Monday, February 11, 2013

Karzai's Two-State Solution for Afghanistan. 9/11 for India.


Hamid Karzai is trying to broker a two-state within one state deal that would effectively cede control over Afghanistan's Pashtun south to the Taliban.

That Taliban we've spent the last decade plus saving Afghanistan from?  Yes, those guys.
 ...The Afghan peace process envisions that “by 2015, Taliban and other armed groups will have given up armed opposition, transformed from military entities into political parties…and participated in national elections.” And more significantly “NATO/ISAF forces will have departed from Afghanistan, leaving the ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces) as the only legitimate armed forces…” The roadmap, however, seeks to preserve Afghanistan as a parliamentary democracy, denying the militants the Islamic rule.

... The roadmap, according to some observers, appears to back a two-state solution (or a variant of it) that splits the country into two blocs, a non-Pashtun north and west and the Pashtun south and east, under a weak central government in Kabul. This leaves Pakistan with an extended Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Or if the Taliban, instead of the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence service] calls the shots in the region, there will be a talibanistan/pashtunistan straddling the Durand line. This region would hold the ‘good’ Taliban (Quetta Shura), ‘bad’ Taliban (TTP) and the ‘ugly’ Haqqanis, Uighurs and the IMU. The supersized FATA would hand Pakistan its ‘strategic depth’, while in the latter case (Talibanistan) Pakistan will have a Tiger by its tail. Either way it is bad news for India.

...Deputy Commander of the US Forces in Afghanistan, Lt Gen. James Terry, recently referred to an estimate of around 20,000 militants still operating along the Pak-Afghan border. With reports of as many as 5000 Taliban having relocated to Karachi and the recent attacks on the Pakistan army and the levy in the Khyber area, the ISI will have its task cut out. The convergence of interest of the ISI and the militants can be sensed by the fact that, coinciding with the Indo-Pak tension along the LoC, the TTP announced that it would cease attacking the Pakistan army and focus instead on the NATO forces. With some analysts already prophesying that the roadmap 2015 will lead to pre-9/11 situation in the region, one of the options with the ISI to engage the militants would be to present them with a fresh jihad- India.

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