Despite jihadist threat, Pakistan backs Taliban out of “fear of India”

Islamabad’s reaction to the Taliban’s victory in Kabul was the opposite of the dismay displayed by Western capitals. Their triumph showed that the Afghans had “broken the chains of slavery,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Special assistant to head of government Raoof Hasan, meanwhile, considered the fall of Kabul – for many, a moment summed up by images of hundreds of Afghans. running after an american plane, desperately trying to flee – as “a smooth transition of power from the hands of a corrupt Afghan government to that of the Taliban”.

Even more revealing, Pakistani Climate Minister Zartaj Gul Wazir was delighted – in a tweet subsequently deleted – consequences of the change of power in Kabul for the eternal rival of Pakistan: “India receives an appropriate gift for its Independence Day.”

New Delhi’s support for pro-Western Afghan governments, led by Hamid Karzai and then Ashraf Ghani, was condemned by Islamabad, relations between India and Pakistan having been marked by three wars and repeated clashes in the disputed region of Kashmir since the end of British rule in 1947.

“Under Ghani, Afghanistan was seen as particularly close to India, and this of course caused a lot of consternation, as all of Pakistan’s foreign policy is shaped by the fear of being surrounded by India in the east, and by a pro-Indian Afghan government in the west and north, “Farzana Shaikh, Pakistan specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London (Chatham House), told France 24. Therefore, continues the researcher, “Pakistan regards the return of the Taliban as the success of a long-standing policy designed to guarantee a friendly government in Afghanistan.”

>> To read also: “The return of the Taliban to power reshuffles the cards for Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group”

“The bad enemy”

Many analysts and journalists – notably Carlotta Gall, former New York Times correspondent in Afghanistan, in her book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan” (2014) – have accused the Pakistani state of secretly supporting the Taliban, pointing in particular to finger the Directorate for Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI, the largest and most powerful of the three branches of the Pakistani intelligence services, Editor’s note).

US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, himself said: “We may be fighting the wrong enemy in the wrong country”, implying that the real enemies of the United States in the region were in reality the ISI and the Pakistani army.

After 9/11, Pakistan pledged to support the US intervention in Afghanistan, which brought down the Taliban. And Islamabad has repeatedly denied any help to Islamist insurgents.

Interior Minister Rashid Ahmed admitted last June, however, that “Taliban families live here in Pakistan” and “sometimes they come here to hospitals. [sic] for treatment “.

In 2015, Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani president from 2001 to 2008, had for his part declared to the Guardian : “We were obviously looking for groups to counter […] Indian action against Pakistan. This is where intelligence work comes in. Intelligence being in contact with Taliban groups. “

“There is no doubt among academics, officials and those on the ground in Afghanistan that Pakistani intelligence agencies have strongly supported the Taliban since the formation of the movement in the 1990s, that this support has continued. beyond 2001, that the group’s management was based on Pakistani soil, and that this is an important reason for maintaining the Taliban for so many years, “Shashank Joshi, in charge of defense issues, told France 24. at The Economist.

“The United States takes the gloves off with Pakistan”

Concerns persist that Pakistan is playing two ways in the fight against jihadism. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – a Paris-based multilateral organization combating terrorist financing and money laundering – announced in June that it was giving Pakistan four more months to adopt an internationally agreed plan to end the funding of jihadist groups on its territory.

If Islamabad does not comply, the FATF will ask its member states to add the country to its blacklist of nations excluded from global financial institutions, alongside North Korea and Iran.

Long before the FATF report, many observers wondered why recurring allegations of Pakistani support for the Taliban had never triggered US sanctions. “A lot of people remain perplexed by the fact that the United States is taking the gloves off with Pakistan”, underlines Farzana Shaikh.

In Washington, policymakers felt tied hand and foot, explains the researcher: “The most intuitive reason was that the United States needed access to Pakistani territory to get supplies to Afghanistan,” she said. “A more fundamental problem, however, was the fear of the United States of the consequences of the destabilization of a nuclear power like Pakistan, home to dozens of jihadist groups.”

“The two sides of the same coin”

Now, however, analysts believe that the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan is precisely what threatens to destabilize Pakistan.

The arrival in power of the Taliban induces a “risk” for the security of Pakistan, moreover admitted a member of the cabinet of the Pakistani Prime Minister to the Financial Times, on condition of anonymity.

The proximity of Afghan militants to the jihadist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (the TTP, French Taliban Movement of Pakistan) is of particular concern. The TTP has carried out dozens of deadly attacks since its inception in the 2000s, including the infamous Peshawar school massacre in 2014.

The Taliban and the TTP are “two sides of the same coin,” Pakistani army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI boss Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed acknowledged in a statement. meeting in July. In early August, the Taliban reportedly released a senior TTP commander as they advanced through Afghanistan.

“Pakistan is indeed worried about the galvanizing effects that the victory of the Taliban will have on other Islamist militants, and in particular on the TTP, whose rise in power was already notable before the entry of the Taliban in Kabul”, Michael Kugelman, South Asia expert at the Wilson Center in Washington, told France 24.

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Pakistani army “will not budge”

In trying to contain the damage caused by their withdrawal, and as Afghan cities fell one by one, the United States repeatedly warned the Taliban that it would be considered an outcast within the international community if it took full control of the country. An approach that Washington had already tried in the 1990s and which had not however diminished the hold of the Taliban on Afghanistan, Pakistan acting as the key ally of the fundamentalist Islamist movement.

Today, US-Pakistani relations are at an all-time low and do not allow the United States to enlist Islamabad in its plans to isolate the Taliban. Since his arrival at the White House last January, US President Joe Biden has never met with the Pakistani Prime Minister.

For his part, Imran Khan told reporters last week that the United States sees Pakistan as useful “only to repair the damage” it is leaving behind in Afghanistan. “The Americans have decided that India is now their strategic partner, and I think that is the reason why they are treating Pakistan differently now,” he said.

For its part, Islamabad now sees China as its strategic partner. This is evidenced by the intensification of the flow of arms and the economic investments of the communist superpower in Pakistan.

“With the support of China, Pakistan feels encouraged to resist what it sees as Western intimidation”, analyzes Farzana Shaikh.

Even if the Taliban’s rise to power over Afghanistan were to lead to a jihadist backlash for Pakistan, Islamabad is unlikely to heed the West’s calls to turn against Afghan extremists, continues the specialist. “The Pakistani military has actually ruled the country for most of its history, and it will not budge from what it sees as Pakistan’s national interest, regardless of the collateral damage.”

Adapted from English by Pauline Rouquette, find the original version here.