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August 2008

Razaq Mamoon is one of Afghanistan’s best-known journalists and authors. He has worked for BBC Persian Radio, and was the chief editor of Radio Free Europe in Kabul. He is the author of several books including Hidden Secrets, an investigation into the killing of Dr. Najibullah, the last Soviet-backed president of Afghanistan, shortly killed after the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 1996. Mamoon is also an astute observer of the politics of both Pakistan and Iran. Kabul Direct interviewed Mr. Mamoon at its offices at the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies office in Kabul.

Kabul Direct: Considering the changes that have recently occurred in Pakistan, how do you assess the future of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations?

Mamoon: Relations between the two countries are now frozen. Pakistan has been fighting its covert war against Afghanistan for a long time now. This is the result of allowing Pakistan to use Afghanistan to advance its strategic interests with respect to the world’s strong powers. As long as Pakistan is able to continue doing this, there will never be peace in Afghanistan.

Kabul Direct: What do you mean when you refer to Pakistan’s strategic interests? What kind of deal is it trying to make that relates to Afghanistan?

Mamoon: Pakistan wants Afghan authorities to reverse the manifesto of 1947. This unwritten manifesto is what has determined Afghanistan’s foreign policy regarding Pakistan since that period.

Kabul Direct: What are the salient terms of this manifesto?

Mamoon: After India was partitioned in 1947, the Afghan government decided that they would also claim some territory – that is what they considered to be Afghan land that was now on Pakistan’s side of the Durand line. This border was something that had been accepted by Afghan rulers from Abdur Rahman Khan to Habibullah Khan to Amanullah Khan to Nadir Shah. But after Nadir Shah was killed during the Partition of India, the princely families split. Daud Khan, who was at that time the young head of the tribal council, took the opportunity to challenge this border.

Then after he became premier of Afghanistan, he became even more emboldened. He decided to make the Durand Line the key issue. And this effectively caused relations between the two countries to freeze. At one point, Daud Khan tried to invade Pakistan over the Durrand line. The source of enmity between the two countries can be related to what is really a border dispute.

During the past two decades, in spite of a revival of nationalism and a growing sense that the Afghan nation is comprised of different minorities as opposed to a majority, the issue of the Durand line remains. This is because the Panjabi-dominated government in Pakistan uses instability in the Frontier province to provide strategic depth. It wants to maintain the sense that only Pakistan can contain the NWFP. What all this means is that I believe that the Pakistan’s war against Afghanistan will continue forever.

Map courtesy of Rand Corporation

Kabul Direct: Indeed, the Durand line does seem to be the central issue when it comes to relations between the two countries. But there seem to be many forces in Pakistan that are working against Afghanistan. There are the Deobandi-inspired radical Islamists in Pakistan who use Afghanistan to spread their ideology and as the gateway into Central Asia and the Caucuses. Then you have the former ISI officials, those who were close to the Taliban and still have ties.

Mamoon: I should stress that the Deobandis were used by Pakistan to augment their security forces. When Pakistan first emerged as a nation, Pakistan did not have the military strength to contain India’s hegemonic designs.

So the Pakistanis turned to the religious extremists to recruit a volunteer force who would be willing to fight against India – they used the fact that India was a non-Muslim nation to engage them. Had Pakistan not entered into this arrangement, I do not believe it would have survived even for a day.

We have seen this strategy applied in Pakistan’s struggle for Kashmir. The religious militias do the built of the fighting because the Pakistani military is still afraid to confront Indian forces directly. And by using the extremist groups, the cost to the government is almost nothing.

We see this in their approach to Afghanistan too. During the anti-Soviet jihad, the Pakistani government gave the Afghan mujahedin very little of the monies it received from the U.S. Most of the funding went to seminaries and religious schools in Pakistan, where they cranked out religious armies.

