Pakistan Boxed into a Corner

KARACHI, Pakistan -- With the Taliban's sudden withdrawal from key areas in Afghanistan to concentrate in the eastern provinces for a prolonged guerrilla war, and with the likelihood of an anti-Pakistan government running Afghanistan, Islamabad could be forced into lending covert support to the Taliban, whom it ditched two months ago in favor of the United States in its war on terrorism.

The quick retreats of the Taliban from Mazar-e-Sharif and the dramatic withdrawals from the capital Kabul and Jalalabad have exploded like a bombshell among Pakistani military decision makers at general headquarters in Rawalpindi and at the Foreign Office in Islamabad.

The developments are in stark contrast to what the Pakistani intelligence services had reported to President General Pervez Musharraf -- that the war would drag on much longer and that Pakistan would maintain a strong bargaining position with the U.S. and its allies over the composition of a new Afghan government.

All this has changed with the U.S.'s inability -- or reluctance -- to stop the Northern Alliance from taking over Kabul, where it is already reported that on Wednesday former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani will return to pronounce himself the head of the territories now under the control of the anti-Taliban opposition. Deposed by the Taliban in 1996, the ethnic Tajik Rabbani is the political leader of the Northern Alliance and is still recognized as Afghanistan's president by the United Nations and most countries.

Although the United Nations is trying its best to install a broad-based government in Afghanistan, Rabbani has already made a move to set up an interim administration. It is said that General Mohammad Fahim will act as minister of defense, Abdullah Abdullah as minister of foreign affairs and Yunus Qanooni as minister of the interior. Warlords such as Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan are expected to be left in control of the areas they have captured, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat respectively.

This pretty much leaves Pakistan out in the cold as this power configuration is made up mainly of three different ethnic groups: Tajiks, who comprise some 25 percent of the population; Hazaras, about 19 percent; and Uzbeks, with about 6 percent. Pashtuns, with 40 percent of the population, dominate central and southern Afghanistan, the home base to the leadership of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, the network of Osama bin Laden.

Rabbani has said that he would welcome former monarch Zahir Shah, but as a "private citizen." Yet Rabbani was the founding father of the Afghan resistance movement, which began in the days of Zahir Shah. Rabbani is well documented as saying that Zahir Shah would be hanged for war crimes if he ever returned to Afghanistan, and he has never softened this stance.

In this perspective, it appears that Afghanistan will continue with its centuries-old traditions under which there will be no participation in government on the basis of anything but "might is right" and that the only way in which Pakistan can have any sway in balancing unfriendly forces across its border is to lend support to the Taliban to help keep a guerrilla war going.

Sources say that on the news of the fall of Kabul an emergency meeting was convened in Rawalpindi, headed by General Yusuf, the vice chief of army staff -- Musharraf is currently on a visit to the U.S. At the meeting it was emphasized that a new strategic policy for Afghanistan is needed.

Well-placed sources suggest that in the new scheme of things the Pakistani tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, home of 10 million mostly Pashtun people, will play an important role: the Taliban will continue to fight their guerrilla war, with backup and supplies being ferried from Pakistan through the tribal areas to them.