Afghanistan (44 page)

Pakistan and Afghanistan: The Influence from the US, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and India

In 2009, the incoming Obama administration, seeking to differentiate its policies from those of its predecessor, started referring to “AfPak” as a conjoined entity, reflected in the appointment of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke as the special representative to both countries. The Obama administration would, rightly or wrongly, view Afghanistan and Pakistan as representing a single conflict, militarily and diplomatically. But while the US has troops on the ground in Afghanistan and a great deal of leverage with the government in Kabul, the US cannot fight the war in Pakistan, and its ability to affect governmental actions is limited. For Pakistan, whose relations with Afghanistan have usually emphasized hostility or conflict, this was an unfamiliar context. Relations with the US, China, and Saudi Arabia have been traditionally been what geopolitically mattered most to Pakistan, with India and, to a lesser extent, Iran as competitors for what is seen as the vital issue of political control and influence in Pakistan’s neighbor Afghanistan.

US policy regarding Pakistan after 2001 concentrated on assuring mutual cooperation in capturing foreign Al Qaeda members. In this matter, Pakistan did cooperate, as reflected by the arrests of several terrorist leaders. But in so doing, the displaced Afghan and emerging Pakistani Talibans were largely ignored by the Pakistani security services
or, indeed, were encouraged by the Pakistani government, military, and civilian political parties, especially the pro-Musharraf MMA and religious organizations. They were perceived as potentially being valuable tools of Pakistani strategy as their predecessors, the Afghan and Kashmiri insurgents, had been in the 1980s and ’90s. The US concentration on capturing “foreign,” non-Afghan or Pakistani, Al Qaeda terrorists (in which Pakistan acquiesced) allowed Al Qaeda to replace their losses with skilled Pakistanis who had access to both the support networks created by the ISI to support the conflicts in Afghanistan and Kashmir and those running through Pakistani ethnic communities worldwide, especially in the UK and US, plus they had the added advantage of effective “immunity” in Pakistan through their links with the security services, who were not interested in sending their countrymen to Guantanamo. The post-9/11 rhetoric by Musharraf inspired Washington by raising expectations of a restoration of effective civil governance and the hopes of a regional peace that would mean the end of state support for the Kashmir insurgency. These hopes were instead eclipsed by the reality of Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy firmly in military control, who continued to tolerate if not support the Afghan and Pakistan Talibans, the Taliban culture, and their infrastructure of support, effectively circumventing any headway gained by the apprehension of Al Qaeda members.

China, on the other hand, has been distant from supporting the current government in Kabul, instead focusing on supporting Pakistan, a long-standing friend. China is Pakistan’s third-largest foreign direct investor, exceeding the US. Trade between China and Pakistan more than tripled in 2001–06. A free-trade agreement came into force in 2007. In 2008, both Musharraf and Zardari went to Beijing, appealing for help with Pakistan’s economic crisis. That both came away with little to show for their efforts did not undercut China’s continuing importance to Pakistan.

Chinese policies toward both Afghanistan and Pakistan are shaped by its interests in security and economic access in central Asia, as has been seen by the creation and operation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which both countries have participated in, Afghanistan as a guest and Pakistan as an observer.
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In 2009, the Obama administration sought additional involvement from China in Afghanistan as well as in
Pakistan on security issues.
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While China has not opposed the coalition effort in Afghanistan and has, from its position on the Security Council, enabled UN actions there, it has tended to see Afghanistan’s stability undercut by the West’s insistence on creating a new Afghanistan in their own alien image and sidelining those Afghans that have the potential to provide peace; while these have not been explicitly identified, Chinese diplomats have seen the conflict in Afghanistan as a result of neo-imperialist attitudes.
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China’s Afghanistan policy appears largely to follow their Pakistani friends’ goals in Afghanistan, although China has been willing to cooperate with Russia and India on Afghanistan rather than attempt to exclude them.
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While China would ideally prefer that the US have a limited role in central Asia, ensuring its own access to the region’s energy, resources, and markets, a stable Afghanistan would also feed into China’s economic interest, even if it meant allowing a US foothold. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed concern over China’s voracious demand for new sources of energy and willingness to employ “coercive diplomacy.”
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This has the potential to affect future Chinese policy toward Afghanistan.

