Friday, March 29, 2024
 
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Security pact with Pakistan angers Afghan lawmakers




By Manzoor Ahmed



Angry protests have forced Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s government to review a security and intelligence sharing pact it has signed with Pakistan.


The Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) has said an experts’ committee will review the pact it has signed with the Pakistan Army’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

The government has had to assuage the sentiments of the critics as any pact signed with a government has to be ratified by the National Assembly and many lawmakers have said they would move to get the pact annulled. This is a serious obstacle to the pact being enforced.

Pakistan is gloating over the security deal, even as the latter is becoming the hotbed of violent power struggle between Al Qaida and ISIS, also called Da’esh.

Twenty-seven persons said to be fighters of the two groups have died in violent clashes that indicate Al Qaida being challenged by the ISIS, while the Afghan Taliban and other groups are busy changing sides.

As Afghanistan witnesses daily incidence of violence aimed at sho-oing off foreign nationals, United States President Barack Obama, who led the NATO drawdown from Afghanistan, rendering it more unsafe than before, has vowed to withdraw all Americans, save the Embassy staff in Kabul.

The situation in Afghanistan is grim. The daily attacks have cost its security forces severely. Over 1,800 soldiers have died and another 1300 have been injured in the four months since January, by which time the NATO had formally withdrawn its troops, leaving a skeleton force of less than 10,000.
The changes have begun since Ghani’s controversial election last August that a tired Obama administration, keen to leave Afghanistan, strongly supported.

Ghani is anxious to make peace with Pakistan that hosts the Taliban groups who control vast swathes of Afghan territory, operating from Pakistan’s havens. This has caused him to reverse the policies and actions of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai.
To please the Pakistanis, Ghani has withdrawn the request Karzai had made to India for arms. He has begun to send officers for training to Pakistan instead of India.


He is making numerous concessions to Islamabad with the hope that the latter would facilitate talks with the Taliban. Some progress has been made, not for Ghani but for Pakistan, with Taliban officials tasked to hold talks travelling to Beijing.
China is playing the mediator, but its role is presumably aimed at preserving its own interests – of holding down the rebellious Uighour Muslim tribals of Xinjiang and two, interests of Pakistan, its “all-weather friend.”

With Sino-Pak collusion on Afghanistan, all others, from the US to Europe and India to Iran and Russia, who are traditional stakeholders in Afghanistan’s peace, have taken the back seat.

The NDS-ISI pact was finalized, but not signed, during the high-level visit by Pakistan prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accompanied by Army Chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif and several top officials.

It serves Pakistan purpose of de-linking Kabul from New Delhi as was the case under Karzai, while also keeping tab on the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan ((TTP) who are using Afghan territory as safe havens. Above all, it gives Islamabad the upper hand in all security-related matters of Afghanistan..

It is now known that Ghani, on his first visit to Pakistan last year, was straightaway taken to Rawalpindi for a meeting with Army Chief, Gen. Sharif.

For form’s sake, apparently to assuage Pakistan’s critics in Kabul, the Pakistan PM went on record disapproving of the Afghan Taliban who, it is well-known, are operating from Pakistan territory.

Commending the NDS-ISI pact, while criticizing the opposing to it, Syed Mudassir Ali Shah, a Pakistani writer based in Kabul (obviously close to the establishment in Islamabad) writes: “the deal is a welcome indication of a shared determination to repair a frayed relationship.”

“Under the accord, suspected terrorists will be jointly interrogated — action that will help stem the tide of extremism in the region. Pakistan will equip and train Afghan intelligence agents, whose modus operandi has long raised serious concerns.”

He calls the pact the result of “a change of heart” on the part of the NDS, but tells you that the NDS chief, Raqhmatullah Nabil, had refused to sign it and finally, his Number 2 put his signature.

The signing of pact, he says, “will hopefully win him (Ghani) Pakistan’s support for peace talks with the Taliban, who have lately spiked their gory campaign in Afghanistan.”

“President Ghani has so far steadfastly stuck on to the policy of improving ties with Pakistan despite the continuing Taliban violence and is apparently determined to continue it for some time,” Sayeda Mamoona Rubab writes in The Friday Times.

“Signing the agreement would have been unconceivable under Karzai, who blamed his myriad failures on the Pakistani military establishment and gave India enough rope in Afghanistan — to its neighbour’s detriment,” Shah writes in Dawn newspaper.

Karzai has called for scrapping the agreement saying that it hurt Afghanistan’s national security.

Afghan lawmakers asked the parliamentary panel on international relations to summon the NDS top brass to brief MPs on the accord.

“Keeping in view the deep-seated mistrust between the neighbours and concerns voiced by powerful circles, the MoU may be amended,” Shah speculates.

“The backlash shows the delicate balance the president has to strike between promoting reconciliation and sustaining public support. The hostile response highlights divisions within the so-called national unity government,” he says.

Afghan Parliament’s tenure is to end soon and elections could be held either this year or next. Hence, Sino-Pak collusion is looking at the prospects short and medium term as well, waiting for a new set of lawmakers who might be amenable.

Since elections in both Afghanistan and Pakistan have a tendency of becoming controversial and violent, with money and muscle power playing prominent role, Afghanistan’s future and that of its democracy, become uncertain.



(The writer is a Kashmir based freelance journalist)


(Opinions expressed in write-ups/articles/Letters are the sole responsibility of the authors and they may not represent the Scoop News)



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