Check out my latest blog post as ForeignPolicy.com’s AfPakChannel.  Here’s the bottom line:

“The Kayani extension provides a short-term ceasefire between the PPP and the army, but it will also likely produce re-alignments among its fractious power brokers. And another head-on clash between any two of them is not far from reality.”

Here’s my latest, an oped in the Christian Science Monitor.  I will try to discuss the topic more expansively in a blog post here.  Stay tuned.  My apologies for the extended absence.  I’ve been busy.

“Nearly six months into the United States surge in Afghanistan and six months prior to the White House’s review of the Afghan war strategy, it’s clear our mission in Afghanistan is not only failing, but beyond repair.

Only a political solution can bring lasting peace to Afghanistan and extract the US from this messy conflict. And given Washington’s bleak military predicament, it must begin to give precedence to a political reconciliation process with the senior Taliban leadership now, rather than next year…”

Read the rest here.

My latest blog post, a ForeignPolicy.com, is available here.

An excerpt is below:

“Next week, senior U.S. and Pakistani officials will meet in Washington for the first ever strategic dialogue between the two countries. The Pakistani delegation will be led by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but make no mistake: at least when it comes to the Pakistani side, this will be the Gen. Ashfaq Kayani show….”

The New York Times reveals this evening that the Afghan Taliban’s second-in-command, Mullah Baradar, was arrested in Karachi on Thursday in a joint raid by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.  The move is clear demonstration that the Pakistan Army, under the command of Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has a more flexible approach toward Afghanistan, guided by the realization that it has permanent interests, not permanent allies in its neighbor to the northwest.

In a recent briefing to foreign correspondents, Kayani said that Pakistan seeks a friendly government, stability, and ”strategic depth” (meaning, at the very least, that Kabul is not allied with New Delhi) in Afghanistan.  The Pakistan Army is willing to play by more conventional rules and begin to engage so-called good actors to secure these goals in Afghanistan.  Toward this, Kayani offered to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.  Having denied India a strategic pivot into Central Asia and northwestern/western Pakistan via Afghanistan (note India’s minimal role in the London talks and absence from the Istanbul talks), the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment feels more secure to broaden its ties in Afghanistan and engage the current Afghan leadership.

In addition to having been provided an opportunity to diversify its contacts in Afghanistan, the Pakistan Army likely also feels a need to do so.  In my previous post, I speculated that Kayani’s overtures to the Karzai government possibly contained the following “implicit message” to the Afghan Taliban: “you are not our only option, so don’t take us for granted.”  And so the arrest of Baradar is perhaps part of an attempt by the Pakistan Army to induce behavioral change on the part of the Afghan Taliban, and particularly its obstinate leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.  These desired changes likely include: giving up maximalist goals, such as the re-establishment of an emirate; and clear movement toward the bargaining table with Karzai and away from al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.  And equally important, as Afghans have engaged in a multitude of secret peace talks in the region, the Pakistan Army would like to ensure that it, to the exclusion of India, is part of the glue that holds together any power sharing arrangement in Kabul.  In other words, it doesn’t want the Afghans to make their own peace and shut Pakistan out of the process.  If Pakistan were excluded, then what was the trouble of the past eight years for?

The arrest of Baradar helps bring U.S. and Pakistan policy toward Afghanistan in closer alignment.  The Pakistan Army is willing to work with Afghan moderates and, at the same time, retains significant leverage over the country’s insurgents.  It has the capacity and willingness to engage, if not manage, a broad spectrum of Afghanistan’s major Pashtun actors — both “good” and “bad.”  One would imagine that Pakistani diplomatic, military, and political officials are also engaging Afghan Tajiks and Uzbeks, particularly ex-mujahideen.

With its contacts, geographic location, and new-found “responsible” approach, it’s Pakistan — not Iran, India, or Russia — that is positioned to play the role of stability guarantor in a post-American Afghanistan, especially as it pertains to U.S. interests.  Pakistan has an opportunity to come in from the cold and project its regional influence through more conventional and “legitimate” means.  In doing so, it can secure its interests and the respect and trust of others, while also containing the Taliban contagion infesting its border areas with Afghanistan.

On Monday, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani briefed foreign correspondents in Rawalpindi and was unusually candid.  

In the briefing, Kayani articulated his Afghanistan doctrine.  Pakistan, he said, seeks a friendly government, stability, and ”strategic depth” in Afghanistan.  He also added that Pakistan does not seek a Talibanized Afghanistan and offered to train the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police.

