Pakistan wants to ditch Taleban, opens unprecedented negotiations with King Zahir Shah for the future set up.. the end game starts for the Talebans!!
Just in last 30 minutes President Pervez Musharraf breaking from so far policy not to interact with former King has invited former Afghan king Mohammad Zahir Shah to send an emissary to Islamabad as soon as possible to discuss a post-Taliban government, Italy's minister of state for foreign affairs said Wednesday.
Margherita Boniver told reporters here after meeting the President for 40 minutes that he believed King Shah had a role to play in helping form a unified government in Afghanistan.
A former President of Pakistan, Sardar Farooq Khan Leghari, wants to become a bridge between the deposed king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, who now lives in Rome and the government of President General Pervez Musharraf.
Leghari, who has had a lengthy meeting with Musharraf in Rawalpindi late Monday evening, partly revealed his desire to an American journalist, Arnaud De Borchagrave, editor at large of United Press International.
Both boarded the same PIA flight to Karachi from Islamabad after Leghari's meeting with Musharraf the other day. The president of Pakistan, Leghari is reported to have told Borchagrave, "enthusiastically endorsed" the idea that the exiled king of Afghanistan should be invited to take up residence in Pakistan and convene a tribal assembly to decide the fate of his nation.
Leghari also claimed to have devised his plan to "obviate the US urge to put its diplomatic chips on the Northern Alliance to the exclusion of other political forces (of Afghanistan)." The Leghari-scheme can also "enable Musharraf to formally ditch Taliban" and set a new course designed to align Pakistan "to the United States without any unspoken reservations."
Leghari didn't appear to have told the American journalist that before reaching the president of Pakistan with "his plan," he also had a lengthy one-to-one working lunch last week with a senior Lt General in Lahore, who also had served in ISI when the Baloch Sardar was living in the presidency from 1994 to 1997. It is yet not clear as to who invited who for the said lunch.
Not fully aware of Leghari's "Afghan connections and links," many politicians in Lahore and Islamabad kept imagining as if the former president's meetings with top generals of Pak army hint the possibility of "a national government," which should be run and led by politicians, preferably from all recognized political parties of Pakistan.
The need for such a government is there, believed the expectant politicians. "Because, the military is finding it extremely difficult to handle the crisis situation, Pakistan is enduring since the suicide-hijack attacks on New York and Washington, on its own." It's only now that we have begun finding out the real purpose of Leghari's meetings with some top generals of Pak Army. For being the son of a Pathan mother, Leghari is fluent in chaste Pushtu. His wife also hails from a Pushtun family. But to the Afghan elite, he is connected through a cousin of his who is married into the famous Gillani family, which is very close to Zahir Shah, the exiled king.
There already are reports that Zahir Shah intends to appoint Pir Syed Ahmad Gillani as the prime minister of the interim government, he wants to set immediately after the fall of Taliban regime, till the time an appropriate power structure is propped through holding of Loya Jirga. Farooq Khan Leghari was not available for comments at his Lahore and Islamabad telephone numbers throughout Tuesday. Some people close to him only revealed that he had gone to Karachi for attending a meeting with some top industrialists of this country.
He, however, was expected at PTV studios in Islamabad for talking to the news night programme, which goes live in late hours. It's yet not possible for The News, therefore, to get the rumours confirmed that after getting his plan of inviting the exiled king to Pakistan "endorsed" by General Musharraf, Farooq Khan Leghari was now preparing to fly off to Rome for a meeting with Zahir Shah.
Hamid Karzai, a Quetta-based chief of an elitist Pushtun tribe of Kandahar, is in active contact with Zahir Shah these days. He was clueless regarding the possibility of Farooq Khan Leghari having a meeting with the deposed king of Afghanistan, when The News contacted him on phone on Tuesday. But Karzai did reveal that he was himself leaving for Rome on Thursday. Karzai's rushing to Rome provide substance to rumours that instead of landing in any neighbouring country of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah wants to directly land in his country, once the Taliban are no more and a "secure launching site" is established for the returned king to deliver.
Hundreds of Afghan refugees, who had crossed over to Pushtun areas of Balochistan from Kandahar and villages around it, have already been planning for the past two weeks to "return to their motherland in waves," in case the exiled king returns there. Farooq Khan Leghari does not appear thinking that Zahir Shah can directly land in Afghanistan in the immediate future. As if to prepare Zahir Shah for the "eventual return" to Afghanistan, Leghari is also reported to have suggested to Musharraf that once in Pakistan, Zahir Shah should be encouraged to "take up residence" at a spot in tribal Waziristan, which happens to be only six kilometers away from Afghanistan.
Leghari also wants Zahir Shah to convene Loya Jirga at the same site for the purpose of establishing an interim government for Afghanistan. Mehmud Khan Achakzai, a Pushtun nationalist leader, tried to explain as to why Leghari had recommended Waziristan as the "launching site" for Zahir Shah, when The News contacted him on phone Tuesday. "Nadir Khan, the father of Zahir Shah, also entered Afghanistan from the same route in 1930," he recalled. Nadir Khan was a commander of Amanullah's army in early 1920s. But he never felt comfortable with the haste, his king wanted Afghanistan to get modernized. And, preferred to live a life of exile in Paris. Amannullah Khan established very deep political connections with the communist revolutionaries, who took over Russia in 1917. He also was very inspired with the nationalist fervour and policies, Mustafa Kamal Pasha had unleashed in Turkey after dismantling the monarchy in his country, which was sustained in the name of "Khilafat."
The British rulers could not tolerate a "radical modernizer" too close to their "jewel in the crown," the colonized India. Like the CIA of 1980s, their intelligence operatives cultivated some Afghan Mullahs to drum the impression that Amanullah was pushing their country to "infidel culture of the West." Eventually a Tajik "fundo" of those days, Bacha-e-Saqqao became the ruler of Afghanistan. Though an earlier prototype for Taliban, he wasn't acceptable to the majority of Afghans. Just because he was a Tajik and low class. The Pushtun elite began looking for a "blue blooded Durrani" as their king. And, the British cunningly prodded Nadir Khan, a cousin of Amannullah.
Nadir was encouraged to land in Waziristan, where the British political agents gathered the Loya Jirga for him. And he reached Afghanistan only after nine months of Bacha-e-Saqqao's rule. But, before taking the throne of Kabul he had to accept some noted and rich Ulema (the Muslim religious scholars) as legitimate partners of the ruling elite. He got murdered within three years of his rule which brought Zahir Shah on the scene in 1933, who got deposed and exiled in 1973 after forty years of a dormant ruling.
Iqbal Latif
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