The Mirage of Afghanistan-Pakistan Rapprochement

On May 18, Pakistan’s Army spokesman, Major General Asim Bajwa, took to Twitter to make a major announcement. General Bajwa tweeted that the intelligence agencies of Afghanistan and Pakistan had signed a memorandum of understanding that calls for intelligence sharing and coordinated counterterrorism operations.

The deal’s signatories were as striking as the deal itself. For decades, Afghanistan and Pakistan have suffered through a tense and tumultuous relationship. And yet here they were signing a deal requiring close cooperation and immense levels of trust.

A Legacy of Rocky Relations

Much ink has been spilled over Pakistan’s troubled relations with India, its neighbor to the east. Less has been said, however, about Islamabad’s difficult relationship with its neighbor to the west.

Historically, the chief driver of Afghanistan-Pakistan tensions has been their disputed border, the 1,500-mile Durand Line. It is a border that Kabul has refused to recognize since the day in 1893 when a British colonial official in India, Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, demarcated the frontier between Afghanistan and British India. Following the establishment of this new border, ethnic Pashtun tribal areas (now the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA) reverted to British – and, in due course, Pakistani – control. Afghanistan continues to claim these areas as its own.

The Durand Line is a highly porous border, and over the years many Afghan refugees fleeing conflict have crossed to the Pakistani side. Afghan officials have accused Pakistan of discriminating against these refugees (which number about 3 million in total), further fueling bilateral tensions. This year, authorities in Islamabad have suggested that they plan to repatriate many of them.

In recent years, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan has arguably become the chief source of bilateral tensions. Kabul has repeatedly accused Pakistan’s security establishment of destabilizing Afghanistan through its support of the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, including through the provision of sanctuaries in FATA and elsewhere in Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban’s top leadership is based in Quetta, though some top-ranking figures may be in Karachi. In 2013, Nasiruddin Haqqani, a Haqqani Network leader, was shot dead near Islamabad – which is not far from Rawalpindi, the location of Pakistan’s military headquarters and a city where some believe other Haqqani leaders are based.

Bilateral relations have been so fraught in recent years that some observers have raised the possibility of war, based on the assumption that Afghan forces could launch an offensive against Afghan Taliban sanctuaries in FATA and trigger Pakistani retaliatory strikes in Afghanistan. Such a scenario wildly overstates the capacities of Afghan security forces. Still, in recent years, militants have staged cross-border raids from both sides of the Durand Line. There is reason to fear that tit-for-tat cross-border shelling by each country’s military could escalate into something more serious.

During the final years of Hamid Karzai’s presidency (his term ended in 2014), relations between Islamabad and Kabul were ice cold. Like Washington, Islamabad seemed uninterested in dealing with the mercurial Afghan leader, who made no effort to hide his hostility toward Pakistan. Karzai’s deep affinities for and ties to India – he spent several years studying in the country – did not exactly endear him to Islamabad either.

And yet, starting in late 2013, a series of new developments gave this battered and bruised relationship new life, setting the stage for that landmark intelligence deal.

Shifting Sands

It all started in November 2013 with the appointment of a new Pakistani Army chief, General Raheel Sharif, a leader keen to engage with Afghanistan. Then there was the September 2014 inauguration of Afghanistan’s new national unity government, fronted by President Ashraf Ghani, who does not share his predecessor’s pathological mistrust of Pakistan. Sharif and Ghani hit if off immediately. Just weeks after Ghani took office, Sharif made a trip to Kabul, where he was warmly received by the Afghan president and other top civilian and military officials.

Then came December 16, 2014.

On that day, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) assaulted an Army-run school in Peshawar. Even by the barbaric standards of terror attacks in Pakistan, this was a truly horrific tragedy. More than 150 people – most of them children from military families – were murdered. Teachers were reportedly burned alive in front of their petrified students.

According to Pakistani military officials, the attack was masterminded by TTP supreme leader Mullah Fazlullah and other top TTP figures based in Afghanistan. Suddenly, Pakistan – and, given the target of the Peshawar attack, the military in particular – had the strongest of incentives to get relations with Afghanistan back on track. General Sharif needed Kabul’s help to go after the terrorists responsible for the mass murder of the children of Pakistan’s most venerated institution. The Army chief was likely buoyed by promises made by Ghani during a trip to Islamabad back in November, when the Afghan president had reportedly pledged to crack down on anti-Pakistan militants on Afghan soil. Tellingly, Sharif jetted off to Kabul just one day after the Peshawar tragedy.