Kayani, like many others in the region, is preparing for a post-American and post-ISAF Afghanistan.  Many actors fear the emergence of a security vacuum in such a context.  Kayani is expressing Pakistan’s willingness (or better put, desire) to fill the void, prevent an outbreak of instability, and even come to support the Karzai government.  His message to Karzai is: if you become our ally (because strategic depth really calls for an alliance, not just friendship) and ditch India, we can help keep you alive and in power.  And, it seems as if there’s an implicit message to the Afghan Taliban — key as both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia try to pull the group away from al-Qaeda: you are not our only option, so don’t take us for granted. 

Kayani’s doctrine is not revolutionary.  Its objectives are no different from Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy from the past thirty years.  But, for the first time, he is publicly demonstrating great flexibility in terms of choice of alliances.  Kayani is essentially a cold realist.  He believes Pakistan has permanent interests, not permanent alliances, in Afghanistan and elsewhere.  And he and the Pakistan Army will do business with the entity that best facilitates achieving those objectives.  Behavior, not personalities, is key.   

Pakistan’s army chief also said that he impressed upon NATO that Pakistan’s “strategic paradigm” needs to be realized.  In that strategic paradigm, India remains a natural, long-term threat and Afghanistan is part of Pakistan’s sphere of influence – the latter being a perspective no different from America’s Monroe Doctrine.  Pakistan’s desire to be the predominant foreign power in Afghanistan is, as I said on a recent radio appearance, a policy that began in the late 1970s with military ruler Zia-ul-Haq.  But the key difference between the two is that the Kayani doctrine is largely agnostic, while the Zia doctrine was heavily religious.

The Pakistan Army’s behavior since 9/11 and India’s isolation from the two recent conferences on Afghanistan in Istanbul and London, demonstrate that Rawalpindi, at the very least, has a veto power on the key decisions regarding Afghanistan’s future.  Pakistan is not simply a nuisance or basketcase, but a regional power that has the capability to leverage a superpower’s depedency on it and check the regional growth of India, a rival, neighbor, and potential superpower. 

In the midst of this high wire act, Pakistan neared bankruptcy.  It has mastered the art of making a dollar out of fifteen cents.  Some would say, it’s done this by getting the United States to pay the remaining eighty five cents.

I have a blog post on ForeignPolicy.com’s AfPak Channel on the recent violence in Karachi.

Here’s a snippet:

“The Arabian and Indo-Australian tectonic plates meet near Karachi, the Pakistani port city inhabited by at least 15 million people. But in recent weeks, Karachi has been reeling from violent seismic activity along its ethnic and political fault lines — not the collision of geological plates nearby….”

Click here to read the rest.

My latest external publication is an article on ForeignPolicy.com that discusses the plight of President Asif Ali Zardari. An excerpt is at the end of this post.

I have been blogging less frequently in the past two months, but you can catch me regularly on the John Batchelor Show, Saturdays at 9:30PM EST (770AM-NY, WABCradio.com, and XM , XM Radio Channel 158).

You can also follow me on Twitter.

Here’s an excerpt of my FP article:

“Afghanistan’s election crisis has temporarily abated, but Pakistan could soon face a volatile political transition of its own. President Asif Ali Zardari is under ever-increasing pressure to resign. His influence and power are dwindling and will likely continue to diminish in the coming months. By this spring, the Zardari presidency could meet its end….”

Click here to read more

My latest publication, an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor is available here.  An excerpt is below:

“After eight years of US involvement in Afghanistan, a strategic crossroads within Asia, the country remains a deadly conflict zone. In fact, this weekend insurgents attacked two US military bases along the Pakistani border. Helping Afghanistan stand on its own – an imperative for both regional and Western states – is a task that will take decades. But it is increasingly clear that it is not one that the West can perform….

However, a precipitous Western withdrawal from Afghanistan would leave a major void in the state….

Afghanistan is factionalized, pockmarked by ethnic and tribal divisions. Its government’s sole success is an election rigged in its own favor. Warlords run much of the country. The national Army and police are years away from being able to secure the country on their own. Other state institutions lack the minimal human and financial resources to function without external crutches. US and Western troops should leave. But because Afghanistan will remain dependent on international aid for development and security, troops cannot leave without something to fill the vacancy.

The solution? Muslim and regional states must fill the void….”

Here’s a link to my latest blog post at ForeignPolicy.com’s Af-Pak Channel. It’s on the Pakistan Army’s upcoming ground operations in South Waziristan.

On Saturday night, I appeared on the John Batchelor Show (WABC Radio, New York, 770AM) to discuss the status of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan following the killing of Baitullah Mehsud.

Audio of the interview is available below:

Arif_Rafiq_JBShow_08_29_09.mp3