AS the May 1 deadline for the pullout of American troops from Afghanistan under the US-Taliban Doha agreement nears, there has been a flurry of shuttle diplomacy involving American officials making calls in major capitals of this region.
On Monday, Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s point man on Afghanistan, was in Islamabad and met the army chief as well as the prime minister’s special assistant on national security. “Matters of mutual interest, regional security and ongoing Afghanistan reconciliation process were discussed,” said the military’s media wing. Earlier, Mr Khalilzad had visited Kabul and Doha, while also discussing the Afghan file with India.
Clearly, the Biden administration wants some sort of framework to be in place in Afghanistan — the ‘moonshot’ as it is being referred to — before it pulls its troops out, hence the shuttle diplomacy. The US secretary of state has also written a letter to the Afghan president calling for a political settlement, and warning that the Taliban “could make rapid territorial gains” after his country’s troops leave Afghan soil.
However, as efforts are underway on the diplomatic and political fronts to reach a lasting peace agreement in Afghanistan, on the military front things do not look good. There has been a noticeable uptick in violence, with the Shia Hazara community as well as female media workers targeted in deadly attacks last week.
The Hazaras were brutally murdered in Nangarhar province, while the media workers were also targeted in the same region. The latter attack was claimed by the local affiliate of the self-styled Islamic State group. This, unfortunately is Afghanistan’s dichotomy: it has been unable to govern itself for the past few decades, and is dependent on foreign forces to provide security, while at the other end, despite the presence of foreign troops, there has been no let-up in violence, with even more virulent actors — such as the local IS ‘chapter’ — spreading their tentacles.
The fact is that no foreign-dictated peace can succeed in pacifying Afghanistan, and there are strong chances that bedlam will ensue as soon as the last foreign solider leaves the country. Unless of course the various Afghan stakeholders decide that there has been enough violence, and it is time to bring peace to their battered land. Hackneyed as it may sound, only an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned process can succeed, and in this regard the onus is on the Taliban to respond to peace overtures from the government in Kabul.
Regional states, including Pakistan, should play the role of facilitators, but decisions must be taken by the various Afghan stakeholders themselves. If foreign troops stay, the Taliban will continue to fight, and if they leave without a peace agreement in place, the brutal civil war will only intensify. Which is why the sooner the Afghans — particularly the government and the Taliban — reach a workable peace deal, the better.
Senate chair contest
THE race for the Senate chairman and deputy chairman has reached an interesting stage. With the election due on March 12, and a handful of votes separating the government and the opposition in the upper house after the latest election, campaigning is at full swing. The incumbent chairman Sadiq Sanjrani, re-nominated by the ruling coalition, is six votes behind his rival from the opposition Yousuf Raza Gilani but since the election will be held through a secret ballot, the government appears confident Mr Sanjrani will scrape through to victory. The opposition coalition has 53 members to the government’s 47. However, one PML-N senator, former finance minister Ishaq Dar, has not taken an oath since he left the country, so the opposition has a lead of five votes.
On Tuesday, events took a strange turn when Defence Minister Pervez Khattak told the media that they had offered to nominate JUI-F’s Maulana Ghafoor Haideri as their candidate for the post of deputy chairman. This was a shock offer because JUI-F leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman is leading the opposition campaign against the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the two have been exchanging personal taunts for years now. The surreal offer symbolises the extent to which parties are willing to go to snatch victory in this closely fought contest. Maulana Haideri refuted the offer subsequently but the fact remains that in this high-stakes game, everything appears kosher for the contestants. The ruling party, however, will have a lot to answer if its candidate wins despite trailing in numbers. The entire edifice of the PTI’s protest against the victory of Mr Gilani on the Islamabad seat for the Senate is built around the fact that the opposition did not have the required numbers, just like the government does not in the Senate today. The logic peddled by the PTI is that since Mr Gilani did not have the requisite vote count as per party positions, the votes that propelled him to victory were a product of corruption. This same logic will apply if Mr Sanjrani were to win. The PTI government needs to be ready to answer these questions, or see its narrative get degraded in the court of public opinion. In either case, it is important that these issues are addressed once the Senate elections are over. The political pollution witnessed in the past few weeks can only be cleansed through comprehensive electoral reforms.
Railway infrastructure
THE derailment of a Lahore-bound train near Sukkur the other day is yet another stark reminder of the government’s utter failure to invest in the upgradation of the decrepit railway infrastructure to protect the lives of hapless passengers who cannot afford to pay for safer means of travel. Every time a tragedy occurs on the rail tracks, an eyewash of an inquiry is ordered, low- and middle-level railway employees are blamed for the accident and suspended, and the matter is swept under the rug. The families of the passengers who lose their lives in such accidents are left to fend for themselves. Accidents happen all the time and all over the world. However, a quick look at the long list of train accidents in Pakistan shows that the majority of these could have easily been avoided — and hundreds of precious lives saved — if the government had invested in the maintenance and upgradation of the infrastructure which at the moment consists of weak rail tracks, an erratic signal system and decaying rolling stock. Besides, the railway management has paid little attention to improving and enforcing passenger safety protocols. A preliminary inquiry, according to a TV channel, has suggested that the Sukkur accident took place when nine coaches derailed because of overspeeding and broken tracks.
How much money or effort is needed to ensure that the tracks are safe to run a train on? For long we have been told by successive governments, including the incumbent one, of big plans in the offing to improve the railway infrastructure and passenger service, but nothing has been done. The present government appears to have postponed all investments, even the ones immediately required to keep the trains rolling, in the hope of receiving Chinese investment in the ML-1 project. With the scheme having hit serious snags, it is time for the decision-makers to urgently start looking for other sources of money to repair and upgrade the railway infrastructure to prevent further loss of life.
