The Pakistani Afghan Strategy for after the US Pullout

Pakistan has exploited and manipulated Afghanistan primarily through the use of American money for years. Now the US is preparing to pull out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014 so what does Pakistan do next. Mehreen Zahra-Malik has a brilliant article in The News International that offers and insight.

 

Mehreen Zahra-MalikWednesday, October 10, 2012

 

A Pakistani journalist visiting Kabul in the nineties half-jokingly asked the then-vice president of Afghanistan, Maulana Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi: “I’ve read in the British gazetteers that the only way to deal with an Afghan is either to buy him or to bully him. But what if he still doesn’t relent?”
The Maulana smiled: “Then he’s not an Afghan!”

The journalist insisted: “But still; how do you deal with him?”

Nabi Mohammadi thought for a minute and replied: “Well, if you can’t buy or bully an Afghan, then the only way to bring him around to your way is to convince him that it’s his idea.”

Years later, the Maulana’s words carry a lesson for the Pakistan-Afghanistan relationship: that what’s wrong with it is precisely that while Pakistan doesn’t have the resources to ‘buy’ Afghanistan, or the capacity to effectively ‘bully’ it, the poverty of the approach is such that Pakistan has also failed wholesale in convincing the Afghans it has anything close to their best interests at heart.

So, as western forces prepare to leave and the world scrambles to fashion a future Afghanistan beyond 2014, has Pakistan understood the need to change its approach?

The civilians say yes – and then trot out a list of ‘fundamentals’ that have changed to show Pakistan is truly working to abandon its traditional security-centric, Pashtun-dominated, geo-strategic approach and adopt a more politically inclusive, geo-economic one.

We don’t play the game as well as the army does but there is no dictation anymore, the civilians will tell you.

Here’s their narrative.

Unlike in the past, under this civilian government and the Hina Khar-led foreign office mandarins, Pakistan has overcome its traditional preoccupation with maintaining exclusively Pashtun ties. Today, the civilians will tell you, Pakistan talks to actors as diverse as Yunis Qanooni (Tajik speaker of the lower house of Afghanistan’s parliament); Ahmad Wali Massoud (ethnic Tajik, younger brother of Ahmad Shah Massoud and former member of the Northern Alliance); Ahmad Zia Massoud (leader of the major united political and anti-Taliban group, the National Front of Afghanistan); Ustad Mohaqiq (leader of the Hazara Shia Hezb-e Wahdat); Faizullah Zaki (an ethnic Uzbek who has been the right-hand man of the ethnic Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum for years) and General Dostum himself.

A foreign office official explained: During Prime Minister Ashraf’s July 2012 maiden visit to Kabul, he met so many opposition leaders that after he left, all Kabul newspapers said the North is now in bed with Pakistan – the same accusation that has for years been trotted out about Pakistan and the Taliban! “That should tell you how much Pakistan is trying to reach out to the non-Pashtuns,” the official said
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H.E. Habibullah Ghalib Hero of Afghanistan

H.E. Habibullah Ghalib completed his B.A. degree in 1964, he joined the Ministry of Justice at the beginning of what turned to become a life-time career. Between the years 1967 - 1969, Minister Ghalib went to Egypt to pursue his Graduate Studies at Al Azhar University of Cairo.

Habibullah Ghalib id his M.A. in Comparative Islamic Jurisprudence and Law, and thereafter registered -- as a Ph.D., candidate -- his Dissertation titled "The Legality of Crime and Punishment", only to return to Afghanistan at the request of the Ministry of Justice.



Habibullah Ghalib esumed his career as Chief of the office of the Minister, and later as Senior Adviser to the Department of Legislation and the Institute of Legislative Affairs. Minister Ghalib was serving as Deputy Attorney General for Investigation and Petitions when the nation was cast into political upheaval in 1979. He was put behind bars for several months and an ensuing year-long house arrest. He re-joined the Justice Ministry following release. Facing imminent re-arrest, however, he fled the country and took refuge in neighboring Pakistan, where he began serving the Afghan refugees in varied capacities. He teamed up with a group of intellectuals, who, together, established the "Cultural Council of Afghanistan Resistance", an influential organization broadly involved in promoting the educational, scholastic and cultural interests of the Afghan refugees and of the greater Afghan cause.
Minister Ghalib then went on to serve at the head of Madina Monawara orphanage and of Department of Education of the orphanages run by Asra Charity, teaching as university professor in the meantime. Years later, upon formation of the Interim Government in Exile, Mr. Ghalib was called upon to assume the office of Director General of Legislation Department of the Ministry of Justice.
He returned to Afghanistan in 1992 upon coming into power of the new government and was named as Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Supervision of Implementation of the Law and Director General of the Department of Protection of the Law and Legal and Judicial Affairs. In late 2001, pursuant to the establishment of the Interim Authority and within the course of the subsequent years, Minister Ghalib held diverse portfolios with the Transitional and elected governments. He served as a member of the Independent Legal and Judicial Reform Commission, and Chairman of the Committee on Reform of the Laws.
He then entered the Legal Consultative Board to the President of Afghanistan as a member, and later on as Chairman of the said Board, while simultaneously holding the position of Senior Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Justice. Mr. Ghalib was nominated for the post of Justice Minister by President Karzi on January 14, 2010, whereupon he won confirmation by the nation's Parliament. He assumed his duties as Minister of Justice of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on January 19th, 2010.
Minister Ghalib has been involved in efforts for peace initiated by the former King of Afghanistan under the aegis of the United Nations, attending its successive gatherings held in Quitta-Pakistan, Bonn and Rome.
He also has attended respective conferences on drafting the Constitution and formation of Government convened in Switzerland and Washington, D.C. As well, Mr. Ghalib has been a member of the Constitutional Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly). Minister Ghalib has paid working visits to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Canada. He has conducted scientific research with the Attorney General Office, the Police, and Prison and Correctional Services in Egypt and Turkey.