Pakistan is the hub of the Anglo-American/Nato war against the Taliban and al Qaeda. Britain's embassy in Islamabad is its largest in the world. And the city is full to the brim with American spies and senior military people. But the truth is that the war in Afghanistan is going badly. The Taliban are gaining the upper hand, funded by proceeds from poppy-growing, which they now encourage in a reverse of the policy pursued when they were in power (back then, it was un-Islamic).
In the course of a wide-ranging, two-hour conversation in his office in the presidential palace, Pervez Musharraf, military strongman of Pakistan, made no effort to persuade me that the Taliban and al Qaeda were being defeated or that the war in Afghanistan was going well. There was an absence of bravado and an apparent openness to new ideas—such as talking more formally to the Taliban/al Qaeda and even buying up the poppy crop.
Indeed, Musharraf is the first world leader to tentatively back the idea of western governments buying the Afghan poppy crop to stop it reaching the drug barons yet without impoverishing the farmers. "Buying the crop is an idea one could explore. Pakistan doesn't have the money for it. We would need money from the US or the UN. But we could buy up the whole crop and destroy it. In that way the poor growers would not suffer," he told me.
? The idea of buying the Afghan poppy crop was first floated in 2005 by Emmanuel Reinert, head of the Senlis Council, a development think tank. The council's proposal would solve two world problems in one blow. First, it would help deal with the world shortage of medical opiates, which according to the World Health Organisation is causing a "global pain crisis." Second, it would prevent the opium farmers of Afghanistan being driven into the arms of the Taliban.
The Americans are very unlikely to back an official common agricultural policy-style purchase. Moreover, there are many practical problems with the idea of such a purchase. If the price were set too high, it might encourage even more farmers to grow opium poppies. If it were not high enough, they would go on selling at least some on the black market. Nevertheless, they would probably rather sell their crop legally than to the mafia. Musharraf nods as I list some of these problems, and says, "Look, let's analyse it, let's cost it and see if it is practical."
In different ways, the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan are besieged. President Hamid Karzai appears to realise that the western forces are losing ground to the Taliban and that he can do little about the infiltration of fresh fighters from Pakistan. In 2003, Musharraf sent 80,000 troops into Waziristan, the semi-autonomous tribal area that borders Afghanistan, in an attempt to flush out Taliban and al Qaeda fighters. This was partly the result of western pressure, but his troops took such a battering that last August Musharraf sued for peace—withdrawing the army in return for an agreement that local tribal elders would resist Taliban encroachments.
Meanwhile, popular support in Pakistan for the militants appears to be growing. As Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistan ambassador to the EU, wrote recently in the Karachi newspaper Dawn, brute force tactics which have killed women and children and destroyed homes have been counterproductive. "The impression has gained ground among the tribes that we are oblivious to their lives and interests." At the last Pakistani election in 2002, the religious parties, which had never in the past been politically significant, won 11 per cent of the vote. They even won office in Baluchistan and North-West Frontier province, both provinces that border Afghanistan.
The Pashtuns, one of the world's most adept fighting peoples, are found on both sides of the border—making up almost half of Afghanistan's population of 30m and about 17 per cent of Pakistan's population of 169m. They have been the standard-bearers of Afghan nationalism ever since the Afghan state came into being 250 years ago. Although they have a strong religious and ethnic identity, the Pashtuns also have a long tradition of inter-tribal rivalry. (The Taliban are almost exclusively Pashtuns, but by no means all Pashtuns are Taliban supporters.) They close ranks against the invader—British, Soviet or American—and then turn to fighting among themselves when the threat passes.
The current cycle of violence will only be ended by negotiation. A jirga (tribal council), which brought together the Taliban, Kabul, Islamabad and Pakistan's northern tribes, would require a ceasefire. And the Taliban would insist on a timetable for the withdrawal of Nato troops. But when I ask Musharraf, "Why don't you talk to your enemies, the Taliban and al Qaeda?"—he does not slap the idea away; Pakistan has, after all, already been talking to the Taliban informally in the tribal areas and elsewhere.
I press on. Perhaps, I say, the Afghan Taliban should not be feared as much as they are. Al-Jazeera's interview with Mullah Omar in January suggested that the Taliban leader is distancing himself from Bin Laden. No Afghan has been directly associated with any terror attacks in the west. Bin Laden, assuming he and his men are in Pakistan, can no longer easily finance or mastermind terrorism from a remote cave. He could be finished off by careful police work. Al Qaeda operatives are paying locals in dollars for protection, as Musharraf himself told me. That makes a kind of paper trail. As for the harsher side of would-be Taliban rule, let Pashtun culture work on that over time. The Pashtun ethos, as another Dawn writer, Minocher Bhandara, suggests, "does not promise democracy, but a sort of personal autonomy and equality."
