Pakistan has role in Afghan reconciliation: US

By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has said that Pakistan also needs to be enlisted in any effort to seek reconciliation with the Afghan militants, although the process has to be led and managed by Kabul.

The Afghanistan-Pakistan border that was very fluid, now is starting to be problematic for the insurgency, the official said.

A senior US defence official, while briefing journalists in Washington, recalled that Pakistan had offered assistance to Afghanistan in the reconciliation process and the offer needed to be considered "because of the tribal region and the nature of it".

"Under those terms, then, I think, you know, probably helping enlistment of Pakistan in that as well as - in that framework" for reconciliation would be useful, the official said.

But the decision for accepting Pakistan's offer would have to be taken by the Afghan government because the reconciliation and reintegration process had to be "led and managed" by the Afghans, said the US official.

The US believed that some of the militants were reconcilable and some were not, the official added.

In the April 2010 edition of The Atlantic magazine, Maj-Gen Michael Flynn, director of intelligence, US Central command, was quoted as saying that militant leaders Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were both "absolutely salvageable".

The general said that Mr Hekmatyar already had members in the Karzai government, and it could evolve into a political party while the Haqqani network was tired of fighting.

Both groups "have lucrative business interests to protect: the road traffic from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to Central Asia", the general said.

The Atlantic also quoted a former British military officer, who fought in Afghanistan, as saying that both "Haqqani and Hekmatyar are pragmatists tied to the probability of outcomes. With all the talk of Islamic ideology, this is the land of the deal".

This supports the Pakistani position that the US needs to engage senior militant leaders instead of trying to defeat them militarily and that if contacted those leaders would be willing to cooperate.

Pakistan has been urging the US to seek reconciliation with the militants for quite some time. The suggestion was initially rejected by Washington but now US officials are becoming increasingly interested in the process of reconciliation as they seek a conclusion of war in Afghanistan.

The development has alarmed India. During a recent visit to Washington, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao warned the international community that there were no good or bad Taliban.

"One cannot stress enough the need to avoid compromises or differentiation between the so-called shades and hues of the Taliban," she said, adding that "such attempts, if unchecked, will only embolden the same forces that held sway in Afghanistan in the 1990s and caused the tragedy of 9/11".

At the Pentagon, the senior US defence official also acknowledged that not all Taliban leaders were reconcilable but underlined the importance of involving Pakistan in the process.

The official also noted that Pakistan "seems to be abiding by" the pledge it made in 2008 to go and uproot the insurgencies in the areas where militants had been entrenched.

"You're seeing a trend where they are trying to remove the areas that were once unapproachable," the official said, noting that the recent Pakistani military offensives marked the first time any military had occupied South Waziristan.

The official characterised the accomplishments of the Pakistan security forces as "quite impressive".

"To see the gains that they have made in this short time is a real testament to the resolve, the fighting spirit and the leadership of Pakistan's armed forces," the official said.

He said that about 200 US military personnel in Pakistan were providing security assistance and training to the Pakistani military and to paramilitary operatives and members of the Frontier Corps. The official said the number of US forces might increase if the US delivered military equipment to Pakistan that required specialised trainers.

"We stand fully behind Pakistan in its relentless drive to restore peace and security in this region," the official said.

He said that what spurred on Pakistan to greater action against militants within their borders was the realisation that Taliban operatives - working in Afghanistan and Pakistan - and Al Qaeda behaved as a "syndicate", working in support of each other.

The official also noted that Pakistan began to take threats from the syndicate more seriously after militants began encroaching in areas that traditionally had not been home to insurgent forces.

The official said coordination had improved among the US-Nato coalition forces, Afghan security forces and Pakistan.

"That (Afghanistan-Pakistan) border that was very fluid," the official said, "now is starting to be problematic for the insurgency."