He found a willing partner in Ghani, who had his own strong incentive for reaching out to Islamabad: Ghani wanted Pakistan to persuade the Afghan Taliban to agree to reconciliation talks with Kabul. Because of the sanctuaries and other support that Pakistan provides to the Taliban, the Pakistanis enjoy a fair degree of influence over the group – enough, Ghani hoped, to persuade the group to step off the battlefield.

And from Ghani’s perspective, by early 2015 there was no better time for the Taliban to step off the battlefield. International combat troops had left Afghanistan. The Taliban, in an effort to test the capacities of Afghanistan’s fragile soldiers forced to fight on their own, was ramping up its attacks – even during the winter, when fighting typically subsides. Ominously, in late 2014 a top U.S. commander had warned that the rising casualty rate of Afghan security forces was “not sustainable.” In addition, 2014 was the deadliest on record for Afghan civilians, and the year had ended with a flurry of spectacular Taliban attacks on Western targets in Kabul. Little wonder Ghani was so keen to revamp the pursuit of a political solution to the war.

And then, as if all this serendipity were not enough to raise hopes of rejuvenating a rocky relationship, along came the Chinese.

In early 2015, Beijing was increasingly concerned about the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan. China holds a number of key economic assets in Afghanistan, including a contract to exploit a large copper mine near Kabul, and it feared that destabilization could imperil its access to these assets. Beijing was also intensifying its efforts to build a new economic corridor to its west, part of a broader effort to create a direct trade route to the Middle East. Building the infrastructure for such projects will require some semblance of stability in Afghanistan, a nation through which the corridor is envisioned to run. For these reasons, Beijing keenly shared Kabul’s desire for a negotiated solution to the war in Afghanistan. China, a close ally of Pakistan, joined Kabul in supporting Pakistani efforts to bring the Taliban to the peace table.

Diplomatic Demarches

Not surprisingly, the early months of 2015 saw a surge of goodwill between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In February, six Afghan cadets arrived for an 18-month training stint at a major Pakistani military academy (typically Afghan cadets are trained in India). That same month, Sharif made his third visit to Afghanistan since Ghani’s inauguration. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif followed up with his own visit in May. Sharif made some extraordinary statements on his trip – including a declaration that the two countries share the same enemies, and that neither side would allow the other’s territory to be used against the other.

It was against this backdrop that Kabul and Islamabad concluded their intelligence deal on May 18. “Pakistan and Afghanistan will both benefit if the two organizations start to trust each other and share intelligence systematically,” said a Pakistani defense analyst, referring to each country’s intelligence agency, in an interview with the German outlet Deutsche Welle.

If only it were that easy.

Doomed Détente?

Immediately after the accord was announced, Afghan officials began to backpedal. They sought above all to downplay the scope of the deal. A spokesman for the NDS, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, rejected rumors that Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, would be training or arming NDS operatives. He also noted that similar MOUs had been signed back in 2006 and 2009.

Kabul’s comments failed to calm a furious backlash that erupted in Afghanistan and has continued over the last few weeks. For many Afghans, the deal represents nothing short of a sell-out to their long-time nemesis. “Pakistan is an enemy to Afghanistan and will never develop friendship with us,” thundered a top Afghan parliamentarian, Fazilhadi Muslimyar, on May 19. “Pakistan has always plotted to destroy Afghanistan and will continue to do so.” Another legislator said that “by signing this agreement you have made yourself blind and dumb.”

Other prominent figures within the Afghan political class also excoriated Ghani for pledging to partner with Pakistani spies. One of them was Karzai – a leader who has not exactly disappeared quietly into the night after completing his presidency, and who remains influential in Afghan politics. According to Aimal Faizi, a top former aide, Karzai called Ghani soon after the deal was announced and declared that “intelligence cooperation with Pakistan and such deals are treason and a betrayal of the Afghan soil.”

Ghani’s detractors have widened their assault to focus on the president’s broader strategy of outreach to Pakistan. Former Afghan spy chief Amrullah Saleh said in an interview published in late May that by reaching out to the Pakistani Army, Ghani “ignored the reality that Pakistan has been investing in extremism for decades.” Afghan leaders, Saleh warned, “won’t change [Pakistan’s] entrenched policies until and unless [Pakistanis] gain what they are fighting for, that is domination of Afghanistan in one way or another.” Not surprisingly, Ghani’s aggressive pursuit of reconciliation talks with the Taliban has generated angry pushback in Kabul as well, not because he is seeking talks (which many war-weary Afghans support), but because he wants Islamabad to play a major role.

