Encircling the Taliban

THE DIABOLICAL TALIBAN may have now suffered an almost irreversible isolation except for a singular jarring note of indirect support from Pakistan. As the notoriously barbaric `rulers' of Afghanistan, a failed state that borders Pakistan, the Taliban regime has found itself in the dock since September 11 when America came under a cataclysmic terrorist offensive. With the United States losing no time to call upon the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect who is also its honoured ``guest'', the fanatical `government' in Kabul could not have asked for more trouble. As on September 11, the Taliban was recognised by only three Islamic countries. However, with Saudi Arabia now joining the United Arab Emirates in snapping diplomatic links with the Taliban, the renegade Afghan regime's residual lifeline of sorts is the one that Pakistan might choose to sustain or snuff out in a rapidly changing international environment. The traditional cross-currents within the Islamic bloc have had much to do with the Taliban's diplomatic alienation from 1996 when it captured power in Kabul, the Afghan capital ravaged by external interventions and internecine wars. Now, it is plain logic that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have broken ranks with the Taliban in the specific context of America's newly internationalised concerns. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the larger international community will shed any tears over the Taliban's downfall if that were to happen as a consequence of the current U.S. efforts to track down Osama bin Laden. Yet, if Pakistan appears to have sounded a discordant note, the U.S. may indeed find that it has something to mull over.

Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdul Sattar, is of the view that any external support for the anti-Taliban factions within Afghanistan might only prove to be a recipe for disaster in that impoverished country at this critical juncture. His warning of this kind is being interpreted in the West as the sign of a possible rift in the nascent strategic understanding which the U.S. reached with Pakistan in the context of the terrorist outrage of September 11 and the American efforts to avenge it. In one sense, the international community's suspicions regarding Islamabad's benevolent links with the Taliban have virtually been confirmed by the circumstances in which Pakistan joined hands with the U.S. prior to Mr. Sattar's latest warning. Now, it is obvious that Islamabad, which is increasingly befriended by the many allies of the U.S., wants to ensure that no regime inimical to Pakistan's interests comes to power in Kabul in the context of any U.S.-inspired destabilisation of the Taliban. This certainly is of much strategic salience to Pakistan which is still not sure about how a U.S.-India equation might evolve in line with Washington's pledges of a truly international campaign against universal terrorism.

In all, Pakistan still draws the distinction between a campaign to trace the trail of Osama bin Laden as a suspect and an all-out strike against the Taliban. This may have dismayed large sections of the international community. But the U.S. seems to keep its options open at this stage about any move to dislodge the Taliban. This may not be due to the apparent differences between Pakistan and the U.S. over the Taliban's culpability. More important is America's new refrain about an aversion to ``nation- building'' (the search for an alternative to the Taliban in this case). This certainly has nothing to do with the dubious claims of the Afghans about having defeated the Soviet superpower on their own. Yet, if the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance seems to be the only relevant existing alternative to the Taliban within the Afghan spectrum, a note of caution will be in order. The Alliance, made up mostly of Afghan minorities, should first be seen to live up to the pan-Afghan credentials of its recently assassinated leader, Ahmad Shah Masood.

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Section  : Opinion
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