If we look at our past efforts at crafting a policy for Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union we are bound to be dismayed because it is evident that we made a mess of things in that country.

In our effort to please those who wanted to avenge Vietnam in Afghanistan, we became complicit in prolonging the agony of the Afghan people. Little did we realize that evil begets evil, that it comes home to roost.
By assisting in the task of forcing the Soviets to withdraw from Kabul and later in the murderous removal of Dr. Najibullah, we allowed the evils of weaponization and a drug economy to enter our land. It ruined the traditional structure of administration in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Prior to this destabilization the administration in Fata was managed indirectly through the maliks (tribal chiefs) and the political agents. The tribal control mechanism collapsed since the power shifted from the maliks to the ‘nouveau riche’ created by the ISI and the CIA. These new warlords extended their influence to the NWFP province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and corrupted the governance system from Khyber to Karachi.
Our security agencies were pleased that they now had an ample supply of jihadists who could be deployed in Indian-held Kashmir to serve a shortsighted foreign policy agenda through proxy warriors. The result today is that Pakistan has barely survived going under thanks to the efforts of barbaric militants who are now a formidable international force and want to extend their control under an ideological philosophy that projects a Takfiri-Wahabist interpretation of Islam.
With the U.S. preparing to withdraw a major part of its forces from Afghanistan after mid-2011, it is again becoming apparent that history is about to repeat itself in Afghanistan. The question is whether or not, this time around, we will we be wise.
There will be a change in government in Afghanistan sooner than later because Hamid Karzai will have to leave if the main party to this conflict, the Taliban, is to be brought to the negotiation table. The problem here is that many of those in our security establishment who guide Pakistan’s Afghan and Indian foreign policy are dreaming of again influencing it so that Afghanistan has a pro-Pakistan foreign policy under the mischievous concept of ‘strategic depth’.
Surely we must learn from our past. Pakistan should stay away from a future role in Afghanistan at all costs or the impending civil war in the next round will enter our land and there will be no stopping the national nosedive to extinction. But having said that what is the road to peace in that unlucky land?
Afghanistan is a very difficult country to understand — it becomes even more complicated when the dynamics of ‘Pakhtunwali’ begin to intercede in the running of the state. I agree that the ultimate solution to the problem lies in sorting out the people’s difficulties connected with governance and security in the first place. But that cannot happen because of the nature of UN intervention and the Bonn Accord design implemented in Afghanistan post 9/11. It is quite flawed as it runs counter to the lessons of Afghan history.
Ever since the time of Amir Abdur Rehman, the first modern ruler of Afghanistan, the country was managed as a loosely administered state. A weak central authority acted as the pivot that connected the state and the foreign subsidies received and directed the latter’s flow to regional influentials. The officials delivered services but allowed local factors and traditions to provide the direction.
Since the induction of foreign assistance in the 1960s, when USAID provided funds for the massive Helmand Valley Authority (HVA) project, Afghanistan has become the victim of unintended consequences. It is another story how the HVA actually led to the creation of the communists in Afghanistan. The ‘surge’, will create another cycle of unintended consequences with disastrous security implications in the region — especially for Pakistan.
Therefore the way forward is not by holding talks with the Taliban, not just yet — they will come later, and also not to place any hope in the surge of forces adroitly sold as a panacea by Gen. McCrystal, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul — but instead to reshape the future governance structure for Afghanistan before anything else.
As long as Mr. Karzai is president there will never be progress either towards peace or talks with the Taliban; he has too many things to answer for. The Pakhtun concept of ‘badal’ (revenge) will hound him in whatever he chooses to do. Thus he cannot be an effective interlocutor for peace. The road to peace in Afghanistan lies in making a major governance overhaul that needs to be administered by someone who is acceptable to all the people and who is not tainted as a ‘collaborator’.
In the existing situation that someone could be from the former King Zahir Shah’s family — that person can craft an exit strategy through which Afghanistan could re-emerge as a peaceful country under a democratic constitutional monarchy working under a parliament. This formulation is likely to be acceptable to the many ethnic nationalities in the country including the Taliban. Pakistan would do well to encourage such a move — but from a distance.
The writer was formerly political agent, North Waziristan, Pakistan.
(Source: Dawn