The underlying message of all this vitriol is crystal clear: Decades of mistrust toward Pakistan cannot simply be wished away. In all likelihood, when Ghani launched his charm offensive toward Pakistan months ago, he gambled – wrongly – that Afghans would rally behind a policy that, while risky, had the potential to help deliver peace and stability to a nation desperate for both.

Ghani was banking on a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Yet it is now seemingly a strategy in retreat. On June 1, news emerged that Ghani had sent a missive to Pakistani officials. This letter contained neither inducements nor invitations, but a series of demands. The president, according to Afghan officials, called on Pakistan to carry out seven tasks in a matter of several weeks. These include eliminating the Afghan Taliban’s sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal areas; extending counterterrorism activities to target the Haqqani Network; and placing Afghan Taliban leaders in Quetta under house arrest.

In effect, Ghani was reverting to the same demands that Afghan leaders have been making of Pakistan for years, with several new ones thrown in for good measure.

A Long List of Undeliverables

Thus far, there is little indication that Ghani’s demands are being met, or will be met anytime soon.

The reason is simple: They all basically require Pakistan to turn on the Afghan Taliban, which has long served as an asset for the country’s security establishment. It has been regarded as a useful proxy that can limit the presence and influence of India in Afghanistan. New Delhi signed a strategic partnership accord with Afghanistan in 2011, and it enjoys robust political and economic relations with Kabul. These are unsettling realities for Islamabad, and particularly given Pakistan’s oft-stated claim – whether manufactured or real – that India uses its consulates in Afghanistan as a base of support for Baloch separatists in Pakistan.

It is sheer folly to assume that Islamabad will sever its relations with the Afghan Taliban anytime soon. This is because reconciliation with India, the enemy country that motivates Pakistan’s embrace of the Taliban, is a non-starter. If reconciliation with India were to occur, the Pakistani military’s main source of legitimacy would be undercut, if not eliminated altogether. The Pakistani military’s legitimacy derives from its contention that India, with its much larger size, population, and military, poses an existential threat to Pakistan, and that the military, which self-identifies as Pakistan’s protector, must therefore assume an outsize role in the Pakistani state and politics (which includes a leading role in foreign policy, and dictating relations with Afghanistan and India).

Pakistan is particularly unlikely to act on Ghani’s demand that they turn on the Taliban. A vicious war of words erupted between Islamabad and New Delhi in May, and it has plunged bilateral relations to a low not seen in years. In recent days, top Pakistani officials – including, in a rare public accusation, Army leaders – have lambasted India for fomenting terrorism in Pakistan and even for plotting Pakistan’s destruction. New Delhi, meanwhile, led by a conservative government that is no shrinking violet, has issued not-so-cryptic threats that it will not sit quietly if provoked by its neighbors.

In other words, from Pakistan’s perspective, never has its strategic assets policy, and consequently its continued embrace of the Afghan Taliban, been more necessary.

Back to the Basics

Unfortunately, the original motivations for improving Pakistan-Afghanistan relations may be linked to objectives that cannot be met. For Kabul, the driving factor was getting Pakistan to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table. There is little reason to be hopeful on this front. First, as Islamabad itself often acknowledges, Pakistan’s influence over the Taliban may be overstated. In 2012, NATO released the results of interviews with Taliban detainees in NATO-run facilities in Afghanistan. Tellingly, interviewees admitted that they were not particularly fond of the Pakistanis, who were described as controlling and untrustworthy. There is no reason to believe that the Taliban will drop everything and rush to the negotiating table simply because Pakistan tells it to do so.

Additionally, the Afghan Taliban has little incentive to step off the battlefield. With no more foreign combat troops in Afghanistan and vulnerable local forces more or less on their own, the group is poised to make major battlefield gains. One might argue that these circumstances give the Taliban leverage, and that it could enter into negotiations and make big demands – such as prominent positions in the government, including Cabinet-level posts. However, as desperate as Ghani is for peace, it is unlikely he would consider granting such major concessions to the Taliban.

