Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan post-2014

George Washington University’s Pakistani and Afghan Student Associations co-sponsored Thursday’s panel discussion of Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan post-2014, when NATO troop reduction spells uncertainty for Pakistan as well as for Afghanistan.  The discussion focused mainly on the effect of the drawdown inside Pakistan.

Deteriorating security

Zubair Iqbal of the Middle East Institute projected that the Afghan government will have to decrease government spending as international funding declines, leading to increased unemployment, socio-economic strain and security challenges. Without foreign support, Afghan security forces will encounter difficulties in maintaining security in southern and eastern provinces, including Kandahar.  Taliban resurgence in southeast Afghanistan would have serious consequences also for the Pakistani state, which faces its own terrorist insurgency.

What Jonathan Landay of McClatchy characterized as a “defacto economic and security partition” between northern and southeastern Afghanistan could trigger a significant influx of refugees into Pakistan, with serious economic, political and security implications.  Adding a refugee crisis to the strain of fighting an insurgency will spread thin the reduced resources of a Pakistani government accustomed to receiving fat stacks of military aid.  The upcoming civilian elections will make little difference in Pakistani policy towards Afghanistan.  Military preferences will prevail, as they have in the past.

Threats to Pakistan

Pakistan fears US abandonment of the region like in 1989, when US interest declined following the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. Decreased US interest in the region reduces Pakistan’s leverage, which derives in part from its role as the main transit route for military supplies to Afghanistan.

Shuja Nawaz, Director for the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council, highlighted that no single Pakistani point of view exists. The Pakistani army has a “schizophrenic” position on US withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Although some elements of the ISI remain distrustful of US intentions in the region, others fear the reduction of US military aid. When the US draws down in Afghanistan, Pakistan could be forced to rely on deficit financing to support its army. This would lead to inflation and undermine the army’s struggle against Pakistan’s internal terrorist insurgency. If Pakistan cedes territory to the Punjabi Taliban and chaos erupts in Afghanistan following the NATO drawdown, the Pashtun Taliban may take over the border and use Afghanistan as a base to attack the Pakistani state.

Landay laid out another, not mutually exclusive, scenario for Pakistani involvement with Afghanistan post 2014.  With the departure of NATO forces, the Pakistani military will revert to seeing India as a lens through which to formulate policy in Afghanistan. To ensure pre-eminence there, Pakistan might indiscriminately back a Pashtun strongman in Afghanistan, an approach that brought the Taliban to power in the first place, when Afghanistan had no serious security forces to resist the maneuver.  Today, the well-armed, US-trained, multi-ethnic Afghan army increases the risk of such a strategy.

Pakistan’s inability to absorb Afghan refugees

Today’s Pakistan is characterized by greater insecurity and economic fragility than the Pakistan of the 1980s and 1990s that managed to absorb three million refugees from Afghanistan. Landay claimed that an injection of refugees into the already over-crowded Af-Pak border camps would increase the porousness of the border, providing the Pakistani Taliban with an “inverse sanctuary” from which to access Afghanistan and draw recruits.

The influx of refugees might also exacerbate tensions between Afghans and Pakistani Pashtuns in competition for Pakistani state resources. Iqbal predicted that tensions could lead to Pakistani calls for forced Afghan refugee repatriation back across a border that many in the region view as a bureaucratically contrived boundary.

Nawaz went as far as to claim that “refugees” was not a term applicable to the region, since many individuals on either side do not recognize the legitimacy of the line. He claimed that the only solution to the current and future Afghan refugee problem lies in giving the refugees Pakistani papers and absorbing them into Pakistani society.

Pakistan’s internal terrorist insurgency

According to Ahmad Khaled Majidyar, a Senior Research Associate at the American Enterprise Institute, Al Qaeda remains a network and an ideology in Pakistan, despite Bin Laden’s death. Pakistan and its economy fail to satisfy the demands of its young population, two-thirds of which is under 30. The 20,000 madrasas that often represent the only form of education available to impoverished youth raise the likelihood of extremism. The problem of militants requires a societal solution, not a military solution. 

Iqbal suggested addressing the sectarian discord that lies at the core of the Pakistani terrorist insurgency. He claimed it falls to  the army — as the country’s most ethnically representative body – to seek out a representative constituency of the warring groups willing to voice their concerns and to mediate a path towards a solution.

US drone strikes will shape the future of Pakistan’s domestic insurgency. The strikes eliminated the Taliban’s middle ranks.  A new generation of young men inculcated with what Landay characterizes as “bin Ladenism” replaced them.  Today’s Taliban does not pursue nationalist goals but rather ascribes to re-establishment of the caliphate advocated by Bin Laden.  The drone strikes do not solve the issues underlying extremist militancy.  They may, however, have contributed to dispersing militants, as recent events in North Africa and the Sahel  indicate.

The Pakistani military distinguishes between a “good” and a “bad” Taliban, characterizing Taliban elements that conduct missions against NATO forces in Afghanistan as “good” and those that attack the Pakistani state as “bad.” This shortsighted policy fails to recognize the shared mentality that will unite the groups against the Pakistani state.

Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan

The panel offered many possibilities for how NATO troop drawdown in Afghanistan may destabilize Pakistan, but little concrete insight on Pakistan’s future role in Afghanistan.  Nawaz did offer one remedy: the best role for Pakistan in Afghanistan is no role. Pakistan should look inward and focus on embracing its pluralism, instead of fanning the flames of sectarianism.