Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan expert, writes that a senior Pakistan diplomat revealed that Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from the Afghan runoff election under U.S. pressure led by Hillary Clinton after she met with top Pakistani military leaders. Pakistani military officers viewed Abdullah as unacceptably pro-India. The Pakistani military will be now given the job of reconciling with the Taliban, serving as a mediator between the U.S. and the Taliban, so that the American military can slowly step down in Afghanistan, like they are doing in Iraq, according to the source.
The Pakistani military, the real power in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, maintained strong ties with the American military through the cold war era. Hillary Clinton negotiated with the military leaders in Pakistan to break through the political logjam in resolving the war in Afghanistan created by weak political leadership in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
A senior Pakistani diplomat involved in backchannel negotiations on Pakistan, Afghanistan and US relations told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity that the deal over Abdullah, whom Islamabad considers to be pro-India, was made during the three-day visit to Pakistan last week of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Apart from other senior officials, Clinton met with the chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, and the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence, Lieutenant General Ahmad Shuja Pasha. It was agreed that all US-led negotiations with Abdullah, which included offering him the position of chief executive officer of Afghanistan, would stop, and Karzai would get full backing for a second five-year term.
It was also acknowledged that Washington's political leadership, like the Pentagon, now accepts that the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan is best tackled with contact between the Pakistan armed forces and the Taliban, and not by the political governments of the region.
Hillary Clinton had already cut a deal with India to pull back troops from the border in Kashmir, making this deal with the Pakistani military possible.
In this context, Clinton supported Pakistan's vision of Afghanistan, that Abdullah's participation as a major player in the government would be detrimental to the cause of dialogue with the Taliban. Clinton also played a major role in India's decision to pull out its forces from the Pakistan-India border near Kashmir. This allows the Pakistan army to concentrate on its fight against al-Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas. The army assured Clinton it would broaden this fight in the coming months.
If this report is correct Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama have developed a strategy for resolving the conflict in Afghanistan sufficiently to allow American troops to step down.