and police.
At the press conference,Gen Kayani summed up Pak Army’s interests in Afghanistan: “Our objective is to have a peaceful,stable and friendly Afghanistan,” he said. “If we have that,I have no problems with Afghanistan.”
At first look,Kayani’s framing of Pak interests unexceptionable. But Afghanistan’s other neighbours,including Tehran and New Delhi,might point to one important missing word in Gen. Kayani’s formulation: “independent”. The key to the independence and sovereignty of a nation state are its armed forces.
On its part,India must recognise the proposition that Pakistan has genuine interests in Afghanistan. That includes having a regime in Kabul that is friendly and cooperative towards Pakistan. But Kabul too has its legitimate interests – non-interference in its internal affairs by Rawalpindi.
The Indian and world interest lies in promoting a relationship of ‘sovereign equality’ and ‘friendly cooperation’ between Kabul and Islamabad.
The best way to achieve this is to end the dispute between Kabul and Islamabad over the legitimacy of the Durand Line,address the aspirations of the Pashtuns who are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan,and promote economic integration of Afghanistan and Pakistan with the markets in India,Central Asia,and the Persian Gulf.
(C Raja Mohan is Henry A Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington,DC)
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