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Pakistan plays long game in Afghan peace drive

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

By Michael Georgy

An Afghan assembly touted by President Hamid Karzai as a homse-grown peace initiative is unlikely to produce a blueprint for reconciliation because the drafters do not include regional power Pakistan’s Taliban clients.

Heavyweights such as Pakistan’s key militant asset, the Haqqani group, are not attending the June 2-4 “jirga”, although Taliban sympathisers may take part.

Islamabad sees the powerful anti-American network as leverage against the influence of rival India in Afghanistan, and is unlikely to help broker peace as long as leader Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sarajuddin are excluded from the process.

Islamabad is playing the long game, hoping to persuade both Karzai and the White House that peace will not be possible without the participation of the al Qaeda-backed Haqqani network, the most potent force in Afghanistan, analysts say.

“Pakistan is hedging its bets that sooner or later ‘if we can hold out on the Haqqani factor’, the U.S. will be ready to include the Haqqani faction on the peace train,” said Simbal Khan, Director of Eurasian Studies at Pakistan’s Institute of Strategic Studies.

But there is little chance the White House will change its position anytime soon and it would prefer to see the Haqqanis dead.

The U.S. is pushing Islamabad to dismantle Haqqani’s network in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, but Islamabad is resisting because members of its powerful security establishment says that could trigger a full-scale tribal revolt that would be catastrophic for the country.

A history of ties and influence may not translate into control of Haqqani’s seasoned fighters, who could easily turn on Pakistan’s forces, and call on extra support from thousands of Pashtun tribesmen along the forbidding border with Afghanistan.

Government troops are already exhausted from drawn-out efforts to contain home-grown Taliban, and can ill-afford to open another front.

“The Pakistanis are very pragmatically aware that it would be a difficult task for (the Pakistani military),” said Khan. “We would have to take them on for 15 to 20 years.”

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