In a recent editorial, titled "Stuck in quagmire," the Peshawar-based newspaper The Frontier Post urged U.S. President Barack Obama to work for a grand reconciliation between the various ethnic and tribal groups of Afghanistan and withdraw the U.S. troops.
Warning that the U.S. is stuck in a quagmire, the regional Pakistani daily noted that the U.S. is confronted by a "boiling Pashtun nationalism" in Afghanistan as the Pashtun community is disappointed by the U.S. as well as Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
It warned that the U.S. proposal to pay the Taliban to quit fighting will not work and urged the U.S. to recognize the reality of the Taliban’s presence in Afghanistan and agree to a negotiated peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hizb-e-Islami chief Gulbadin Hekmatyar.
Following are some excerpts from the editorial in the original English. [1]
"President Obama May Not Want the U.S. to Stay on in Afghanistan for Another Eight Years... But That Could Only Be His Wish"
"President Barack Obama may not want the U.S. to stay on in Afghanistan for another eight years, as aver his aides. But that could only be his wish. And it will remain a wish, no matter how pious or fervent, until and unless he candidly admits to certain hard realities and takes them into account fully - in actions and strategies. His predecessor has messed up the things so colossally in Afghanistan that fictions would not do for him to get out the quagmire he is now stuck up in there so despairingly.
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"He will have to shunt aside the CIA-woven artful contrivances like Quetta Shura [-the reference to the U.S. charge that the Taliban leadership is hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta] in the first place, and recognize the pulsating reality of the Afghan Taliban being inside Afghanistan lock, stock and barrel since the day one. They are living there with their families and in their tribes not as a distinct separate entity but as part and parcel of their Pashtun community straddling all over from the country's south to the east. And this ethnic majority of Afghanistan is extremely outraged at the raw deal it has been dealt with by the occupiers and their puppet Kabul regime over the past eight years unremittingly."
"Obama Would Do Well to Comprehend that What He is Confronting in Afghanistan is Not a Taliban Insurgency but a Boiling Pashtun Nationalism..."
"Traditionally a ruling community, it [the Pashtun community] has been kept out of the power dispensation [in Kabul] since the country's occupation. [It has not had a]... formidable voice... in the government and no[r a] presence in its state security apparatus. At best, it had only symbolic representation in some state arms [government institutions]. President Hamid Karzai may be a Pashtun, but the community sees him [as being] no better than [the] half-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah, both [of whom] play... [as] pawns in the hands of non-Pashtun minorities, the occupier's favourites. Both are despised by the Pashtuns, though Karzai more scornfully for betraying his community so traitorously when, from his top position, he could have made for a better deal for the [Pashtun] community, stamping out the train of injustices being inflicted on it with abandon.
"Obama would do well to comprehend that what he is confronting in Afghanistan is not a Taliban insurgency but a boiling Pashtun nationalism of a disgruntled community. And he would be better informed if he understands that it is not [only] the corteges carrying bodies of soldiers wrapped in national flags that sadden American and European hearts and streets, but the Pashtuns too mourn their dead and are filled with anger and revenge over their unnatural demise. For that, doomed is his commanders' planned strategy to concentrate holding on to major urban centers in Afghanistan, leaving the countryside untended. The Soviet occupiers did it too. Yet they kissed defeat... "
"Even the Buying Out of Resistance Loyalties Would Go the Soviet Way; It Was Not Uncommon That Recipients of Money Would Turn [Their] Back on Their Soviet Paymasters"
"Even the buying out of resistance loyalties [i.e. U.S. proposal to pay the Taliban to quit fighting] would go the Soviet way. It was not uncommon that recipients of money would turn [their] back on their Soviet paymasters at once [during the 1980s]. The Americans must have indeed learnt of this from their own experiences of this foray. Reports have surfaced in recent days that American merchants [agents out to buy Taliban’s] loyalties passed on money under the table to certain Pashtun tribal chiefs, but were then horrified seeing them leading the fight against their troops the next day. In fact, this device had not helped the Soviets in curbing the Afghan resistance; in all probability, it would be of not much avail to American occupiers either.
"Even now Obama could rethink his entire Afghanistan policy afresh. Oscillating between the options of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency would in the ultimate analysis... come to naught, as neither can reasonably hope to deliver. Karzai too would turn out a paper tiger as he has been so far. At best, he would throw out, if at all, a few warlords from his counsels and sack some corrupt officials from his reeky administration to put the international pressures off his back. But of what effect could it be even if he packs his cabinet with spotless technocrats, when almost the whole of southern and eastern Afghanistan are out of Kabul's writ and the entire northern and western territories are in regional warlords' autocratic control?
"Obama would really be well off if he seeks out a negotiated peace with Taliban leader Mullah Omar, as also with Gulbadin Hekmatyar, to pacify the restive Pashtun territory and work for a grand reconciliation among Afghanistan's ethnic and tribal divides and then leave. Otherwise, he will get stuck deeper in the quagmire with unpredictable consequences, [that] in all probability [will] all [be] hurtful to him in every manner."
Endnote:
[1] The Frontier Post, Pakistan, November 13, 2009. The article has been slightly edited for clarity. The original text sites Pashtuns as Paktuns.