As these forces grew, the Pakistani looked for other places to deploy them. They sent their extremist forces to Central Asia for example just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They decided this was the time to sow some radical ideology in these newly emerging countries and simultaneously try to capture their emerging economic markets. But they know they needed to remove the northern Afghan mujahedin in order to fully expand into this region and so they sent the Taliban northward. In a very short time they were able to seize control of ninety per cent of the country.

I believe that this is the reason why Pakistan will never fully align itself with the United States or other Western powers. The Pakistanis understand how easy this all is and that they have nothing to gain from this type of alliance. The alliance works the other way in their view, the Americans must align with Pakistan to accomplish their goals in the region.

Moreover, Pakistan has a deep understanding of Afghanistan politics, its geopolitical significance, its culture, and its complex society. They are also able to exert a great deal of influence on Afghanistan. And third, they have a very strong force in Afghanistan that costs them essentially nothing – namely, the Taliban. Let us contrast this to what the West has to offer. First, the West entered Afghanistan from Pakistan. Instead of getting to know Afghanistan directly, it has always tried to deal with Afghanistan through Pakistan’s eyes.

Moreover, Pakistan understands how to use the public opinion against the international forces. It knows that the foreign public cannot handle casualties and so whenever international forces are killed the Pakistani government can bet that the governments that put these forces into harm’s way will lose public support and will be weakened and become fragile.

Kabul Direct: Based on your analysis, do you think the Afghanistan government has done enough to counter the various channels Pakistan is working through?

Mamoon: When we talk about these different channels, we should not make the mistake of thinking they are uncoordinated. They are emanating from the same element - namely, the Pakistan.

Kabul Direct: Has Afghanistan done enough to counter Pakistan?

Mamoon: The government of Afghanistan is not responsible. For example, President Karzai did threaten to attack Pakistan, but then never acted on the promise.

Now I think no force is willing to stop Pakistan. The only force that was not afraid to fight Pakistan was the Northern Alliance, and the Northern Alliance has since been disarmed and was even pushed out of government. When the international forces first ousted the Taliban in 2001, they understood how dangerous and powerful a force the Taliban were.

Kabul Direct: Pakistan apparently considers Afghanistan as part and parcel to its strategic depth. Does this mean that Islamabad will never allow a third country to get close to Afghanistan and possibly upset this arrangement?

Mamoon: If you examine the map of Pakistan, you can see that from a geographical perspective, India has claims to lands which are part of Pakistan. To effectively ward off India, Pakistan thinks that Afghanistan is the key to maintaining its strategic depth.

Such Indo-Pakistani competitions and disputes notwithstanding, the fact that Pakistan must now deal with the international coalition in Afghanistan Pakistan is also very threatening to Pakistan. Pakistan is not interested in handing the territory it believes provides its strategic depth over to the coalition. It also believes it has a natural claim to these territories because of the ties that have always existed between the two countries. This is why during the past seven years of the war against terror, the flow of militants and insurgents coming into Afghanistan from Pakistani side of the border has never abated.

Kabul Direct: So how can Afghanistan fight this hidden war Pakistan is waging?

Mamoon: This is a very complex problem. We need to wait and see if a convergence of opinion emerges on Afghanistan. If one does, this will be good for Afghanistan. For example, Iran needs to sign endorse the idea that Afghanistan deserves to live in peace. Iran could promote it in Afghanistan by helping to construct a railway to link the two countries, and to link Afghanistan to a Central Asia country. Pakistan could show its goodwill by making its own contribution along this vein. By working together to benefit Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.

Kabul Direct: Are you hopeful that this type of convergence can happen in the region?

Mamoon: No, I am not. Iran is too consumed with positioning itself against West. It thinks this is the way it can become the leader of the Muslim world. With neighbors like these, the future of Afghanistan still looks rather dim.

stan could improve their relations too. Afghanistan could become the project which brings peace and prosperity to the region. We could all benefit.

Origins of Afghanistan-Pakistan Conflicts: Razaq Mamoon Explains