Karzai looks for leverage in Delhi. He should try Beijing, too.
According to the Washington Post and numerous other news outlets, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has given up on talking to the Taliban, which he now asserts is merely a proxy army controlled by the Pakistani government. Under this assumption, Karzai has concluded that he needs to negotiate with the Pakistani leadership in Islamabad, which according to Karzai, “has pursued a double game toward Afghanistan … using terrorism as a means.”
There is nothing new in Karzai’s description of the problem. However, the recent assassination of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been heading up a negotiation effort with the Taliban, catalyzed Karzai’s decision to break off talks with the Taliban and to confront Islamabad instead. Karzai may have concluded that he needed to drop (at least for now) attempts at direct reconciliation with the Taliban and to harden his line against Pakistan, if only to avoid a revolt by the former Northern Alliance, non-Pashtun portions of his government.
Confronting Islamabad will be a waste of effort for Karzai without some leverage. This explains his quick trip this week to Delhi to sign a “strategic partnership agreement” with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an agreement that includes Indian training for Afghanistan’s police. Singh promised that India would “stand by Afghanistan” after Western troops depart in 2014.
This is a logical step for Karzai, but doesn’t promise to deliver much leverage against Pakistan. India and Afghanistan would have to take much stronger measures to persuade Pakistan to adopt a different policy regarding Afghanistan and its support for the Afghan Taliban. India has its reasons to maintain connections with Afghanistan. But it doesn’t have a good reason under current circumstances to run any significant risks for Karzai’s benefit, which will limit the amount of leverage Karzai is looking for. And until that happens, Pakistan is likely to see even more reason to maintain its current Afghan policy.
Where else might Karzai look for leverage? There is always self-help. If, as Karzai asserts, Afghanistan is under attack from a Pakistani proxy war, a traditional nation-state response would be some form of military retaliation against Pakistan in an attempt to persuade its leaders to change their policy. When it comes to defending its territory against foreign invaders, Afghanistan’s reputation for eventual success is legendary. But retaliation against Pakistan would call for cross-border offensive action. What is Afghanistan’s offensive military capacity? The Afghan battleground is a hothouse of irregular and hybrid warfare techniques. Whether there is any prospect of the Afghan government fashioning these forms of warfare into effective transnational offensive tools is an interesting and unanswered question.
Does Karzai see any role for the United States in his search for leverage? He must have concluded that the current U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan is irrelevant to his need for leverage over Pakistan – indeed, the larger the U.S. force in Afghanistan, the more leverage Pakistan has over the U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen’s eleventh-hour tirade against Pakistan, uttered just days before his retirement, was the clearest sign that the Obama administration finally sees the need to change its approach toward Islamabad. But Karzai can’t hold out much hope that the United States will do much to solve his leverage problem, since the U.S. seems intent on washing its hand of the situation after 2014.
As a last resort, Karzai may look to Beijing. Mineral-hungry China may be interested in Afghanistan’s resources and a shipment route into China that doesn’t have to transit waters controlled by the U.S. and Indian navies. But tapping Afghanistan’s mineral wealth will require good behavior by Pakistan and a settlement to Afghanistan’s civil war. As Pakistan’s last and most powerful friend, China may have the leverage to create these conditions. That such a scenario is long-shot only shows what a difficult spot Karzai is in.
