Last month I had the opportunity of listening to an American scholar on the Afghanistan situation and its impact on Pakistan-US relations at a gathering in Lahore. It was shocking to hear this US expert on Afghanistan dilating on the necessity of bludgeoning the Taliban in Afghanistan into submission and imposing a military solution on Afghanistan. The talk basically presented the case for the usual American demand on Pakistan and its leadership to virtually declare a war on our own tribesmen in FATA in support of the US military misadventure in Afghanistan. It also betrayed gross ignorance of the history and cultural traditions of the Afghans and the ground realities in Afghanistan. Fortunately, as I was able to see for myself during my recent visit to the US, there are saner voices also in that country counseling caution to the American leadership and calling for a negotiated political settlement in the interest of peace and stability in Afghanistan and overcoming the scourge of terrorism. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the refusal by the Taliban to expel Al Qaeda from Afghanistan provided a justification for the US invasion leading to the overthrow of the Taliban government with the help of the Northern Alliance. The regime which substituted the Taliban subsequent to the Bonn agreement was dominated by the elements of the Northern Alliance or non-Pashtuns at the expense of the Taliban who were overwhelmingly Pashtuns. Thus, the US in its legitimate quest for defeating Al Qaeda unwittingly became embroiled in the civil war which had been going on in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1989. The discontent of Pashtuns with the Americans fuelled the fire of the Taliban insurgency. Initially it was the US expectation that its military superiority would enable it to vanquish the Taliban insurgency and stabilize the political dispensation that it had imposed on Afghanistan. However, it became clear with the passage of time that the US calculations were not well-founded. The Taliban with the support of the Pashtun tribes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border proved to be too tenacious to be defeated easily. As the war raged on, it was predictable that sooner or later the Pashtun tribesmen on the Pakistani side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border would be sucked into the armed conflict in Afghanistan because of their tribal links with their Pashtun brethren on the other side of the border. This is precisely what happened. The US policymakers, faced with the intensification of the Taliban/Pashtun insurgency, exerted pressure on the Pakistan government to stop the Pakistani tribesmen from supporting the Taliban/Pashtuns fighting the war against the coalition forces in Afghanistan. The Pakistan governments decision to oblige the Americans caused these tribesmen, who felt that they had been stabbed in the back by Islamabd at the behest of a foreign power, to direct their fury against military and civilian targets in the settled areas in Pakistan. Thus, while the US succeeded to some extent in lightening the burden of the coalition forces fighting the Taliban/Pashtun insurgency, Pakistan in the process was badly destabilized and its economy suffered a serious setback. Despite the increase in the US forces in Afghanistan and the continued US pressure on Pakistan to do more, there is no sign of an end to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Faced with the failure of its efforts to quell the Taliban insurgency so far, the US leaderships first inclination is to put the whole blame on Pakistan and its army instead of realizing the fundamental flaws in the US Afghanistan policy. In a nutshell, the post-9/11 American strategy ignored the lessons of the Afghan history and the compulsions of its conservative, ethnic and tribal social structure. While the declared US objective was to defeat Al Qaeda, in practice it expanded its aim to impose a government of its own choice on the Afghan people. This flew in the face of the experience of the past two hundred years of the Afghan history in which attempts by foreign powers to occupy or establish puppet governments in Afghanistan had failed miserably. This was the net result of the British efforts to subjugate Afghanistan in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was also the Soviet experience following their invasion of Afghanistan in December, 1979. Secondly, the US desire to establish a liberal political set-up in Afghanistan does not adequately take into account the extreme conservative character of the Afghan society. Again, the Afghan history tells us that the past attempts to bring about revolutionary changes in Afghanistan such as those by King Amanullah did not succeed. An evolutionary approach instead has greater chances of success. Thirdly, the US strategy ignores the implications of the ethnic and tribal divisions in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the first loyalty of a person lies to his tribe followed by the ethnic community to which he belongs. US policymakers should have foreseen the consequences of their attempt to crush the Taliban militarily in the form of a revolt by the Afghan pashtuns. The Taliban despite their retrogressive ideology are an important part of the Afghan political scenery and cannot be ignored in any political settlement in Afghanistan. Fourthly, the Afghan history of the 1990s underlines the importance of securing the support of Afghanistans neighbours, particularly Pakistan and Iran whose vital security interests are at stake, in any plan to restore peace and stability in that country. Right now, the US policy essentially consists of exerting crude pressure on Pakistan irrespective of its consequences for Islamabad. As for Iran, the US does not even have normal diplomatic relations with Tehran. To sum up, national reconciliation and a broad-based government in Afghanistan in which the various ethnic communities and important political groups including the Taliban and the Northern Alliance have their due share in power are indispensable conditions for durable peace in Afghanistan. Fortunately, there are some signs of rethinking in the US on its policy towards Afghanistan. President Obamas December 2010 policy review emphasized that the US will support a durable and favorable political resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan. Later, on 18 February Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an address at the Asia Society announced the US decision to support responsible, Afghan-led reconciliation that brings the conflict to a peaceful conclusion, and to actively engage with states in the region and the international community to advance that process. Significantly, while repeating the US administrations red lines for reconciliation (the Taliban must renounce violence, must reject Al Qaeda and abide by the Afghan constitution), she said that they were necessary outcomes of any negotiation rather than preconditions for talks. More recently, a new study prepared by an 18-member task force of well-known experts and issued by the Century Foundation in New York has stressed that the political process for national reconciliation and a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan must start now. The talks for such a negotiated settlement, which must commence without any preconditions, should include the Taliban and should aim at establishing a political order broadly acceptable to the Afghans. These developments are in the right direction and need to be encouraged by the international community, especially by Afghanistans neighbours. Against this background, the decision taken by Prime Minister Gilani and President Karzai in Kabul on 16 April to upgrade the Pakistan-Afghanistan joint commission for facilitating and promoting reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan must be welcomed. What remains to be seen is whether the Afghan parties will take advantage of these promising developments to advance the cause of reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan. n The writer is a retired ambassador. E-mail: javid.husain@gmail.com