have long been obstacles to peace in Afghanistan, according to Khalilzad. That’s why he said Pakistan “has to tell the Taliban that if they don’t enter a peace process, they will not be allowed to operate from Pakistan.” Chaudhry, who also participated in that Atlantic Council discussion, argued that Pakistan is perennially used as a scapegoat for Afghanistan’s problems. “To say that Pakistan is responsible for everything is over-simplistic, and if you keep doing that I think you are barking [up] the wrong tree and will not be able to get to a solution.” He warned that in the long run, there is no military solution to Afghanistan’s many problems. “If there were one, it would have come when NATO forces were at their peak,” he said. “But after 15 years of huge military and economic investments by the United States and their partners, there’s not much to show. We believe we should not rely solely on the military option. The political track also has to be nudged forward. Unfortunately, it has not been satisfactory.” Efforts by Pakistan to get the Taliban leadership to sit together with Afghanistan’s legitimately elected government and “come up with some kind of politically negotiated pace” began in earnest in 2015 — yet a string of political assassinations and U.S. drone strikes caused the collapse of those talks, and the insurgency has only grown since then. “We are waiting for the new [Trump] administration to announce the outcome of its review,” said Chaudhry. “Based on that, we would like to engage with the U.S., which we still believe is the main player and has invested huge stakes in Afghanistan’s peace.” Trump has given Defense Secretary James Mattis wide-ranging authority to come up with a new strategy for Afghanistan, with Mattis reportedly considering sending an additional 4,000 troops to the country (also see story on page 10). But the president has yet to articulate a clear
Pakistan at a glance Independence: Aug. 14, 1947 (from british india) Location Southern Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea, between india on the east and iran and Afghanistan on the west and China in the north National flag of Pakistan
Capital islamabad Population 201.9 million (July 2016 estimate) Ethnic groups Punjabi 44.7 percent, Pashtun (Pathan) 15.4 percent, Sindhi 14.1 percent, Sariaki 8.4 percent, Muhajirs 7.6 percent, balochi 3.6 percent, other 6.3 percent GDP (purchasing power parity) $988.2 billion (2016 estimate)
GDP per-capita (PPP) $5,100 (2016 estimate)
vision for Afghanistan — or Pakistan, for that matter — focusing instead on defeating the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. currently has no ambassador in either Afghanistan or Pakistan, and it remains to be seen when the posts might be filled, given how slow Trump has been to fill government vacancies and the looming budget cuts to the State Department. That has left Af-Pak watchers eagerly awaiting Mattis’s review, which is due later this month. “Officials said the Afghan review has been broadened to include the policy toward neighboring Pakistan, particularly the question of how to prevent that country from being a haven for the Taliban and militants involved in the Afghan conflict,” wrote Michael R. Gordon in a June 13 New York Times article. “That in turn has led to a discussion within the administration about what steps might be taken to mitigate Pakistan’s decades-long anxieties over India. The result is that the Afghan review has turned into a larger review of American policy toward Southwest Asia.”
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GDP growth 4.7 percent (2016 estimate) Unemployment 6.1 percent (2016 estimate) Population below poverty line 29.5 percent (2013 estimate)
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PAKiSTAn’S role in AfghAniSTAn In the meantime, with diplomats in limbo over the president’s unformulated policies, Chaudhry is stressing that Pakistan stands ready to work with Afghanistan to stabilize the region. The first step is continued negotiations. “We should not rely solely on a military solution,” he said in his USIP speech. “Force is important, but wars are not the answer. In this day and age, we should have more faith in negotiations.” Chaudhry said Islamabad and Kabul need to “talk at all levels, leadership to leadership, politicians to politicians, diplomats to diplomats, military to military and intel to intel. All approaches are simultaneously required to bring our two governments together in a mode to coordinate with each other for the common good.” Those talks should include border management, or more specifically, regulating the movement of legitimate, bona fide travelers.
“People crossing in large numbers without any passports or documentation whatsoever has not helped. Pakistan complains that bad guys come from Afghanistan and create mischief and terrorism on the Pakistani side, and Afghanistan says the same thing,” the ambassador told his audience. “In order to eliminate cross-border movement of terrorists, it is extremely important that we have a managed border between our two countries. It is as important for them as it is for us.” More controversially, Chaudhry defends his government’s decision to expel all Afghan refugees in Pakistan, some 3 million of whom have fled to Pakistan since the 1980 Soviet invasion of their homeland. “In many countries, even 1 million refugees is a big issue,” he said. “For 15 years, billions of dollars of economic investment was made in Afghanistan, but never to create conducive conditions for people to go back.” Ultimate responsibility for stabilizing Afghanistan, he argues, lies with Kabul, not Islamabad. “We believe that whatever works, we are ready to work with that. But at the end of the day, it has to be the Afghan government,” Chaudhry said. “Pakistan, the U.S. and China can only play a facilitative role. We can push the Taliban and the Haqqanis, but efforts have to be made to create conditions which would facilitate a negotiated peace in Afghanistan so that the U.S. — which has invested so much for so long in that country — is also able to leave with the peace of mind that it has stabilized Afghanistan.”
doMeSTiC WoeS Beyond Afghanistan, however, Pakistan has plenty of its own internal problems to worry about. Poverty and corruption are endemic. The Panama Papers leak ensnared Prime Minister Sharif, leading to investigations about his See Pakis Tan • PAge 20
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THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | JuLY 2017 | 15