Dr. Roshak Wardak on the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan

by Alex Thurston :: Filed Under Middle East / South Asia :: June 2nd, 2009 @ 9:54 am EST

Yesterday Jason and I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Roshak Wardak, a member of Afghanistan’s parliament who is attending the America’s Future Now conference in Washington DC this week. Dr. Wardak will speak later this morning on a panel with Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films and Anand Gopal of the Christian Science Monitor. Following the panel, the same presenters will hold a congressional briefing this afternoon entitled “Rethink Afghanistan: A View from the Ground.”

Our conversation with Dr. Wardak began centered on politics and violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We began by discussing the upcoming presidential elections this August, when Hamid Karzai will face some forty challengers from across Afghanistan, very few of them serious. Dr. Wardak seemed to think an upset of Karzai was possible, but not likely.

When I asked whether the elections would bring an uptick in violence, Dr. Wardak said that much depends on the trajectory of the fighting between Pakistan’s government and the Pakistani Taliban. That conflict, she said, is keeping Taliban forces busy in Pakistan when otherwise they would be continuing to cross the border and reinforce their compatriots in Afghanistan. Dr. Wardak believes in the short term that the Pakistani military will overwhelm the Pakistani Taliban, but warned that the Taliban have enduring appeal in tribal regions, possibly making them a long-term threat. Her greatest fear, she said, is that the Pakistani Taliban would gain control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal - in which case, she believes, nuclear weapons would not be used against India or Israel, but rather against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, she seemed to view the collapse of Pakistan as unlikely, and only foresaw a military coup in the event that the situation in Pakistan began to completely unravel.

Building from the idea that the war in Pakistan is keeping militants out of Afghanistan, Dr. Wardark argued that the solution to violence in Afghanistan would be two fold: use international forces to seal the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and invite the Afghan Taliban into negotiations and, ultimately, the electoral process. Regarding the first point, she decried the tendency of international forces to remain in big cities near big bases, only making occasional forays into rural areas and, in her view, leaving the border essentially unmanned. She believes that international forces in conjunction with Afghan forces could prevent most cross-border movement, crippling Taliban military operations.

Yet Dr. Wardak also believes that international forces should leave Afghanistan in the near future, and she stressed their deep unpopularity among residents of her province and throughout the country. For that reason, she holds that negotiations should take place between the Afghan government and the Taliban. If Taliban leaders are granted safe passage and removed from what she calls the US “blacklist” (which I assumed to mean the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, but could refer to another list), she believes the Taliban would participate in negotiations and, ultimately, participate in multiparty elections. The Taliban are tired of fighting, she says, and though they would not settle for having no say in Afghanistan’s future, they might settle for simply having a seat at the table. This perspective, of course, echoes Karzai’s offer to guarantee Mullah Omar’s safety if he participated in talks.

Above all, talking to Dr. Wardak brought home to me once again how intertwined the situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan are. This point cannot be stressed enough. Dr. Wardak spoke at length on how Pakistan is desperate to keep Afghanistan under duress and desperate to prevent Indian influence in Afghanistan. One of Pakistan’s great fears, she said, is having to cede land to Afghanistan in a border dispute concerning the validity of the Durand Line as a border between the two countries, and so long as Afghanistan remains in chaos the possibility of a border change remains remote. Thinking about the complexity of Pakistan’s interests in and attitudes toward Afghanistan, I concluded once again that America’s “friendship” with Pakistan is bringing us a lot of trouble, and that we are likely deluding ourselves if we believe that Pakistan’s interests and our interests can truly align.

In sum, the conversation with Dr. Wardak confirmed some of my feelings about the situation in Afghanistan and also gave me a lot more to think about. I encourage you to visit Rethink Afghanistan to learn more about her visit to the US and about the war.