From allies to adversaries: Pakistan’s uneasy reckoning with Afghanistan
Editor’s note: Lieutenant General Asad Ahmed Durrani is a retired three-star general of the Pakistan Army. He previously served as Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Director General of Military Intelligence. He is currently active as a commentator, speaker, and author. The article reflects the author’s personal views and does not necessarily represent the position of News.Az.
Afghans ruled over the subcontinent for hundreds of years. Dr. Mahmood Ghazi, a historian and a federal minister in the Musharraf era, used to tell us that often, when in trouble, the Muslims of undivided India sought help from Kabul. In both our major wars against the arch-rival, 1965 and 1971, King Zahir Shah asked us to move all our military forces to the eastern borders and ensured calm on the western.
Even a bigger favor they did us was chasing away from our neighborhood the two powerful militaries of the time, the Soviet and the American. We had our own reasons to provide whatever support we could. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, millions of them sought refuge in neighboring countries. We got the lion’s share for reasons of geography and tribes straddling the borders. The state of Pakistan was now confronted with a whole range of challenges.
While the Zia-led government was struggling to cope with this cataclysmic development — aptly described as Pakistan with an unfriendly India in the east and now an India-friendly superpower in the west, having fallen into the jaws of a nutcracker — we had a humanitarian crisis on our hands. Some of us must have seen the arrival of a large number of displaced people as a God-sent opportunity to fulfill a religious injunction, but for the state of Pakistan it had some serious logistical, financial, and political dimensions.
Moreover, there were no immediate prospects of any foreign assistance to help us take care of this calamity. Initially, the refugees were accommodated through some ad hoc measures — and, of course, by the traditional hospitality of our masses. Eventually, as a consequence of the position we took, helping the Afghan resistance which was supported by the world at large, we received considerable aid; also for the migrants. The problem was that the enterprising and proud Afghans were not content with the meager dole that was dished out in the refugee camps. That also suited us.
A few of the locals hired them to work on their lands and they took off to more lucrative destinations in the Gulf. Many of our wastelands were turned into greener pastures. I recall a few barren patches west of Hangu growing orchards. Even a Baloch landowner, when asked if he was worried about the ethnic balance tilting in favor of the Pashtuns, simply said that the Afghan expertise in arid-area agriculture was very helpful.
As brigade commander in Kohat, which had probably the largest refugee camp in the vicinity, we often used Afghan labor (though discouraged by higher headquarters) because it was more productive. I also learned about an expert on sports medicine who had a good practice in Kabul and was now advising his Pakistani hosts what exercise bicycle would work for them. My old Grundig radio had to be sent to Wana because only an Afghan there knew how to put it back in operation.
Then there was an article in a local paper highlighting Afghan culinary habits. Some of them could afford just one meal a day but ensured that it had a balance of bread, meat, salad, and fruit. The late Arif Bangash was then our GOC and, being from the area, had a soft corner for the Kohatis. He still could not help admiring the spirit of the immigrants whenever they had a dispute with the locals. A young refugee was overrun by a motorist who admitted it was his fault, but the victim’s relatives refused to pursue the matter since they were “guests” in this country.
The local policeman, however, was not impressed by their special status and added import duty to his usual rate when providing them with protection. Obviously, some of their hosts were not too happy as they were losing business to Afghans who were providing better and more reliable services. First preference when moving our household on posting to another station was an Afghan truck.
Most of them, including women and children, worked, at times merely scraping the bottom of the barrel. In our case, one earning hand had to feed a dozen mouths. I was once in Chakwal in the heartland of the Salt Range and asked the locals if they had any problems with the new Afghan habitation in their area. They were full of praise for the moral codes practiced by these aliens. Yes, anywhere else this large a number of immigrants would have given rise to crime and prostitution dens. Jealousy toward immigrants is a global phenomenon.
Many countries in the Middle East grudged the brighter Palestinians who, imbued with migratory zeal, outshone the sedentary locals, who were becoming couch potatoes as the black gold started oozing out of the earth and petrodollars rained from the sky. Paradoxically, when one generation of migrants, having worked hard and created a niche in the host society, gets settled, it feels threatened by the next wave of foreign arrivals. Most of us, descendants of refugees, had yet another reason to get rid of these invaders.