However, for all their economic interests, China is concerned about terrorism and the rise of Islamic-based threats. Since the 1990s, non-Han ethnic groups including Uighurs, Kirghiz, and others farther to the east in China’s Xinjiang province have been unsettled by radical Islamic influences emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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Uighurs have been a presence in Pakistani terror training camps since the 1990s and fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in 2001, although they were far outnumbered by other foreign groups such as the Uzbeks and Chechens.
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China has relied on Pakistan as a bulwark against these threats, although this has been strained by the growing radicalization and internal instability there.
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China’s relations with Afghanistan have so far been reflected primarily by their investment, including the three billion dollars associated with their development of the Ainaq copper deposits.
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Prior to this, China had been largely disengaged from the security situation in Afghanistan, though it has benefited from the coalition efforts.
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Increased Chinese involvement has the potential to benefit Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabia is, along with the US and China, one of the long-standing pillars of foreign support for the government of Pakistan. Saudi Arabia conversely has long aimed to increase its influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, with donations, often by non-state actors or through NGOs, being the preferred means. Saudi funding of Wahabi education and activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan flourished during the 1980s. Saudi Arabia was also an initial enabler of the Taliban culture, helping fund the madrassas of the FATA and the “rupee mullahs” and Islamic NGOs operating in the refugee camps. Saudi Arabia was one of the three governments (along with Pakistan and the UAE) to recognize the Taliban regime of 1996–2001 and was a strong ally of Mullah Omar until the Taliban’s links with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden soured the relationship even before the 9/11 attacks. The Saudi government tolerated the US-led coalition intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.

Saudi Arabia’s Afghanistan policies reflect its own security concerns. It sees Iranian influence in Afghanistan as hostile, intended to gain an advantage against them and their friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Persian-speakers as basically suspect as a potential Iranian fifth column. The Saudis viewed the power of the Northern Alliance in the initial post-Taliban Afghan government with concern. This put their views in alignment with those of Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban, Kabul viewed Saudi aid and investment as suspect, due to its previous support of Mullah Omar. Dr. Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, the only Pushtun leader of the “Peshawar Seven” parties to be part of the Northern Alliance and hence in a good position in Kabul following the US intervention, used his connections to bring in this “tainted” Saudi money that he used to develop real estate and, less successfully, secure his political position.

The post-2001 tensions between the Saudis and Kabul has extended to the institution of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). There are few Muslims, including those from Turkey and Egypt included, and still fewer Arabs, including those from the UAE, among the countries contributing to the coalition in Afghanistan. Despite the obvious utility of an increased Muslim coalition presence in Afghanistan, with the ability to counter the hostile propaganda of an infidel invasion and help with areas where non-Muslims lack credibility, such as in the
training of ulema, they have largely declined to increase their commitments to Afghanistan, despite the urgings of both the Bush and Obama administrations. This is often seen in Kabul as reflecting Saudi suspicion toward the US-led coalition and sympathy to Pakistan’s desire to exert influence in Afghanistan. These Saudi attitudes have affected the policies of other Arab states toward Afghanistan. In 2008–10, it was widely perceived in Kabul that Saudi aid was going to rebuild, if not the Afghan Taliban, then the “Taliban culture” it had previously encouraged, especially by funding fundamentalist religious figures and activities, who, on the whole, have not been supportive of new social and economic development in the region and have been hostile toward the non-Islamic foreign presence.

To further this breach, the Saudis also have strong ties with the ISI, dating back to their aid for the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviets in the 1980s and their shared suspicion of transnational Islamic movements that they themselves do not control, such as Al Qaeda. Prince Turki, the head of the Saudi Central Intelligence Department, built personal relations with successive ISI directors. The ISI also introduced the Saudis to the Taliban in the 1990s and helped ensure that the Saudis became, along with Pakistan and the UAE, the only foreign governments to actually recognize them as the legitimate government in Afghanistan. The Saudis provided aid to the Taliban while they were in power and helped train their religious police, who became the most hated instrument of repression in Kabul. It is no wonder, then, that many Afghans are suspicious; yet without Saudi support, Afghanistan will have limited access to outside support from the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia has also been a long-standing participant in Pakistan’s internal politics, providing funding for religious parties and the madrassa system as well as many mosques, an even deeper level of involvement than what they displayed in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The Sharif family and religious parties have links with Saudi Arabia dating back to the 1980s and have used this to access funding. The Saudi distrust of the PPP, the political rivals of these Pakistani political friends, was reflected in their refusal of Zardari’s request to defer oil payments in the wake of the financial crisis in November 2008.

