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Feature: Post-Taliban Era Troubles Pakistan Politically, But Might Boost Economy
Additional Reporting by IOL Correspondent in Pakistan, Aamir Latif
ISLAMABAD, Nov. 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - As Afghanistan sorts out its post-Taliban future, Pakistan is facing the unprecedented prospect of losing all political clout in a neighbor crucial to its security and stability.
Islamabad has been navigating difficult diplomatic waters since the United States made Afghanistan's Taliban regime a prime target of its war on terrorism seven weeks ago, said Agence France-Presse (AFP). Pakistan, the last country to back the Taliban, signed up to the U. S. campaign and ended up assisting in the collapse of an erstwhile close ally it helped install in Kabul five years ago.
The taking of the capital by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of mostly minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, puts Pakistan in a difficult position on two counts.
On the one hand, it puts a hostile group in power just next door, with the potential to create unrest along Pakistan's western border or, even worse, team up with Pakistan's arch-enemy, India. Conversely, the fall of the mostly-Pashtun Taliban has created feelings of bitterness and betrayal among ethnic Pashtuns, who dominate Afghanistan as well as the frontier tribal areas of Pakistan.
"Pakistan's policy and its obsession to install political favorites in power in Kabul lies in shambles," said foreign policy analyst Mushahid Hussain, a former information minister in Islamabad.
The challenge before Pakistan now is to placate the divided and angered Pashtuns in Afghanistan and ensure representation for them in a proposed broad-based government. But analysts say that Pakistan, with its history of supporting the Taliban, has little leverage going into Tuesday's multi-party meeting in Bonn, Germany, to launch the process of constituting a successor government.
"On the one hand, we help the Americans to oust the Taliban and in the same breath we crib and cry that Taliban opponents, the Northern Alliance, are in power," Hussain said. "You cannot have it both ways. Pakistan should accept whoever takes over Kabul."
For M. A. Niazi, a prominent Pakistani political commentator, Pakistan is in a no-win situation.
"We have earned the undying hostility of any government in Kabul no matter to which party it belongs," Niazi said. "There are pro-Taliban Pashtuns, but no longer pro-Pakistan Pashtuns."
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf took an acknowledged gamble when he risked the ire of the Islamic community in the country to help the U.S. launch military operations against a Muslim neighbor. The dare paid off in short-term economic assistance from Washington and the international credibility the Musharraf regime had sought since taking power in a military coup in 1999.
But analysts in Islamabad wonder whether Pakistan's U.S. connection will hold up in the long term.
Khalid Mahmood, of Islamabad's Institute of Regional Studies, said Pakistan had gained nothing politically by siding with the U. S.-led international coalition.
"The Americans have done nothing to rein in the Northern Alliance, which is now claiming to be a legitimate government and has an unfriendly record against Pakistan," Mahmood said. "Pakistan apparently has been let down on this account."
Islamabad has a lot to fear from a government dominated by the Northern Alliance, which contains many of the same
mujahedin who ruled in Kabul from 1992 to 1996 and caused chaos with non-stop factional fighting. Such instability could easily spill over the border and send a stream of refugees again fleeing into Pakistan.
But the main factor in Islamabad's Afghan calculations is India.
"From its security point of view, it is all the more important for Pakistan to have a friendly regime in Afghanistan because it has a hostile neighbor on its eastern border," Mahmood said.
So far in the last 50 years, Pakistan has never deployed any troops on its western borders, but if an unfriendly regime takes over power in Kabul, Pakistan will be forced to redeploy its troops.
Newspapers and commentators have used words such as "catastrophic" and a "nightmare" to describe the sight of Northern Alliance troops in Kabul. They are urging the Pakistani government to rethink its approach to regional politics.
"In the aftermath of the Taliban demise, said Niazi, "there is need for a serious soul-searching exercise to determine which of our policies and which of our national aspirations are sustainable."
However, economically the rebuilding of Afghanistan by the international coalition would provide many opportunities for Pakistan to strengthen its economy in the coming years, the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Dr. Ishrat Hussain, told IslamOnline's correspondent in Karachi.
Hussain said that foreign loans amounting to two and a half to three billion dollars are needed to bridge the country's current financing gap.
He added that the government's decision to join the international coalition against terrorism, and current economic policies would yield positive results within the next few years in the form of a sustainable and permanent solution to the country's debt problem.
He said the SBP had delineated a comprehensive policy to get rid of borrowing more foreign loans after the next three years.
"Of course, foreign loans are not [a] solution to our economic problems, but we do not have adequate funds for payments to the international donor agencies for next three years. Therefore, we have to borrow foreign loans," the SBP governor said.
Ishrat said the SPB was trying to obtain soft loans with a much lower interest rate.
"We have recently received the first trench of [a] $300 million loan from the World Bank, which is a soft loan, with zero per cent interest rate, and we have to pay it off within next 35 years," added Ishrat. "Our emphasis is to get grants and debt relief instead of new loans."
The SBP governor observed that Pakistan was going to get a chance to strengthen its economy with the commencement of the rebuilding process in war-wracked Afghanistan by the international coalition.
"Pakistan's proximity to Afghanistan can provide much more adequate facilities to the countries to be involved in the rebuilding process," Ishrat said. He added, "If they [the international coalition] hire contractors from USA and European countries, it would cost them four to five per cent [more] than [if they used] Pakistan."
In answer to another query, the SBP governor said that several export orders worth $18 million had been cancelled by different countries since Sept. 11, but, he added, the bank was negotiating to get them restored.
"Being a front-line state in the war against terrorism, we have to face these problems," added Ishrat, "but I am sure this is a transitional period and will be over soon".
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