Rabbani's killer

None else but the Afghan refugees assassinated former Afghan president Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani - that was Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar's disclosure on the floor of the Senate recently. "We are not responsible if Afghan refugees crossed the border and entered Kabul, stayed in a guest house and attacked Professor Rabbani," she said during the question-hour session. This has been conveyed to Kabul, but President Karzai remains unwilling to end his blame-game against Pakistan. At the Bonn conference early this month he was at it again alleging that Rabbani's assassination was a "major setback" to the Afghan reconciliation process, adding "nothing was being done to eliminate terrorists beyond the Pakistan border." Khar said Pakistan is being made a scapegoat for anything and everything that goes wrong in Afghanistan. Given that Afghan refugees in Pakistan are Pushtun, their repugnance to a Tajik that Professor Rabbani was, is no secret, and that must have peaked on his becoming head of the so-called reconciliation process. Pak-Afghan border is porous and people by the thousands criss-cross it everyday as a routine. Ideally, the Afghan government should take back the refugees, and the international community should help it in that. But on its own, Pakistan which played host to some three million Afghan refuges for more than three decades would not like to drive them out of its territory; their plight being a great human problem. Pakistan, as Foreign Minister Khar said, would like to be part of the solution and not the problem that besets Afghanistan. But the ruling elite in Kabul is perhaps convinced of the fact that though in minority it can only prosper in a state of chaos and anarchy. It would not spare any opportunity to keep Karzai under pressure, forcing anti-Pakistan squeaks out of him. No wonder then his arch-political rival Dr Abdullah Abdullah cheer-led "Death to Karzai, Death to Pakistan" chants at Professor Rabbani's funeral. Cornered by his opponents' coercive move, the presidential palace issued a statement saying 'new evidence' had come to light suggesting that Rabbani's killer was "a Pakistani citizen", and also handed over an accusatory dossier to the Pakistan embassy in Kabul. But that anti-Pakistan propaganda did not go waste completely; among those hoodwinked by this exercise included the former American military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, his appetite obviously sharpened by his failure to turn tables on Afghan resistance. Interestingly, the Afghan dossier contained nothing except a confessional statement by one Hamidullah Akhundzadeh. How come the would-be assassin was treated as an official guest, put up in a government guest house for days and then allowed to reach Professor Rabbani without any checking in that high security locality. Maybe Karzai had no hint as to who the assassin was, but the perception remains that the Tajik elite 'sacrificed' one of its elders not only to bring Karzai under pressure but also to muster international support against Pakistan. The fact is that late Professor Rabbani was a friend of Pakistan, who was eliminated as part of the Afghan intelligence's concerted plan to finish off Pakistan's friends in Afghanistan. There is no gainsaying that a peaceful Afghanistan is in Pakistan's best interests. But there is no paucity of forces who want this land of Afghans to be in permanent turmoil given its strategic location and a critical outpost in the emerging international scenario. The US-led coalition would like to maintain its position there as it firms up its China-containment policy. Much of that kind of work is also being carried out on the southern and eastern borders of China, where the United States has discovered new friends, and India is being treated as a natural ally. But for a disturbed Afghanistan there would be no justification for permanent stationing of American troops in Afghanistan. If President Karzai is playing to that tune one is not greatly surprised. That serving as the backdrop, Pakistan is confronted with a huge challenge, which can be effectively met by encouraging and supporting the forces of peace and help Afghanistan regain normality and stability. Even when people like Hamid Karzai are bent upon deeply maligning Pakistan, our reaction has to be pragmatic devoid of counter-accusations and rash rants - for, it appears, we have to live with this nuisance of blame-game for quite some time. Copyright Business Recorder, 2011