Pakistan back as broker

WITH the Taliban sweeping across Afghanistan like a hurricane and seizing power in Kabul, Pakistan is back to what it does best: be a ‘dalal’. The most common translation of ‘dalal’ as ‘broker’ does only partial justice to what Pakistan’s relevance has been in international affairs since the 1950s. Another translation of the Hindi word is ‘pimp’, but it does a disservice to global powers for whom Islamabad acts as an agent.

To regain its ‘dalal’ status on behalf of major western nations, Pakistan is expected to put forth a three-pronged approach.

Contrary to the populist view in India, the creation of a Taliban-led government in Kabul will make the world cosy up to Pakistan, not condemn it. The western powers, which have made a frustrated exit from Afghanistan in stages since US President Donald Trump began peace talks with the Taliban in Doha last year, have virtually no influence on the Islamic militia, which swept aside the legal government of Afghanistan this month.

As long as the Doha spirit is alive in however small measure, the Taliban will do business with the US, but only to the extent that it suits the militia. Washington will not be a benefactor of the Taliban and they know it. For the foreseeable future, the road to Afghanistan will be through Pakistan for both the western and eastern powers. The UK and Japan, respectively, are good examples. The only exceptions to this rule will be Russia, China and Iran, among the key countries which will have a role to play in Talibanised Afghanistan.

The scenario for Pakistan is very similar to what it was after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The then President George W Bush issued an ultimatum: ‘Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.’ Pakistan was only too eager to be ‘with us’. Legend has it that US Secretary of State Colin Powell rang up Gen Pervez Musharraf and read out the riot act to him on Al Qaeda, which had plotted the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon.

The truth is there was no need for any riot act at all. Musharraf was only too happy to embrace America all over again. For a decade since George Herbert Walker Bush’s presidency, Pakistanis have been bitterly complaining that after having used them as agents to build an insurgency against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, the Americans simply abandoned them once the Soviets withdrew. After September 11, Pakistan became Washington’s ‘dalal’ once again.

When NSA Brajesh Mishra came to Washington after September 11, he told me (I was reporting from the US) that he was not going to complain against Pakistan to his American interlocutors. ‘It will fall on deaf ears. They cannot do without Pakistan although the origins of the terror which hit them can be traced back to the ISI.’

Many Indians who were practitioners of their country’s diplomacy during those years will squirm now if reminded that India was a beneficiary of this Mishra line, which had many dissenters within the Vajpayee government. India was still under some US sanctions for having tested nuclear weapons under Vajpayee. The bulk of the sanctions had been repealed to facilitate President Bill Clinton’s India visit in March 2000. These remaining sanctions would have continued indefinitely. Pakistan was under sanctions too, for the same reason.

Bush and Powell needed all the sanctions against Pakistan to be withdrawn. If those sanctions were in place, the US could not get enough done against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Like today, the route to Kabul lay through Peshawar and Peshawar was out of bounds under US law because of the sanctions. There was no way Bush could lift the sanctions on Pakistan without simultaneously lifting the sanctions against India.

Mishra argued that complaining against Pakistani terrorism to the White House or the US Congress then could delay all the sanctions against Pakistan and India from being lifted. He even sent his trusted back channel negotiator RK Mishra to the Pakistanis to secretly coordinate lobbying by the two countries towards a common objective of repealing the sanctions.

In India, the ‘Brownback Amendments I & II’, moved by Senator Sam Brownback before Clinton’s visit to lift the sweeping US sanctions, are propagated as a win-win for Indo-US relations. The truth is that Brownback wanted everything against Pakistan — including the Pressler Amendment, which gave Washington a whip hand against Islamabad — withdrawn. He wanted Pakistan to go scot-free despite all the terrorism it had produced. The move stalled only because Musharraf seized power in a coup d’etat a day after Brownback II was adopted. Overthrowing a democratically elected government triggers US sanctions.

To regain its ‘dalal’ status in Afghanistan on behalf of the major western democracies, Pakistan is expected to put forth a three-pronged approach. It will wail and self-flagellate as a victim of terrorism. There will be takers for this proposition in Washington. It will hold up the possibility of a large influx of refugees from Afghanistan to extract money from Washington, not only in the name of refugee relief, but also for de-radicalising those refugees. Thirdly, it will cite economic hardship compounded by the pandemic and the disruption in trade with Afghanistan for better business relations with western economies.

Will it work? If Pakistan’s 75-year history is any guide, it should work. For 16 years, until Trump ended most of the assistance to Pakistan, the US gave Islamabad at least $33 billion. Other countries were not far behind. This time, the Russians have better relations with Pakistan than at any time in history and Moscow will want to leverage Rawalpindi’s influence on the Taliban. China is now a global economic power and will aid Islamabad.

If none of this works, there is always an opportunity for blackmail. Pakistan has nuclear weapons: the bogey of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists scares the West. And any talk of recruitment for jihad among its 200 million people sends shivers down the spine of every westerner. Whether Pakistan can monetise these assets in the wake of regime change in Kabul depends on how deftly Prime Minister Imran Khan plays his cards.