Strategic pact with India not against Pakistan: Karzai

Afghan President Hamid Karzai went out of his way on Wednesday to reassure Pakistan that it was not the target of the strategic partnership signed with India yesterday, but went on to add that in the wake of the killing of former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani he had decided to call off the peace talks with the Taliban and would direct them at Islamabad instead.

Delivering the third R K Mishra memorial lecture organised by the Observer Research Foundation, Karzai spoke eloquently and without notes on his vision for his country and South Asia, on the damage that terrorism wrought on the fabric of a nation and how he had changed his “attitude and rhetoric” against Pakistan when he saw how it also suffered from the same menace.

“Pakistan is a twin brother, but India is a great friend. This agreement is not against my brother. This is to strengthen Afghanistan, to train our army, our police. If Pakistan and other neighbours want to offer similar training, we are happy to accept…both India and Afghanistan do not intend to use this beyond our two countries,” Karzai said, in answer to a question at the end of the lecture.

The Afghan president’s response was clearly intended to assuage concerns across the Durand Line, especially at the Pakistan army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi which believes it has a direct stake in the approaching endgame when US forces withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

But both Indian and Afghan sources confirmed that Kabul’s request to Delhi to train and equip the Afghan army and police had been in the pipeline at least since February this year. But as the situation grew increasingly unstable in the Af-Pak region, alongside US preparations to withdraw as well as a weakening polity inside Pakistan, Kabul began to look increasingly towards Delhi for help.

When Rabbani was assassinated on September 24 by a suicide bomber claiming to be a peace messenger from the Taliban — the bomb was hidden in his turban — the Afghans gave the green signal to India, the sources said.

“The Afghans had hesitated to sign the agreement when the PM had gone to Kabul some months ago, although it had been fully ready. It was pulled out at the last minute. But after Rabbani’s assassination, the Afghans told us they were ready to go ahead,” an Indian official confirmed.

Karzai, himself, spoke calmly, but seemed aware that his country had reached a turning point in the war against terror. As the country built schools, village health centres, mosques and community areas, the terrorists killed doctors, teachers, the ulema, community leaders and thousands of civilians, he said.

“Till 2006, I was highly vocal in condemning terrorism across the border,” Karzai said, “but when I saw that Pakistanis were also suffering I began to change my attitude and rhetoric. I am sure that no government in Afghansitan, since the creation of Pakistan 62 years ago, has been engaged as extensively as me in launching a peace process with the Taliban and with my brothers in Pakistan,” he added.

Clearly, if Karzai seemed ready to give the people of Pakistan the benefit of the doubt, he wasn’t ready to name the Pakistan army for using the Haqqani terrorist network as its proxy to destabilise Afghanistan. However, he was ready to allude to them.

“We have decided not to talk to the Taliban, because we don’t know their address. We don’t know where to find them. But we have decided to talk to our brothers in Pakistan,” Karzai said.

Time and again, the Afghan president invoked the need for all countries in South Asia to live in harmony, pointing out that Europe was the model, which despite its wars had decided to come together in a union without borders.

“Afghanistan’s grapes should reach Delhi and other parts of South Asia not by plane but in an Afghan truck,” Karzai said, referring to the trade and transit agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan which doesn’t allow Afghan trucks to carry back Indian goods through Pakistani territory.

But the Afghan president also indicated that India and Pakistan should try and resolve their problems sooner than later, as Afghanistan “had no option but to be the best of friends with all its neighbours”.

He hoped that the Indian leadership would continue to reach out leaders in Pakistan, just as former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of the BJP and current PM Manmohan Singh sought to do.

Analysts pointed out that Karzai on this visit to India was a much changed person than the last time he was here several years ago.

“Then he was still balancing India with Pakistan, because he realised that he needed them. But now, after so many of his closest advisers have been eliminated, he realises that although Pakistan may still hold the key to stability in the region, there is a democracy like India which can come to Afghanistan’s aid in so many sectors,” an Indian official said.