The President’s Pakistan Pivot

“The Cadets Go to Abbottabad” should be the reboot of the Police Academy franchise Steve Guttenberg’s been praying for. Instead it’s the story of six Afghan army officer trainees heading from Kabul to Abbottabad for training with the Pakistan military. It’s a first for the frenemies across the Durand Line, and a sign of Ghani’s plans for relations with Islamabad. It’s a move that’s another step out of Karzai’s shadow, a not-so-subtle signal to New Delhi, and something the Americans want. But it’s not winning him any friends back home.

Pivoting toward Pakistan

Like so many of the moves Ghani’s made over the last several months, by sending officer trainees to Pakistan, he’s making it clear that he’s not Karzai. From how he receives guests to his tackling corruption in the security forces head on, Ashraf Ghani’s quickly making a name for himself as being anything-but-Karzai. His reaching out to Pakistan, at least symbolically, sends the message to both Islamabad and the world that if nothing else at least this president’s different.

Relations between Karzai and the Pakistanis was tendentious at best. And given how much influence Pakistani intelligence services have had in Afghanistan over the years, Karzai could be excused be for being less than enthused about his neighbors. After most major attacks in Afghanistan, particularly in the capital, Karzai made a point of laying the blame at the feet of the ISI and their Taliban partners.

Now that Karzai’s gone and the with the need to shore up regional partnerships, Ghani’s been racking up the frequent flier miles. He’s not just hopping across the border, either, as the future stability of his country is also tied closely to relationships with China. Ghani knows that some day that sweet foreign aid is going  away, and the Afghans are going to need a strong security partner to deal with the insurgency when that happens.

Sending those six cadets to Abbottabad is a token gesture, but an important one. Post-American Afghanistan needs their nuclear tipped neighbor to get along with them, and nothing builds that kind of cooperation like joint training. We’re a long way from AfPak military exercises in the tribal areas, but that’s where this is headed.

Remember India? Ghani doesn’t

Not so long ago Hamid Karzai was accepting an honorary degree at Lovely Professional Univerisity in Jalandhar. The Indians were pouring development money into Afghanistan (although not at the level of the Americans), and the Afghans had inked several deals for Indian military equipment, including helicopters.

The helicopters were nowhere near the numbers the Afghan Air Force (AAF) needs in order to be a no-kidding functioning aerial fighting force. But they were a start toward someone besides the United States providing weapons to the Afghans. Which isn’t something the Americans could wholly support, since they have a vested interest in selling more guns to New Delhi.

But given the billions India could be spending on US military hardware, that’s not going to be a problem. What is a problem is the Indians selling weapons to the Afghans. Nothing terribly sinister about that, it’s just that American defense contractors like people buying their stuff and not Indian stuff.

The Indians for whatever reason were delaying delivery of the promised equipment to the Afghans. So last fall Ghani canceled the order, citing delivery delays as the reason. But it was part of Ghani’s earliest plans to shift away from reliance on Indian in an effort to shore up relations with his near neighbor.

Frustrated with India’s failure to deliver long-promised military aid, new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has told New Delhi that he wishes to revisit his predecessor’s request for assistance, diplomatic sources have told The Indian Express. President Ghani’s decision to place Afghanistan’s arms-aid request on hold, the sources said, had been conveyed to negotiators from the Ministry of External Affairs earlier this month.

Here’s me going way out on an analytical limb: this is the fabled Michael Scott win-win-win scenario. The Americans get to sell arms to both the Indians and the Afghans. The Afghans get improved relations with Pakistan.

Maybe that united front helps to dampen the Taliban-related violence in Afghanistan, influenced by the ISIS across the border. If Afghan and Pakistani military forces are cooperating, that means they all get help from everyone’s favorite uncle. Who’s very much in favor of the current arrangement.

‘Merica approves

Despite calls for extension of troop deadlines in Afghanistan from both American and Afghan sources, at the moment Obama’s pretty committed to the full withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan over the next couple of years. Granted, what’s happening with the Islamic State is changing some of those calculations, but not to the point where US troops are going to be surging anytime soon, or even staying past the projected departure dates.

That all could change, and it most likely will. What the US can’t afford geopolitically is another reset like is happening in Iraq. Granted, the number of troops deployed to counter IS are nowhere the numbers that were there at the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but they’re there. And they had to come back after everybody left.

What the Americans don’t want to see happen is another redux in Afghanistan. A lot of factors are against that: there aren’t the same kind of forces outside of Afghanistan like there are outside of Iraq. Sure, the TTP and its affiliates are giving the Pakistanis fits, but they’re nowhere near the kind of force as IS.

But your average armchair pundit who once every couple of years tries super hard to care more about politics than they do about what Kanye did at the Grammys this year doesn’t know that. And that’s the kind of person willing to listen to people who want voters to see IS as the next great bogeyman. And that if we leave Afghanistan we’re just giving the world over to the kind of people that burn prisoners alive.

Even though Obama (or at least his generals) are leaning toward troop presence extensions, everyone gets that this isn’t a good long-term solution. That what needs to happen is a move toward developing more effective regional partnerships with places like Islamabad. Because if the neighbors can at least play nice, maybe it doesn’t blow up like that other war did.

Not so fast, Mr. President

Ghani’s happy, the Pakistanis are happy, and the Americans are overjoyed. The only people not super excited about this arrangement are other Afghans. Even though this arrangement is something that’s likely going to be good for Afghanistan in the long run, some people aren’t particularly thrilled.

Time is running out, we need to see real action. We want Pakistan to either confront those who are not willing to engage in peace or, at the very least, ask them to pack up and leave. — Afghan official

Which complicates this foray into cross-border cooperation but isn’t likely to scuttle the project. There are long-running resentments between Kabul and Islamabad that will have to be addressed for this and any future relations to work, and that’s something Ghani needs to be more aware of as he moves forward. While his iconoclastic approach to governance plays well with foreign donors and the young turks eager to take the reins from their elders, those elders still wield considerable power.

The course Ghani’s trying to navigate is treacherous, complicated by an active insurgency and entrenched cronyism that threatens to derail the transition express. He’s far from being quit of the need for foreign aid, and he’s under tremendous pressure to demonstrate progress and reforms as quickly as possible. He has to do that without offending those whose support he’ll still need to get things done in the post-’merican world.

Ghani’s greatest threat right now isn’t the Taliban. It’s the backlash from old power brokers who might feel marginalized by brave new(ish) world the president’s trying to bring to sputtering life. If he can placate those other interests and still make progress, he might yet make it to a second term as Afghanistan’s president. Leaning toward Islamabad is progress toward the future, one that could still be undone by the turbulent past.