Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

It is easy to be pessimistic about Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there just might be some glimmerings of hope on the horizon, among which we would include the re-involvement in Pakistani domestic politics (albeit still from exile) of former president General Pervez Musharraf through the newly formed All Pakistan Muslim League (APML).

The essential ingredient for establishing regional stability is somehow to find a path to peace between India and Pakistan.  It is the enmity with India that pushes Pakistan towards the exclusionist end of the Islamic spectrum; it is the motivation for many Pakistani youth gravitating towards jihadism; and it complicates all attempts to bring stability to Afghanistan because of Pakistani fears of Indian anti-Pashtun machinations.

The fear of India also enables Pakistan’s notoriously unmanageable Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to pursue a destabilizing agenda that may or may not have included the November 2008 Bombay terrorist attack in which 170 people died.  This, in turn, provides the motivation for India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), to pursue its own destabilization policies, not least in Afghanistan.

But the problems between India and Pakistan are very far from being unresolvable.  The problems over Sir Creek and Siachen Glacier are eminently negotiable, while Indian anti-Pakistan machinations in Afghanistan are a symptom not a cause.  Which leaves Kashmir, but even there the basis of a peace agreement has already been explored in previous peace talks.  It involves a dropping of Pakistani claims to Indian-controlled Kashmir and a soft border along the Line of Control.

What India doesn’t seem to understand, however, is that the decisive move towards peace has to come from the bigger party.  Politically, if the weaker party gives ground it looks like capitulation, whereas if the stronger party makes concessions it looks like (and is) statesmanlike magnanimity.  Until now, India has lacked the maturity to recognize this.

This is unfathomable when one considers the size of the imbalance between the two states.  India’s GDP is $1,430bn to Pakistan’s $175bn.  Its population is 1,200m against Pakistan’s 180m.  And its defence budget is $38.4bn against Pakistan’s $5.2bn.  It also has the much larger territory, Western support (not least because of its economic importance), US acquiescence in its nuclear ambitions, and realistic ambitions to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

The importance of Musharraf’s possible return to the fray is that on the India front (despite his role in the 1999 Kargil conflict in Kashmir) he has a record of trying to find a path to peace, and during the 2004-07 peace process he established a good rapport with India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  He even had a reasonable relationship with Hindu nationalist and former deputy prime minister LK Advani.

Domestically, Musharraf also has attractions.  He may not be an Ataturk (the founder of modern Turkey), not least because he doesn’t believe in wrenching dislocations, but he is a moderate modernizer who understands the long-term nature of the challenge and the primacy of education.  He also has a reasonable record on corruption, unlike current President Asif Ali Zardari who is universally known as “Mr 10%”.  During Musharraf’s last tenure, the country’s corruption rating, as measured by Transparency International, improved by 30 places.

Musharraf’s views on Afghanistan also chime with the emerging international consensus of reaching a negotiated settlement with moderate Pashtuns, even if they are now associated with the Taleban.

The chance of defeating the Taleban militarily, if ever possible, was effectively lost with President Obama’s December 2009 declaration of July 2011 as the deadline for the beginning of the US withdrawal.  Now Nato, under US leadership, has recognized this and is trying to establish links with the Taleban.  The process is at an embryonic stage, but well-placed diplomats describe it as “promising”.  As it happens, talking to the Taleban fits in with Russian views.  Moscow’s main concern is limiting the flow of heroin from Afghanistan to Russia, and the Taleban did have a good record on eradicating opium cultivation during its previous rule.

That the extremist end of the Taleban regime were brutal misogynists who happily harboured Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden does not necessarily render impractical the idea of reaching a working solution with the Pashtun.

It may be too early to say what impact Musharraf’s involvement will have in Pakistan’s elections in 2013, but it is to be welcomed because his views coincide almost exactly with what is needed (both domestically and on the external front) – and it warrants close monitoring.  Three things are needed to stabilize the region: a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan, a moderate modernizing government in Pakistan, and progress towards India-Pakistan peace.  A Musharraf return to power would help on all fronts.  JdeC.