Trusting Taliban Could Be Deadly for Pakistan

Pakistan’s security apparatus seeks to foster a satellite regime within the Taliban in Afghanistan, in hopes theycancounter Indian influence on the west border … but Pakistan should beware of what it wishes for. Afghans have a long history of changing sides.

In 2009, President Obama included in his fiscal military budget a $680 billion defense appropriations bill which included funds to bribe Taliban rank-and-file members to abandon their leaders and switch sides. How did that work out? As the saying goes, “you can rent an Afghan, but you can’t buy him.”

A decade later,the Taliban is even stronger, and the U.S., tired of war and frustrated with Taliban disloyalty, signed a peace deal on March 29. In defiance of its own agreement, the Taliban continues to attack not only Afghan security forces, but civilians as well.     

On May 13,insurgents carried out a bloody attack on a maternity clinic in the capital city of Kabul. Afghan officials now place the death toll at 24, including mothers, nurses and two babies.
The Taliban denied responsibility for attack, and it remains unclear whether ISIS-affiliated militants in the country could have been involved. Afghan officials, however, have dismissed that possibility. Some completely reject the suggestion that an ISIS group is active in the country, insisting that long-present Taliban insurgents bear responsibility.

Afghan acting interiorministerMohammad Massoud Andarabi,in an interview with the media, blamed the Taliban and accused Pakistan of providing safe haven for the Taliban and other groups to conduct terrorist activities inside Afghanistan. Pakistan recently admitted having influence over theTaliban.

Since the overthrow of the Taliban regime by the U.S. in 2001,Pakistan has been worried about growing Indian influence in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government in Islamabad seeks to counter what it regards as an Indo-Afghan nexus to encircle and weaken Pakistan.Therefore, Pakistan seeks to use the Taliban as an instrument of pressure to counter India’s influence in Afghanistan.

“This is an excuse,”said Dr. Mohammad Muradian, a former Afghan diplomat and head of the Afghan strategic study center in Kabul. “What they (Pakistan) want is to swallow whole Afghanistan, or at least half of it. This is why the U.S. sent troops in 2001 – to prevent this Pakistani takeover.”

What fuels Pakistan’s ambition to conquer Afghanistan?

It seems like Pakistan has developed a scenario that, as soon as the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, Pakistan would be ready to fill the political gap by installing their friends— the Taliban— as leaders in Kabul.

But considering the history of Afghans and their culture of switching loyalties, the strategy could harbordisaster for Pakistan.

Pakistan would simply be buying Afghan problems. Afghanistan is a failed state. The  world’s preeminent superpowers – the former Soviet Union, followed by the United Sates – both failed to rescue their client in Kabul,despite sending huge amounts of money and troops. Afghanistan’s very existence now depends on foreign help, and it’s not likely Pakistan will be able to afford this project.

Banking on loyalty from the Taliban is a fool’s errand. The Taliban may be beholden to their own tribes and regions, but political ideology? U.S military analysts believe local Taliban fighters are motivated largely by the need for a job. They may be loyal to the local leader who pays them, but not to ideology or even religious zealots.

Switching sides is part of Afghans’ culture of survival. They have a history of accepting foreign assistance to fight rival ethnic groups or tribes. The government has always been in flux, and puppet regimes that came to power not by the ballot, but by being installed by foreign forces, are short-lived because they don’t have the support of citizens.

The Taliban aren’t capable of running such a failed state because they are militants without any political agenda, simply trying to usurp power in the name of Islam. If Pakistan tries to impose the Taliban’s will on Afghanistan, violent storm clouds will form quickly.

“If the Taliban tries to take complete control of Afghanistan, they will get resistance. It could intensify the civil war and bring other regional actors in,” said Carter Malkasian, a former Pentagon adviser who spent two years in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province as a State Department political officer.

Regional experts warn that Pakistan risks playing a dangerous game if the American military withdrawal leads to a further descent into chaos – fueling a full-scale civil war in which India, Russia and others could back different factions and drag Pakistan into a protracted conflict.

It’s not too late for Pakistani leaders to engage directly with the currently elected Afghan governmentand resolve their differences, rather than cast their lot with a mercurial group that would work for anyone who will pay them. No one should trust the Taliban. Just ask Barack Obama.