ISLAMABAD, 3 January 2007 — The prime minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, is set to visit Kabul today and hold crucial talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to iron out differences between the two countries and discuss Pakistan’s decision to fence and mine the 2,400-km Pak-Afghan border, a proposal which Kabul has rejected.
Officials say the visit aims at removing misunderstandings between Islamabad and Kabul that recently emerged following a statement by Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of the US Department of State’s Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, that the Taleban have set up their command and control center in Pakistan’s southwestern town of Quetta.
In order to normalize relations between the neighbors, US President George W. Bush organized a tripartite meeting at the White House in September. That meeting led to a truce, but relations soured after Boucher’s statement in December. Pakistan strongly denies the claims and has sought intelligence reports about them from Washington.
Aziz is officially visiting Kabul for a day, but officials accompanying him say he may extend his stay. “The prime minister’s stay may be extended if an acceptable formula to check the Taleban is not reached,” said one official.
Pakistan and the United States are allies in their fight against terrorism. The two countries regularly exchange intelligence and Pakistan has so far deployed 80,000 troops on the Afghan border to curb cross-border infiltration of militants. On numerous occasions Pakistani security forces have claimed to have raided Taleban bases killing militants.
NATO forces have also recently intensified their operations to flush out militants from the border area. This year, NATO troops continually found themselves attacked and hassled by guerrilla forces using hit-and-run tactics. Militants are increasingly applying the lessons learned while fighting NATO and ISAF forces, said B.K. Bangash, an AP photographer who was embedded with US forces in November and December 2006.
With growing difficulties for foreign troops, US and British forces are thought to have abandoned their current impartial stance with regard to Pakistan and side with Kabul by insisting that Pakistan seal the border and prevent the Taleban from finding places to retreat to.
According to the former chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul, the geographical and political “realities” will “prevail” in favor of the Taleban. “In their hearts, the Pashtun of Afghanistan have sympathy for the Pashtun in Pakistan. NATO troops are likely to face further difficulties in their ‘combing’ and ‘weeding out’ operations,” he said.
“Pakistan adopted a policy to create a wedge between good and bad Taleban. In line with this policy the federal government of Pakistan struck a deal with tribal chiefs of its semi-autonomous tribal agencies. But that failed to turn overnight all of the Taleban into ‘good Taleban,’” added Gul.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is also set to face domestic problems as he has declared 2007 to be an election year. If he decides to go tough in his Afghan policy, domestic Pashtun unrest would likely grow. If not, Afghanistan will exert further pressure on Pakistan through its allies.
Pakistan’s problems in dealing with Afghanistan’s Pashtun Taleban are exacerbated by the fact that 25 percent of Pakistan’s half a million strong armed forces are of Pashtun ethnicity. At the start of the war on terror, Pashtun elements in the Pakistani Army were forced to play a part in policing their ethnic kind.
