Pakistan and Afghanistan in need of combined strategy
Updated
The most recent militant attack in Pakistan has served to underscore the urgency of the Obama administration's new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan's outlaw border areas. The fates of the two countries are now seen as being in need of a combined strategy. Foreign policy leaders will discuss the very issue at a meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the the Hague this week.
Presenter: Linda Mottram, Canberra correspondent
Speaker: Stephen Smith, Australian Foreign Minister; Professor Amin Saikal, director, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University
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MOTTRAM: As if to openly challenged not only the new Obama strategy towards the Afghanistan-Pakistan issue, but also a key UN meeting on the issues in the Hague this week, Pakistan was again under seige, and again in Lahore. Australia's foreign minister Stephen Smith was already scheduled to make an appearance on tv as the news was breaking.
SMITH: Like the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team, effectively this looks very much like an attack on Pakistan itself.
MOTTRAM: And that is a centrepiece of the Obama administration's new approach to Afghanistan - that the risks from instability not just in Afghanistan but also in the Pakistani border areas are enormous. The strategy will be under discussion this week in the Hague, where, under the auspices of the UN, some key foreign poilicy players will be present, in particular the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama's special envoy on Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke. But its also a bid to bring in nations outside existing NATO and stabilisation force contributors. At an earlier media conference Stephen Smith said there was a two fold approach.
SMITH: One is that for the first occasion there's been a deliberate effort by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and the United Nations and the host nation Afghanistan, to invite and bring into the fold a number of regional countries who haven't necessarily previously been involved to make the point that what's occurring in Afghanistan, what's occurring in the Afghanistan Pakistan border area, has very serious adverse implications for the South Asian and Central Asian region as well as the international community. So for example Iran has been invited.
MOTTRAM: The second prong is to spread the word that a solution to Afghanistan and Pakistan can't be military alone. But while many applaud the broader thinking of the Obama approach, particularly if well resourced counter insurgency measures marry with a big push on building domestic security and civilian institutions, there are still sceptics. Professor Amin Saikal is the director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.
SAIKAL: If President Obama is not prepared to deploy another couple of hundred thousand troops along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and if the Pakistanis are not willing to cooperate with the Obama administration to allow cross border operations into Pakistan, I don't see how this new strategy is going to produce the desirable results.
MOTTRAM: Professor Saikal is critical that while the strategy offers expanded security operations and the civilian element, the focus will be too much in and around the capital Kabul, leaving the fundamental weakness of the current political structures unaddressed and falling well short of containing the Taliban's cross border operations. The problem is also time, he says.
SAIKAL: The question is can Afghanistan and Pakistan wait for another two, three, four years before a more solid strategy comes into action.
MOTTRAM: Now, we have also in the coming days a meeting brought together by the United Nations in the Hague, inviting a wider group of countries if you like to contribute, including Iran. Do you think that approach is going to make any difference?
SAIKAL: Certainly the United States and Iran have a common interest in stabilising the situation in Afghanistan. The Iranians have remains as opposed to the Taliban as the Obama administration is. But at the same time the Iranians would like to really see the situation and to see how its going to really develop. They don't want to really give anything away to the Americans without getting something in return.
MOTTRAM: So far, Professor Saikal says, the Americans have not indicated whether they would give concessions to Iran in return for support in the Afghan-Pakistan effort. And these are very difficult issues - such as U-S sanctions against Tehran, Iranian assets frozen by the US in the wake of the revolution three decades ago and, critically, Iran's nuclear programme.
