Torkham reopens

Dawn Editorial
Monday, 11 Oct, 2010

An Afghan police officer gestures to an oil tanker, carrying fuel for NATO forces, enters Afghanistan through Pakistan's border crossing in Torkham, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010. Pakistan reopened the key border crossing to NATO supply convoys heading into Afghanistan on Sunday, ending an 11-day blockade imposed after a US helicopter strike killed two Pakistani soldiers. –AP Photo

With the reopening of the Torkham route, after an 11-day closure, the latest spike in tensions between the US and Pakistan should begin to abate. However, as the US closes in on a review of its Afghan strategy in December and the beginning of some kind of drawdown of forces next July, the contradictions in the Pakistan-US relationship will almost surely be tested, and tested severely, again. To avoid, or at least mitigate, future crises, both sides need to do some introspection.

First, the US must put its own house in order. Everything points towards there being strategic confusion in the American camp. President Obama’s overarching goal — to ‘disrupt, dismantle and destroy’ Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and by extension in Fata and Pakistan — does not really provide an answer to where along the continuum between nation-building and full-blown counter-insurgency at one extreme and a narrow counter-terrorism approach at the other end does the ‘right’ strategy lie.

The US administration decided to try and dent the Afghan insurgency before opening negotiations for a political settlement, but that has proved difficult — possibly because the Afghan Taliban are a nationalistic force implacably opposed to deal-making with those they perceive are trying to subjugate them. Could the threat Al Qaeda poses be defanged by trying to separate the ‘globalists’ among the jihadis from the ‘nationalists’ in Afghanistan? Perhaps. But confusion and doubts in the American camp about such matters have led to self-defeating and contradictory signals, especially about the timing and scope of a political settlement being initiated.

At the end of the day, it is difficult to ask Pakistan to try and help smash the Haqqani network before inviting it to the negotiating table so that an exit plan for the Americans can be fashioned. Meanwhile, Pakistan needs to decide on its relationship with the US. If India is indeed ‘Enemy No 1’ then Pakistan does not have the capacity to deal with it alone. America can play a role there, but that would require building trust in the Af-Pak region first. For that to happen, the brinksmanship and petulance needs to be curbed.

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