Interview with Ahmed Rashid, Peter Bergen
ZAKARIA: Last week, the United States put a $10 million bounty on this man's head. His name is Hafiz Saeed, the man Washington blames for masterminding the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India. So imagine the surprise when he shows up openly at a press conference in Pakistan, and he had a message for the State Department. "Why give the $10 million to someone else? Why not give it to me," he said. It is a message of defiance that also highlights the state of relations between Washington and his Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. I have two superb guests to talk about that relationship as well as another crumbling partnership across the border in Afghanistan. Ahmed Rashid is an award-winning journalist and the author of a new book "Pakistan on the Brink." And in Islamabad itself, we are joined by CNN's terror expert, Peter Bergen. Welcome. Ahmed, was it a mistake to have put that bounty on Hafiz Saeed? What do you think was the thinking behind it?</s>AHMED RASHID, AUTHOR, "PAKISTAN ON THE BRINK": Well, I fear now that, you know, both countries have been in this very dense relationship for the last six months. I fear now what we are seeing is a kind of tit for tat, a kind of proxy war going on now. Because Pakistan did not open the road when the Americans expected. That is the road that is transporting goods from Karachi up to the Afghan border for the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. That road has been shut now for nearly five months. Pakistan was supposed to open that road after a parliamentary debate, it hasn't done so. I think this is an American response to that. A week ago, we saw an earlier tit for tat when the chairman -- when the head of CENTCOM, General Mattis, was in Islamabad, and that very day the Defense Department releases a statement saying that the Americans were not responsible for the deaths of 24 Pakistani soldiers in -- on the border, five months ago that sparked this present problem. So, you know, both sides are, instead of coming together and really healing the rift, I fear that they are going further apart.</s>ZAKARIA: You wrote in a piece in the FT that it really is time to start serious conversations with the Taliban and find some way to create some level, a kind of political stability. You know, this is something we have all talked about for two or three years and somehow is doesn't seem to -- nothing seems to move. Is there any sense that there is movement on the U.S. side, the Taliban side, the Karzai side?</s>RASHID: Well, you know, I mean, talks have started. There have been direct meetings between American officials and the Taliban in Qatar. They have been stymied for the moment because of all these terrible incidents in Afghanistan. But it's very clear that the Taliban do want to talk. We should remember, Fareed, that, you know, it was the Taliban who approached the Americans for talks two years ago, through the Germans and through Qatar. And they sent messages to the Americans saying, we want to talk. Now I really believe that the Taliban do not want to see the Americans leave, and a really even worse civil war erupting in Afghanistan as a result of that.</s>ZAKARIA: So they are looking for some kind of a deal?</s>RASHID: Yes. They are looking for a deal with the U.S. so that there can be, first of all, I think, a reduction in the violence. In other words, that they want -- both sides would have to build trust with each other and take measures, which would hopefully reduce the violence, ultimately, of course, ending in some kind of cease-fire between them. And then, you know, they would obviously want to talk to Karzai about some kind of power-sharing agreement with the Afghan government. But I think the decision has to be made in Washington that they want to pursue negotiations with greater determination than before, even perhaps with more determination than the military track. And the military has to be told -- the U.S. military has to be sold that these negotiations are vital. And, you know, the military -- there will come a time when the military will have to play second fiddle to the negotiations. I don't think the U.S. military is ready for that yet.</s>ZAKARIA: Peter, do you get a sense that in Pakistan if there were to be some settlement, if the U.S. were to withdraw, does Pakistan believe that the Taliban are basically there -- you know, is their path to influence in Afghanistan? That, you know, the last time around, the Taliban effectively came to power on the backs of the Pakistani army. Do they view the return of the Taliban as something that they, the Pakistani military, want to push for?</s>PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I don't think there is any great desire by the Pakistani government to have a Taliban- controlled Afghanistan, not at all, partly because there has been so much blowback into Pakistan by, you know, Taliban groups. I think they do want to have control and one of the ways they see control is through the Haqqani network in eastern Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean that they want a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan at all. And they certainly don't want another civil war because, you know, an Afghanistan that blows apart on their western border will produce huge refugee flows. Pakistan has already lived through that with one of the largest refugee populations in the world during the Soviet war. They don't want a repeat of that. So I think they want a semi-stable government that isn't aligned with India. They see the Taliban -- elements of the Taliban as part of that. But, you know, just zooming out for one second, Fareed, I'm very skeptical that negotiations with the Taliban will succeed because we have already run a controlled experiment on this question in Pakistan repeatedly. The Taliban government has done -- the Taliban has done peace deals with the Pakistani government in '06 and '05, in Waziristan, north and south, in Swat in 2009. And the Taliban took each of those peace deals, so-called, as an opportunity to regroup and to kind of spread their influence. So I don't think they are sort of rational actors, a sort of group of Henry Kissingers in waiting, with whom that you can do a deal, that won't necessarily stick. And as you indicated at the beginning of this discussion, you know the talks of whatever status they were, they are not going very well. We don't have a huge amount of time before 2014. And I think it is much more important to be focused on the free and fair election in Afghanistan in 2014, a very predictable event, if that election is not seen as free and fair and -- you know, and resources are not put into it to make sure that that is the case. That could be a sort of instigator of greater conflict in Afghanistan. And I think the U.S. has sort of put this in this binary thing. If we have a deal with the Taliban, somehow that solves the Afghan problem, when really it's a much larger political problem that, to some degree, a free and fair election in 2014 might begin to solve.</s>ZAKARIA: Quick final thought, Ahmed?</s>RASHID: Well, you know, I think, you know, there are going to be so many complications which are not necessarily being addressed by the administration or by NATO. For example, not only is there this question of the Taliban, there is a question of a regional dialogue with the neighbors. And in fact that regional dialogue is even further away than before because now the U.S. is at odds with Pakistan. The U.S. is at odds with Iran. These are key neighbors of Afghanistan. How are you going to prevent these countries from interfering in Afghanistan after the Americans leave in 2014? You have to try and get these countries together now. And it doesn't look like this will happen. The internal dynamics, the elections in 2014, what role is the Northern Alliance, the non-Pashtuns, going to play? These are all very important questions. And finally, the economic question. There's no sustainable economy in Afghanistan, even 10 years after American intervention. The American forces will leave. Thousands of Afghans who have been servicing the Americans will be out of a job.</s>ZAKARIA: Ahmed Rashid, Peter Bergen in Islamabad, thank you for discussing a subject that isn't going to go away. Up next "What in the World?" Understanding the problems in the Arab world by exploring events that took place 1,000 years ago. Don't miss this.