The Pakistani Spectator

As the US and NATO leadership struggle to find a way out of the Afghan quicksand, amid a growing concern caused by the mounting casualties and enhancing strength of Afghan resistance, the US rhetoric seems to be getting focused on the city of Quetta. According to US assessment, the city houses the top echelon of the Taliban leadership, the “Quetta Shura” who are not only providing the ideological orientation to the insurgency in Southern Afghanistan but also arranging for the logistical support for the fighters owing allegiance to Mullah Omar. Quetta Shura finds a mention on the assessment forwarded by General Stanley McChrystal to the US Government, duly ‘leaked’ to the Washington Post and now available to all and sundry on the internet.

The ‘Quetta Shura’ has been talked about for some time in the US security circles but the emphasis on its supposed virulence sees to have acquired a rather sudden leap. Anne W Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan told Washington Post that “the United States has now turned its focus to Quetta” from where “Mullah Omar and his commanders plan and launch cross-border strikes into Afghanistan”.  “In the past, we focused on Al Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had less troops in the region. Now our troops are on the other side of the border and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington’s list,” she said. Not to leave any doubt in the message being conveyed, a UK paper hinted that after FATA the US was paving the ground for launching Drone attacks in Baluchistan as well.

The question arises; what is Quetta Shura, does it really exist, do its contours match the US perception and above all does it constitute the terminal threat to US mission in Afghanistan? Further will it be pragmatic of US to extend the Drone attacks to Baluchistan under the pretext of attacking the supposed Shura leadership?

According to McChrystal, the Quetta Shura Taleban (QST) tops the list of three insurgent groups in term of threat posed to the US mission in Afghanistan; duly followed by the Haqqani Network (HQN) and the Hizb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. It is running a parallel political structure and constitutes, as per US perception, the face of Afghan Resistance in Kandahar city and its suburbs. But before one ascertains as to why the QST has been assessed to have become a major threat to US operations, it would be instructive to know as to what, in the first place, constitutes the US mission in Afghanistan. General McChrystal describes it so;”ISAF (International Security assistance Force), in support of Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and the will of insurgency, support the growth and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces, and facilitate improvements in governance and socio economic development, in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population.”

Conduct of operations flow from the statement of mission and a cursory scrutiny is enough to reveal as to why the US politico-military effort in Afghanistan appears wobbly and disjointed. Establishment of a strong civilian government along with the raising of a credible military arm is a viable strategy, given the circumstances. But if it gets translated into propping up of the much despised Karzai Government, cobbled together by harnessing most unnatural patchwork of ethnic minorities in Afghanistan, to the exclusion of Pashtun majority, the entire effort turns haywire. From another dimension the US strategy is reflective of her naiveté concerning the local traditions and power dynamics. It also brings into focus the misplaced US accommodation for an Indian role in Afghanistan which has become a major source of instability in the Region. General McChrystal has made a mention of the India factor under the heading of ‘External Influences’; saying that “increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India”, but much else remains unsaid, by design if not by default.

If Afghanistan is to stabilize, ISAF strategy needs to get its fundamentals right. If the design is to establish a Government that can hold the country together and control extremism then politics that flow from US mission statement need to conform to ground realities. It is obvious that failure to integrate political ambitions within the overall Afghan power matrix has turned the incumbent Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan into a farce. At the political and military levels, under the tutelage of the Indian influence and US concurrence, the Northern Alliance warlords, now wielding a great degree of clout are shaping the Afghan National Security apparatus in line with their own ambitions and with an eye to the post US Afghanistan. As things promise to turn out, that is not what the majority of people in Afghanistan want; turning the entire and costly US efforts for winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people into a wasted exercise. Until the political ambitions of the majority are satiated to satisfaction , how will the grass root administration take form and until the security apparatus reflects the ethnic mosaic of the land how shall its authority be respected, are questions that need serious deliberations by US policy makers and commanders on ground.

Certain realities concerning the swell of insurgency in Afghanistan, particularly its South, are hard to ignore. Primarily the resistance is a response by the Afghan Pashtun majority against the poor and partisan governance by the incumbent Afghan Government, dominated by India’s Tajik and Uzbek protégées and lacking in the much needed legitimacy. Cross border flow of insurgents is unstoppable; a fact not lost upon ISAF commanders and spillover of the insurgency in Afghanistan is bound to reach Baluchistan and FATA badlands from time to time. But claiming that Quetta houses the top leadership of what is called the Quetta Shura Taleban is absurd. Most of the Afghan Commanders attributed under the rubric of the Shura are dead, as explained by the DG ISPR. In any case such unsubstantiated premises can’t provide the justification for conducting drone strikes in Baluchistan. In this context remarks made in November last by Gen David McKiernan, the previous US military commander in Afghanistan, are revealing.  “Any assessment that said the Quetta Shura’s dictates were closely followed by the field commanders gives the Taleban far too much credit for coherency at the operational and strategic level. They don’t have it”, he said. The fog of war is ‘clear’ and present but who is leading the US into blind alleys of Afghan insurgency? The answer is written in bold letters on the wall, but is the US willing to read?