Moreover, the Afghan Taliban is a fractured organization with an absentee leader (Mullah Omar may well be dead or incapacitated). The group does have moderate leaders who may favor the idea of talks, but it also has hardliners who are staunchly opposed. Any efforts by the former could quickly be stymied by the latter. It’s worth remembering how, back in late 2013 and early 2014, several Afghan Taliban leaders reportedly exploring peace prospects were gunned down in Pakistan. No one claimed responsibility, but their hardline colleagues are certainly candidates.

To be sure, some progress toward talks has been made; in recent weeks there have been informal meetings between Afghan government and Taliban representatives in Qatar, Norway, and China. Still, these are mere talks about talks. And they follow a common pattern that has emerged in recent years: baby steps toward a peace process that eventually hit a dead end.

Meanwhile, Islamabad’s chief motivation for improving relations with Afghanistan was getting the latter to help crack down on Pakistani Taliban fighters and other Afghanistan-based militants that carry out attacks in Pakistan. Here the issue is less one of will than capacity. The TTP mainly targets Pakistan, but it also collaborates with the Afghan Taliban and carries out attacks in Afghanistan. So Kabul has good reason to comply with Islamabad’s request. However, Afghanistan’s security forces, already burdened by deficiencies in air support and other warfighting capacities, and overwhelmed by new Afghan Taliban offensives throughout the country, are in no position to launch fresh assaults against the Pakistani Taliban.  And they can no longer count on foreign troops to help them.

Some analysts suggest another possible reason why help from Afghanistan may not be forthcoming:  shady liaisons between Afghan intelligence operatives and the TTP. Commentators such as Umar Farooq, writing for The Diplomat in 2014, believe that just as Pakistan’s ISI has nurtured relations with the Afghan Taliban, Afghanistan’s NDS has reciprocated by courting the TTP.

This theory gained steam back in 2013, when American forces in Afghanistan discovered – and captured – a senior TTP official, Latif Mehsud, who was travelling to Kabul with Afghan officials. Afghan sources later told the New York Times that they were trying to cultivate a relationship with the TTP to be used as a trump card in Kabul’s dealings with Islamabad. At the time, many Pakistanis were convinced that Afghan intelligence already enjoyed a close relationship with the TTP. One Pakistani analyst claimed that Mullah Fazlullah, the TTP’s top leader, is “hand-in-glove with the Afghan intelligence agencies.” Whether such ties still exist today is unclear, though Pakistani officials, perhaps to help foster goodwill with their Afghan counterparts, have not publicly made such allegations in recent months.

All Hope Is Not Lost

A clear pattern has emerged of late: Pakistani officials continue to play up the idea of improved relations with Kabul, while their Afghan counterparts have been much more muted. On June 16, Tariq Fatemi, a top Pakistani foreign policy official, declared that relations with Afghanistan are moving in the “right direction” – and yet, tellingly, no similar statements have come from Kabul.

That said, all hope is not lost. There is arguably more optimism about bilateral relations now than there has been for quite some time. Pakistani analysts and officials, including in private conversations, insist that their country is ready to turn the corner and usher in a new era of cordial ties with their western neighbor. To be sure, this could well be spin designed for strategic audiences. Pakistan continues to value its relationship with Washington, which badly wants rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad, and such assurances are sweet music to the ears of U.S. officials. Nonetheless, the intensity with which Pakistan is making these assurances is greater than it has been in recent memory.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, despite the loud opposition to Ghani’s Pakistan outreach, analysts are not outright rejecting the possibility of better bilateral ties. Additionally, observers, including former Taliban officials, suggest that if informal meetings between government and Taliban representatives continue to occur on a regular basis, then breakthroughs are possible. Any major progress toward the launch of formal talks – which would presumably involve efforts by Pakistan – would be a confidence-builder for Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.

Meanwhile, positive signs continue to be seen on the ground. On June 16, for example, Pakistani troops, at Kabul’s request, crossed the border into Afghanistan to rescue a wounded Afghan soldier. He was taken back to Pakistan for medical treatment.

So are Afghanistan and Pakistan ready to kiss and make up? Not at all; decades of mistrust die hard.

Still, it could be much worse. Just two years ago, Afghans were staging large protests replete with “Death to Pakistan” chants, and authorities in both countries were trading angry words, including the memorable proclamation of one Pakistani official that Karzai was “taking Afghanistan straight to hell.”

As troubled as Afghanistan-Pakistan relations remain today, they have nonetheless come a long way. This is a modest achievement worth highlighting, and one that may provide some solace and perspective as the two nations tackle the more ambitious, and perhaps unachievable, goal of broader rapprochement.