As long as there was some aid trickling in for them, many state organs could take their cut. Even when it ceased, they could still be fleeced and had to work harder to keep some extra money in their pocket to feed our greedy watchdogs. It reminds me of advice given to anyone who had to walk the streets of Chicago at night: “must keep enough cash on you otherwise the mugger could become violent; his time and effort must be amply rewarded.”
By now we all know about their resilience when defending their homeland, but that they are also talented students and sportsmen may not be common knowledge. They learned cricket as refugees in Pakistan and are now a potential threat to all the big names in the game. Among the many dividends that these traits brought to the Afghans, some collateral costs were inevitable. Driven by greed, a good number of aboriginals started eyeing their businesses. Quite a few of them were chased away with the help of our (so-called) law enforcement agencies to confiscate their properties or force them to sell these at throwaway prices. A man I often called over for help at home was one of them. As the DA in Germany, I was also accredited to Holland.
My British counterpart there, in the best of diplomatic norms, often pampered me that the Pakistanis in the UK had done so well that the other communities were envious of them. I had no reason to argue with him, but during the last over a quarter of a century I have seen many of my compatriots, especially from our traditional recruiting areas — northern Punjab and the flatlands of the former NWFP — acutely suffering from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Afghans who successfully resisted our colonial and post-colonial masters. After NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Afghan refugees were scapegoated for all our ills.
A year after the foreign forces left the region, we found an opportunity to fulfill our long-held desires. It was not very clear to me why our establishment, while the country was reeling under political and economic pressures, opened another front, one against Afghanistan: regardless of the causes, it delivered a serious blow to years-long investment in our western neighbor and upended a regional policy for which some good people had worked long and hard.
It started with the expulsion of refugees; hundreds of thousands allegedly “unregistered.” In a country where some locals got themselves registered as refugees to partake in the largesse received from home and abroad and many foreigners had procured Pakistani ID cards, it was obviously a ruse. Watching a mass of humanity moving through the wired corridors toward a country most of them had never known, and which had barely survived four decades of internal and external conflict, was heart-wrenching.
One could read anger writ large on some faces. A few seemed determined to return not as asylum seekers but with an army led by a modern-day Abdali. The most unforgettable was the sight of a child secured with ropes on top of a truck waving farewell to Pakistan. No gain appealing on humanitarian or religious grounds to people who by now had usurped the properties built upon the sweat and blood of the hardworking migrants, and indeed to those who had fulfilled their lust for Schadenfreude. More insanity was to follow.
A decade back, a massive military operation had driven thousands of militants, members of the TTP, into Afghanistan. They became part of the Afghan resistance against the foreign occupation. Once it ended, they resumed their old mission: taking revenge on the state of Pakistan for what they perceived as an unjust war imposed on the tribal areas. We now had many options: reconcile with some of them; take military action against others who had started attacking our assets; or hit them in their sanctuaries in Afghanistan. We probably tried a combination but also asked the regime in Kabul to round them up and hand them over to us.
I was reminded of what we used to tell the occupation forces in Afghanistan who demanded the same from us: “it was physically impossible; your enemies were not ours; we had enough of our own troubles and have no intent to add one more; our people are sympathetic to your nemesis; and since you have a potent military machine, deal with any group that goes across.” The Taliban had one more reason not to oblige. TTP had backed them in their war of liberation and the Afghans were bound by their traditions not to forcibly evict them.
This is but only one set of narratives. One of many others seems to have led to the war now waging on our western front. Some of its consequences were inevitable. VP Malik, a former Indian Army chief though long retired, remains an honest man: “Pakistan provided us the opportunity to gang up with our neighbor’s neighbor, and we were not going to let it go. Our media warriors indeed, as per the SOP, went all guns blazing in service of the state.”
Many other matters — like how one conducts COIN, the Afghan non-recognition of Pakistan for all the two weeks at its birth, and that of the Durand Line as an international border — have been debated for over seven decades. Right now, we have guns to our east and guns to our west — and bombs from within. Charging like the Light Brigade is one option — staggering the fight is another.
(If you possess specialized knowledge and wish to contribute, please reach out to us at opinions@news.az).
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