When President Barack Obama held a two-day White House summit with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hamid Karzai and Asif Ali Zardari, in early May, he impressed on them the urgency of cooperating to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Reportedly, he also raised the issues of human rights and the rule of law with Karzai.
Two months later, the Pakistani military is engaged in fighting the militants in the tribal areas of South Waziristan. Since the military’s campaign in the picturesque Swat Valley drove out the Taliban, which they had controlled for some time, more than 2 million refugees from Swat have suffered in crowded camps in Pakistan. Now that they have been asked to go home, some of the refugees fear the Taliban might return to Swat and again begin coercing them.
In Afghanistan, the surge of American forces promised by President Obama has resulted in the counterinsurgency strategy in the Southern Helmand province, where the Taliban had been in de facto control of a large part of the province. Under the new strategy, the focus is on staying in areas cleared of the Taliban and providing tangible evidence of better security, enhanced reconstruction and economic development activities, improved governance, and rule of law. A major shortcoming has been inadequate participation by the Afghan forces and civilians in the ongoing struggle.
The region remains fragile. There seems to be no immediate solution to the problems of drugs and corruption in Afghanistan. And in Pakistan, while there is growing resentment against the Taliban — especially when they were controlling areas merely 60 miles from the capital — there still remain some in the Pakistani intelligence agency who are sympathetic to the Taliban. For it is the Pakistani military and the intelligence who had earlier nurtured, perhaps even created the Taliban and used them as proxies — so-called “freedom fighters” in Kashmir.
The Pakistani army’s obsession with India’s superior conventional forces is well known. In my travels last month in New Delhi and parts of North India bordering Pakistan, I repeatedly heard a constant refrain: “Why is the Pakistani army in such large numbers stationed on its eastern border confronting India when the nation’s very existence is being endangered by the Pakistani Taliban who are keen to impose extreme Shari’a law in the country? Why is the U.S. continuing to pour billions in aid to Pakistan, when Pakistanis fervently resent America and what America stands for?”
I was constantly reminded that the American presence is not permitted in the Swati refugee camps, even though most of the aid comes from America.
In New Delhi, the areas of cooperation often mentioned were counterterrorism, trade and defense. President Obama’s criticism of tax incentives that move jobs from Buffalo to Bangalore was often seen as protectionist. How the Obama administration would respond to India’s role as a major player on the international scene — with a greater voice in international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and G8, and a seat on the U.N. Security Council — was also a hot topic.
There is a widely shared belief among Indians that the U.S. has thus far not monitored the use of the aid it has provided to Pakistan and that the country has used some of it to build its nuclear arsenal and to equip its army to confront India.
For the U.S., that region provides a formidable challenge to succeed in stabilizing Afghanistan and Pakistan and an opportunity to build a closer relationship with India.
Ved P. Nanda (vnanda@law.) is director of International Legal Studies at the University of Denver.
