Eric Randolph
There has been plenty of tub-thumping over this week's capture of Taliban commander Mullah Baradar, but all it really signifies is that Pakistan holds all the cards in the strategic game being played out across central and southern Asia.
President Barack Obama is well-known for his love of poker. It is a comforting image for the rest of the world: the stony-faced thinker, calculating the odds, in the game for the long haul. But when it comes to the bluff, no one can touch Pakistan's military establishment. Consider the complexity of the game it is playing.
America's enemies are based in their country, but they can still wring $7.5bn in aid from Washington. Their population hates the idea of colluding with the Americans, but Pakistan quietly allows US drones, platoons of marines and CIA agents to operate in its territory. It fights its own insurgency with some parts of the Pakistani Taliban while doing deals with its affiliates. Known terrorists are free to hold public rallies in broad daylight calling for attacks on India, and yet India still finds itself pressured into holding a new round of peace talks.
While India spends billions of dollars in development aid and construction projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan bides its time and then demands that India pack its bags and head home as the price of its cooperation with the US. And who can blame it? After all the bloodshed Pakistan has suffered in the past nine years, should it really have to stomach its sworn enemy setting up camp on the western flank?
Meanwhile, the west has one priority – getting out of Afghanistan before it drags all their governments into the gutter. In its obsessive focus on every detail of Operation Moshtarak and the Afghan surge, Mullah Baradar's arrest looks like a big tactical victory. But for Pakistan it will barely muster a footnote in the much broader narrative.
There are a tonne of theories as to what motivated Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence agency to suddenly co-operate in handing over an old ally. Were they making sure he did not make a deal behind their back? Were they buying some influence with the Americans? Or was it a stern warning to the Afghan Taliban to stay in line?
In the end, the truth is unimportant. Baradar was dispensable and he was dispensed with. The Pakistani establishment can sell his arrest to the Americans as a sign they are co-operating, sell it to Mullah Omar and Kabul as a reminder of who's boss, and it can brush the whole thing under the carpet to its own citizens. Is it a change of strategy, or just a bluff? We are unlikely to ever know for sure.
Compare that with the game being played by the Americans. They, too, know that everything comes down to perceptions. That has been the mantra ever since Stan McChrystal took over as US commander in Afghanistan last summer. But look at the task he faces: selling to voters back home that an end is in sight (while President Hamid Karzai says he needs another 10-15 years to finish the job), selling to civilians in the war zone that they can be protected (despite the inevitable civilian casualties), selling to the Taliban that their butts will be kicked (if only we knew where they were).
Is anyone buying? No. It is not the fault of the troops on the ground, who are now thoroughly versed in the intricacies of counter-insurgency. But playing the game of perceptions is difficult in a country shot through with "ethnic paranoia, national self-doubt and conspiracy theories".
And if you are trying to play a tense game of high-stakes poker, it is probably best if you don't show everyone your cards before you start. By telling the world that the troops would start shipping out in mid-2011, that is exactly what Obama did.
It is not his fault, of course. He had to offer a sop to the anti-war contingent. Plus, the US has none of the advantages available to the Pakistanis. They have known all the players in this game for decades. They know how they think, what they are planning, who can be trusted and who needs to be kicked off the table.
At the same time, they are also engaged in a game with India, one which is ultimately far more important to them. If you want a clear statement of the futility of America's current surge in Afghanistan, take this line from a recent editorial: "The war on the western front will not be solved if Pakistan's army continues to regard India's army on the eastern front as the major threat." If that is true, then the west might as well pack up and go home today.
Sure, there are talks planned between India and Pakistan next week. But you would be hard-pressed to find a single person on this side of the world who thinks any progress whatsoever is going to be made. It has been 63 years since they started arguing and fighting over Kashmir, and so far neither side has shown any interest in budging from its original stance.
Whatever glimmers of hope might have existed when the talks were announced earlier this month evaporated when the explosion ripped through the German Bakery in Pune at the weekend. Now all the Indians want to talk about is terrorism, and Pakistan can stick to the line that it does not the support the jihadists in its midst.
There is huge risk in the games Pakistan plays. It has lost of hundreds of lives to its own Taliban insurgency and its intelligence agencies could easily lose control of a jihadist front in Kashmir that has its own agenda and its own momentum. India has the fortitude to withstand only so much, and another series of terrorist strikes like it experienced in 2007 and 2008 may well prove more than it can stand.
While Pakistan remains in some semblance of control, there is hope that some form of compromised stability might be achieved across the region. But if its handle on the situation slips even slightly, the whole pack of cards could very quickly collapse.
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/19/pakistan-risky-games-mullah-capture
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