"You have a point there, we must think about it," Musharraf says. I also suggest that he engage in less "bang bang" and more economic and social development in the alienated, impoverished border villages that lack schools and clinics. He does not demur.
Before visiting Musharraf, I had had a conversation in New Delhi with India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. I can summarise his response to my questions on relations with Pakistan in a few words: how can you expect me to push a peace agreement on Kashmir when militants are coming from Pakistan every few months to set off bombs in India? No leader can be too far ahead of public opinion.
The dispute over the Muslim-dominated province of Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan since independence, has led to three wars and on at least one occasion almost to nuclear war. Since the consensus among senior diplomats in both India and Pakistan is that Singh is the leading Indian dove—and that if he can't bring India to settle, perhaps no one can—then his question seems the right one.
But when I put this to Musharraf, he responds sharply: "I don't agree with this way of looking at it. If everyone in the world looked for calm and peace before reaching a solution, we would never achieve peace anywhere. It is the political deal itself that can produce calm. Bomb blasts are a result of the problem. Let's not put the cart before the horse."
Good point, especially since the general atmosphere between the two countries is now quite benign—witness the recent meeting in Islamabad between the two foreign ministers, where they and their delegations talked and dined with each other like old friends. At my table it was all bonhomie.
Moreover, much has been achieved on other important issues—border delineation in Sir Creek and the Siachen glacier, together with the opening of crossing points on the "line of control" that divides Kashmir between the two countries. Khurshid Kasuri, Pakistan's foreign minister, told me that the Siachen dispute "could be solved within days."
Musharraf has talked approvingly of the Northern Irish model for Kashmir, implicitly accepting India's continuing rule over its part of the country but creating a far more porous border. It is now time for India to respond and for Singh to tell the nation that this move is in India's interest—not only to stop the occasional bombings, but to put to rest the chances of another war and to further open both country's borders to the immense possibilities offered by two fast-growing economies. But Singh is constrained by conservative forces in the foreign ministry, the intelligence services and even in the military. He is also held back by the strong belief among parts of the political class and public opinion that India is on the verge of superpower status and has no need to come to terms with Pakistan over Indian territory.
Revealingly—it is normally denied on the Pakistani side—Musharraf does not deny that various extremists are active from inside Pakistan. Nor does he deny that al Qaeda and the Taliban have hideouts in Pakistan. But he emphasises that it does not help to blame Pakistan, as US intelligence chief John Negroponte did in January, for not going all-out to unearth the al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists. "We are doing more than anybody," he insists. "Why doesn't the US blame Mexico for sending illegal immigrants to the US? Some problems are not easily solved. We can't send the army into the narrow alleyways of the refugee camps—in Quetta there are 40,000 people in just one camp—and start fighting to capture the militants who hide out there. The damage to innocents would be terrible."
Musharraf's view is that the terrorists now operating out of Pakistani territory—whether fighting in Afghanistan, setting off bombs in India (the latest big outrage killed 186 people in Mumbai last July) or spreading terrorism around the world—are hangovers from the past miscalculations of outside powers. The US, having armed and used the Taliban to defeat the invading Soviet army, left Afghanistan to its own devices with the militants fully armed. Britain walked away from India and Pakistan leaving Kashmir unsettled. But Musharraf does not mention that one of his predecessors, Zia ul-Haq—another general who staged a coup—is partly responsible for building up the power of these extremists, and that as an influential military leader, he too did his bit to help them. Now, however, Musharraf fears that if he clamps down too hard he will lose all influence over the militants, who would simply melt into the mountains—and continue trying to assassinate him.
The reality is that if India willed it, Kashmir could be settled fast. That would help diminish the power of the extremists inside Pakistan. Does Singh weigh that in his calculations? I think not sufficiently.
Musharraf is no saint, but he impresses a wide range of people—even those who oppose army rule—with his integrity. It is unlikely he is playing a complicated double-game, as some suggest, in which he appears to repress terrorists but privately nurtures them, or at least turns a blind eye. Still, the US and Britain should push hard for the reinstatement of full democracy in time for the October parliamentary and presidential elections, allowing the return of the exiled party leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Among other things, democratic competition in the northern tribal areas should break up the power of the Islamist parties and make the life of the Taliban and al Qaeda more difficult. This is the subtle work western diplomacy needs to concentrate on, not ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan and wasting more time and money trying to eradicate the opium crop.