Iran provided limited support to the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance
in 1978–92, and their attempts to gain control of Afghanistan’s Shias during that time contributed to a civil war in the Hazara Jat, where they supported revolutionaries who drove out or killed most of the pre-war Hazara elites.
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Since then, Iranian political interference remains resented among the Hazaras, despite extensive post-1992 Iranian aid efforts such as expanding Bamiyan airport and a shared respect for Shia religious authorities. Nor has Iran been able to make strong political inroads among Sunni Dari-speakers in Afghanistan despite their cultural links to Iran due to their shared Persian language, culture, and gratitude for Iranian support against the Taliban prior to 2001.

Since 1992, Iran has opposed Pakistan’s desire for control over Kabul and access through Afghanistan to central Asia to provide links to the sea competitive with those offered by Iran. Iran is worried about Sunni extremism in Afghanistan and central Asia and its hostility to Shias. Iran was an opponent of the rise of the Taliban pre-2001 and blamed Pakistan for sponsorship of the Taliban and Islamabad’s inability or unwillingness to curb Taliban excesses. This led Iran to provide limited financial and humanitarian aid, as well as military supplies, to the 1992–96 ISA regime in Kabul, and they continued this during their continued resistance to the Taliban in 1996–2001. Iran developed good relations with Ismail Khan, the leading Sunni resistance commander in Herat, during the anti-Soviet war. Iran saw him as a balance to the Panjsheri leadership of the Northern Alliance’s military forces, and paid to get him out of a Taliban prison after he was captured in 1996. Relations between Iran and Pakistan declined precipitously over Afghanistan. In 1998, Iran sent 200,000 troops to their border with Afghanistan after the murder of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif by Pakistani extremists fighting with the Taliban, leading to a further deterioration of relations.

Accompanied by US and coalition special operations and intelligence advisors, the Northern Alliance forces that entered Kabul in 2001 did so while riding Iranian-supplied armored vehicles and wearing Iranian-supplied uniforms. Iran was the largest single pre-2001 aid donor to the Northern Alliance, giving it increased leverage at the Bonn conference later that year. US Ambassador James Dobbins described the Iranian role at Bonn as “quite constructive.”
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At Bonn, the Iranians pushed
for mention of democracy and commitment to counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism as Afghan goals in the final document. Iran helped prevent the political leaders of the Northern Alliance’s constituent parties from functioning as spoilers and has remained a supporter of the Kabul government.

Afghanistan was seen by Iran as the most significant issue where they could potentially work with the US. This made Afghanistan part of the conservative-vs.-reform struggle that has dominated Iranian politics in recent years. When it became apparent that the US was not interested in working with Iran in Afghanistan, reflecting concerns over Iran’s commitment to developing nuclear weapons, Iranian policy shifted drastically, causing them to reach out to their 1990s enemies, the Taliban, despite their many differences and continued hostility. Iran has provided the Afghan Taliban with some high-value weapons, such as explosively formed warheads for use in IEDs and Chinese-made HN-5 man-portable SAMs, suggesting more would follow in the event of US or Israeli military action against Iran, and the Taliban has already made limited use of these weapons in Afghanistan. Iran is now hedging its bets, providing support to insurgent groups and sending a signal to Washington not to escalate its pressure over the nuclear issue or face increased aid to insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq and creating “dual-track under-the-table support for Taliban,” in the words of COL McNiece.
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But the level of assistance the insurgents receive from Iran still pales next to that they receive through Pakistan. However, it is far from negligible. Iranians cooperate with Al Qaeda, allowing them transit without stamping passports to avoid alerting Western security services if they later try to enter their countries.
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The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Al-Quds (Jerusalem) political warfare force (or its predecessors) have been involved in Afghanistan since the 1980s, either at the direction of the central government in Tehran or as an example of an independent policy initiated and implemented by the IRGC. The Al-Quds force is still reportedly training Afghan insurgents.
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Despite their willingness to aid the insurgents and seeing Kabul as a US puppet, Iran still sees it as a preferable option to a new Pakistan-backed regime based on Sunni insurgents.