A Clouded Relationship

Friday, 18 November, 2005

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Wahidullah Amani

Mixed political signals, money, arms and insurgents make for a volatile relationship across the long and porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The latest round in the long-running war of words between the two countries involves allegations that Pakistani "terrorists" have been arrested in Afghanistan. Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf has warned that these accusations are worsening relations, and that Islamabad may retaliate.

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal was blunt about where the Taleban guerrilla’s support base was when he spoke to IWPR, "All the weapons, ammunition, budgets, money transfer systems and safe havens for terrorists are located in Pakistan."

United States-led forces, along with Afghan soldiers and police, have been facing increasing attacks by fighters of the ousted Taleban regime in the run-up to Afghanistan's planned September 18 parliamentary and provincial elections.

Officials in Kabul believe that Islamabad could do something about this.

According to Mashal, if Pakistan really wanted to help Afghanistan overcome terrorism, the problem could be resolved rapidly.

"Pakistan has promised us several times [to help fight terrorism]. But it did not abide by its promises, except for once. That was during last year's [Afghan] presidential election, and that resulted in a peaceful election," he said.

Despite Musharraf's declared aim of helping his neighbours, Mashal said that in the past two months alone, interior ministry officials had arrested more than 20 Pakistani nationals.

The arrests were accompanied by seizures of weapons, bombs and explosives which were clearly intended for use in attacks. All this material was identified as coming from Pakistan, and had been supplied either by intelligence services or religious groups there, Mashal said.

President Musharraf, who has repeatedly pledged to put a stop to the activities of the Taleban and other radical Islamic groups that espouse violence, is adamant that his policies have worked. As he told a press conference in Lahore in late July, "We did root out terrorism in Pakistan, and no one can use Pakistani territory against Afghanistan."

But even within Pakistan, there are voices accusing the government of deceiving not only Afghanistan but also the United States and the West by helping militants to infiltrate the neighbouring country.

Earlier this week, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the Pakistani opposition leader who heads Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of six Islamic parties, told a news conference the government should identify the infiltrators and explain its motives for helping them to enter Afghanistan.

“They must also give the nation the identities of the men being moved from Waziristan to militant camps in Mansehra [both in Pakistan],” said Rehman. “This is hypocrisy. The rulers are not only trying to deceive the US and the West, but are also hoodwinking the entire nation.”

Islamabad has come under increasing world attention since the bomb attacks in London which killed more than 50 people, and the allegations that those responsible had links to Pakistani nationals. The mounting pressure forced Musharraf, a partner in Washington's "war on terror", to announce he was expelling foreigners from his country's religious schools, or madrassas.

For Kabul, however, it is not enough to expel the foreign students.

"It is important to eliminate the cause of terrorism. It is not just foreigners studying in Pakistan, but Pakistani students too who are involved in terrorist acts," said Mashal.

In Kabul, political analyst Fazal Rahman Oria said insurgents were receiving training and equipment directly from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, ISI, which worked with the Taleban before the radical Islamic regime was ousted by US forces in 2001.

Oria believes Islamabad has no desire to see a strong government in Kabul. He sees the presence of drug smugglers and warlords in positions of power as a factor which helps keep Afghanistan's leadership weak.

He told IWPR that with the elections barely five weeks away, Pakistan is afraid that if real representatives of the Afghan people form the new parliament, it will be more difficult for Islamabad to influence developments.

One of the issues that may be behind Pakistan's fear of a strong Kabul government leadership is the shadow cast by border and territorial differences. At their heart is the contentious Durand line – the border named after Sir Mortimer Durand and originally imposed by Britain to separate Afghanistan from what was then British India.

The border, which now divides Afghanistan and Pakistan, is not accepted by Kabul, and the fact that it runs through more than 2,000 kilometres of difficult terrain, making it easy for insurgents to slip between countries, is an added security problem.

"Pakistan has a few clear aims in Afghanistan," commented Aziz Ahmad Rahmand, a social sciences lecturer at Kabul University. “First, Pakistan does not want to see a strong central government in Afghanistan, because it would then be forced to deploy forces in two areas – on the borders with India, and with Afghanistan, in case Kabul were to raise the issue of the Durand line.”

Rahmand recalled that the border, which divides the traditional homeland of the Pashtun people in two, has always been problematic, and as recently as 2003, led to both sides building up forces in a contested frontier area.

Growing tensions caused by the increasing Taleban attacks resulted in a one-day visit to Kabul in late July by Pakistan's prime minister Shaukat Aziz, during which he promised that his country would help its neighbour eliminate terrorism.

"During the election and in normal times, whatever Pakistan can do for the security situation in Afghanistan, it will do," Aziz pledged, standing alongside President Hamed Karzai. "Pakistan thinks a strong and stabilised Afghanistan will be advantageous for neighbouring countries."

Karzai's spokesman, Mohammad Karim Rahimi, said later, "We discussed many issues with the prime minister of Pakistan, of which the important ones were security and a joint campaign against terrorism. He promised help on these issues."

Rahmand questions whether such promises will lead to anything. Besides the Durand line, he sees economics as another reason for interference from Islamabad, "Pakistan is trying to keep Afghanistan in a position where it has to rely on Pakistani trade and markets."

He says Pakistan has long had an eye on its neighbour’s assets. "General Hamid Gul, who headed the ISI under General Zia Ul-Haq's government, forecast that ‘the Russians will leave Afghanistan in 1987 and we should replace them so that we get access to the uranium in that country'," he said.

But Afghan foreign ministry spokesman Naweed Ahmad Moez, speaking after the Pakistani premier's visit, diplomatically suggested that the Islamabad government was not itself to blame for the continuing problems, "There are some groups in Pakistan that are unhappy with the current situation in Afghanistan, and they are trying to create problems here. But that is not the Pakistani government's idea."

Wahidullah Amani is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul. Hafizullah Gardesh and Amanullah Nasrat also contributed.