BACKGROUND: Pakistan's generous backing for the Pashtun Mujaheddin during the anti-Soviet war, especially Gulbuddin Hikmetyar's Hizb-e Islami party in the 1980s and the Taliban movement in the 1990s, has been based on the close ethnic links between Afghan Pashtuns and Pakistani Pashtuns, who are Pakistan's second largest ethnic group. Pakistan's policy has been determined by fears of a rejuvenation of the Pashtun nationalist movement in both countries, which in the past has aimed to carve out a separate Pashtun state or attach Pakistan's Pashtun belt to Afghanistan. Pakistan has sought the creation of a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul in order to acquire ''strategic depth'' in Afghanistan for strength in its conflict with India. Pakistan's Islamic fundamentalist parties and some sections of the military now also articulate a policy of ''Islamic depth,'' that includes an Islamic Afghanistan and Central Asia allied to Pakistan.

Pakistani officials say Musharraf's comments were provoked by the fact that the Pakistani army is pressurizing the Taliban to accommodate the demands of the international community. Musharraf is reassuring the Taliban that Pakistan's support for the Taliban movement is not in question and that it would not join growing international efforts to undermine the Taliban leadership. Pakistan has consistently urged the international community to engage with the Taliban rather than isolate them. Musharraf's comments were also geared to appease Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist parties, who back the Taliban, the Pashtuns and fundamentalist officers in the Pakistan military.

Musharraf’s comments, coming at a time when the Pakistani military regime faces growing international pressure from its neighbors and the United States to reign in the Taliban and deal with terrorism, drug proliferation and Islamic fundamentalism emanating from Afghanistan, appear particularly insensitive. Musharraf's comments contradict Pakistan's professed intentions to help create a broad-based government in Afghanistan, while they ignore the reality of Afghanistan's multi-ethnic society. Pashtuns form the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, but constitute only an estimated 40% of the 20 million Afghans. Pakistan itself is a multi-ethnic state that faces growing ethnic problems due to the resentment of smaller ethnic groups against the largest province Punjab.

IMPLICATIONS: By publicly professing a pro-Pashtun policy, Pakistan appears to be ignoring the interests of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities and the interests of the Central Asian republics, who have backed their ethnic brothers in Afghanistan. In reality, other neighboring countries have also pursued ethnic biased policies. Uzbekistan backs Afghan Uzbeks, Tajikistan supports Afghan Tajiks and Iran initially backed its Shia co-religionists, the Hazaras. But none have publicly articulated an ethnically biased policy towards Afghanistan. Musharraf's comments made no accommodation to the national security interests of these neighbors, interests that have fuelled their own interference in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan army views itself as having genuine security interests in Afghanistan but is not prepared to concede that other countries have similar interests as well. Islamabad's recent attempts to reconcile differences between Pakistan and Iran over Afghanistan are stalled by Pakistan's non-recognition of Iran's own national interests in Afghanistan. Until all of the neighboring states accept and accommodate each other's national security interests in Afghanistan, assist in ending Afghanistan’s civil war, and stop the supplies of arms and ammunition to Afghanistan, the proxy war in Afghanistan will continue to be fuelled by Afghanistan’s neighbors.

The United States continues to pressure Pakistan to persuade the Taliban to deliver Osama Bin Laden, but Washington has still not articulated a larger peace-making role for itself in Afghanistan. United States Under-Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, who visited Islamabad at the end of May, said that Islamabad had an extraordinary and important strategic relationship in Afghanistan. Therefore, he argued it is hard to conceive of the fact that "Pakistan's continued support for the Taliban is irrelevant to the questions of the possibility of Pakistan playing a very constructive role in bringing Osama Bin Laden to justice.'' Publicly, however, Pickering has not pushed for a more even handed ethnic policy in Afghanistan.

CONCLUSION: The usually mild-mannered former Afghan monarch Zahir Shah, in unprecedented criticism of Musharraf, stated that Musharraf was delineating an ethnic Pashtun policy in Afghanistan and was violating the fundamental notion that the "Afghan nation is composed of different ethnic groups united and indivisible with a recognized Afghan national identity". He termed Musharraf’s comments as ''interference and aggravation of the national unity of Afghanistan.'' The Northern Alliance objected that Pakistan was imposing a certain political system through an ethnic tribal group in its neighboring country. It claimed this was a violation of Afghanistan’s sovereignty and independence through the flagrant violation of recognized international norms.

Musharraf’s pro-Pashtun policy was intended to reassure the Taliban but instead it has seriously undermined the Pakistan Foreign Office's recent attempts to be more even-handed towards the Afghan factions. Musharraf has also increased the anti-Pakistan rhetoric of the non-Pashtun Afghan groups and further antagonized Afghanistan's neighbors by dealing a blow to peace mediation efforts, such as the Rome initiative by Zahir Shah and the Organization of the Islamic States Conference. Taliban’s opposition, the Northern Alliance, declared that Musharraf's comments revealed Pakistan's expansionist goals in Afghanistan. As the leading external player in Afghanistan, Pakistan cannot afford to have a totally one-sided ethnic policy in Afghanistan if it wants to live in peace with all Afghans and the Central Asian states.

AUTHOR BIO: Ahmed Rashid is the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Daily Telegraph. He is the author of The Resurgence of Central Asia: Islam or Nationlism?, as well as the recently published Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (Yale, 2000

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