After Biden decision on Afghanistan a deluge of delusions in Pakistan

Syed Talat Hussain 

One swallow does not make a summer but one statement always seems enough to make new policy in Pakistan. As the clock on the American deadline to pull out of Afghanistan begins to tick, titillating theories of “Pakistan’s policy rethink” have started to float around. An image is being portrayed as if strategic planners ---the assumption being that the breed exists—are sitting in a room full of charts and maps devouring immense data and processing well-grounded conclusions to form a new universe for the country that would give it strong direction towards a grand purpose in times of immense flux that lie ahead. 

We are told that General Qamar Bajwa’s statement seeking peace with neighbours (read India), and the statement’s various mutated variants like PM Imran’s tweet of sympathy for the Covid-suffering Delhi that have come out since, are meant to “readjust” the country’s world view. (That simple, hunh!) Background briefings to uninitiated analysts (actually talk show hosts) are given on Afghanistan’s end-game feeding pointless hopes about a (mostly imagined) window of opportunity that will make Pakistan relevant to the international community (Washington) and would help us harness the situation to our advantage.

The fact of the matter is that nothing outlier is happening in the realm of Pakistan’s foreign and defence policy. We are in the midst of the same quandary that has confronted us since independence with the same set of tested (and failed) solutions at hand, which after 70 plus years of use are so rusted that even the varnish of official propaganda doesn’t stick to them anymore. 

Reality check: we are being driven by events rather than driving them ourselves. Our strategic rethink is another way of saying that we don’t know what to do other than just replicate what Ayub, Zia and Musharraf did---hold a white flag meeting with India to avoid being challenged in a long and economically crippling low-grade conflict because the “situation has become grim.” The erstwhile military dictators swung from “we will conquer you” to “we will hug you no matter what” in the same span of their tenures. PM Khan who rubbished the Indian prime minister Narindra Modi with brutal frequency a few months, has done the same thing by suddenly uncaging doves of peace even though the echoes of his “you fascist, you murderer” chants are still in the air. 

General Bajwa’s desire for friendly neighbourhood is no different from Musharraf’s desire to settle the Kashmir issue, except that the Musharraf plan was much more detailed, and thought- discussion driven than what we are hearing now. As in the past our route to “new” outlook is the much-trodden path that goes via the Gulf, starting from the US. This is not reorientation; this is pathetic succumbing to circumstances.

No less hollow is the talk of “window of opportunity” in Afghanistan. This window is in fact the door that the Biden Administration has slammed shut on our face after setting the 11 September 2021 auto lock on it. We are dealing with the daily grind of “negotiations” for a peaceful settlement knowing quite well that we neither control the dynamics of Talibaan calculations and moves nor can in any significant way influence or shape even a barely workable formula to hold Afghanistan together when the US moves its boots out. So when we say that we will stay relevant, it is hard to see any factual basis to the statement. But we can clearly see all the fiction in it.

Or are we saying/hoping/wishing/thinking that Washington and Islamabad would work together to combat rise of extremism in this region. If so that would be the same model that Musharraf had adopted---apres moi le deluge (after me the deluge). One regional warrior against fundamentalism backed by world powers weary of fundamentalism. If so (we don’t know yet and no one is broaching the subject for now) an energized TLP and revived TTP plus the urgency of managing Af-Pak border region (remember the term?) might become relevant cornerstones of another marriage of convenience. But that too would so horrendously familiar and doubly fraught than before of boomranging. Musharraf, Kiani, Raheel all played on the “bulwark against fundamentalism blowback” wicket without ever thinking through a long-term domestic strategy to back up the short-term arrangement. They lived for the day and disappeared with their policy after capturing transient attention. This is how we have arrived here. A repeat of the same is not a policy rethink. It is reliving a sordid past without thinking. And that is dangerous.