Prime Minister Imran Khan is right to warn, in an oped published in the Washington Post, that a hasty exit from Afghanistan would be very unwise; as would be setting unrealistic timelines. The PM perhaps deliberately chose a mainstream American publication to express these views since it is the US government, of all concerned stakeholders, that wants to get out of the war and Afghanistan the quickest. And that is because of the US presidential election in a little over a month’s time. Sure, wrapping up the war pretty much and getting the Afghan government and the Taliban leadership to begin peace negotiations is enough to show the electorate that the job is more or less done. But the more on ground progress there is to show by the time of the actual vote the better the current administration would look to the people.
The PM was also right to remind everybody that, welcome as the peace negotiations are, the hard work has actually just begun, and there are naturally going to be phases where progress will be painfully slow. But, as he said, “a bloodless deadlock on the negotiating table is infinitely better than a bloody stalemate on the battlefield.” And an example of how easily progress can be stalled came just a few days ago when the Afghan government expressed reservations about some of the prisoners that were to be released and the Taliban simply refused to talk anymore till their demand was met. Going forward, more such issues will come up and all parties will need to be flexible.
Pushing things ahead at this point, that too because of political compulsions in Washington, risks undoing much of the good work rather quickly. A war that lasted 19 years, not to mention the successive wars that came before this one, left deep scars and bitterness that will take more than a few days or weeks to sort out. Then there is the nature of the constitution and composition of the future government that must also be agreed upon. Everybody should realise then that patience will be key in seeing this thing through successfully. It is in the interest of not just Afghanistan but the whole region that this war is settled as amicably as possible. The return of violence and terrorism can destabilise the continent and nobody wants that to happen ever again.
Establishment or the people?
Before the government or the opposition go on any longer about the alleged role of the so called establishment in Pakistan’s politics, perhaps it’s wise for both to take a step back and consider the effect of all this on the people. It is, after all, the ordinary people of the country that everybody who takes up politics swears to serve. And when the people are reduced to seeing a slugfest between the government and those who want to be in government over matters that concern neither governance nor people who are meant to be governed, they realise that their lot doesn’t really matter to those in the halls of power.
Now we are about to see yet another round of agitation against a sitting government in which opposition forces will get together and blame the last election result on interference from the establishment. The government, then, will respond with the usual rebuttal and claim that the election was the fairest in the history of the country, and so this back-and-forth will go on. Surely all this will take a lot of energy and resources on the part of both the government and the opposition; things that were much better directed towards the interests of the state and the people.
It is surprising, really, that the opposition still needs to be reminded that its job is to keep checks on the government but in matters that concern governance and the people, not who played what role in which election. That is so because they too have won many a suspect election and were fine with the results all those times. And if the government and the brass are on the same page, and the country has been battling an unprecedented situation quite successfully, then it is a good thing at the end of the day. The way things are going the opposition seems unable to mount an offensive against the government’s work plan, therefore it seems bent upon delegitimising it by attacking the nature of the election itself. But in that it is only feeding an already frenzied international media, especially in India, and everybody is talking about how another storm is brewing in Pakistan.
Both the government and the opposition must realise that they exist to serve the people and the state. That is all. Therefore they must direct all their energies towards what they are supposed to do. Perhaps then the fate of the ordinary people will finally begin to improve. *
