Remember it had taken him quite some time to admit that Pakistan did have terrorists who forayed into India and he had frequently criticised Afghanistan for blaming Pakistan for the regular Taliban invasion. Though he is still unwilling to accept that most terrorists who head for India are backed by his ISI, his statement on Pakistani sanctuaries for Afghan-bound terrorists comes close on the heels of his angry rebuttal of reports by US intelligence late in July that the tribal regions in Pakistan had become a ‘haven’ for Al Qaeda and Taliban. Could it be that his American patrons had forced the ‘confession’ on him?

The delayed confession could have surprised only those who go against their own judgement to portray Musharraf as a terrorists’ bugbear. Yet, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, optimistically claimed that the Jirga was a success, showing ‘good results, achievements and (sending) a message for both countries.’ There is obviously some truth deficiency in Karzai’s statement.

The optimism that Karzai tried to project was perhaps an expression of his desire to infuse some meaning in the process of dialogue that the Jirga is supposed to have started to bring peace. The jumbo assembly of 700 delegates, almost all of them Pushtun from the either side of the Durand Line, ended after four days of talks that produced a sort of declaration of pious platitudes about the need for peace and all that.

Hopefully, something more substantive might emerge when as a follow up measure a series of meetings are held between smaller groups of 25 members from each of the two countries. Another Olympic-size Jirga is also scheduled, this time in Pakistan, though no date seems to have been fixed yet.

It had taken a year for the Kabul Jirga to take shape after it was conceived at a tripartite meeting in Washington between George W. Bush, Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf. That meeting had taken place when Karzai and Musharraf were openly displaying mutual dislike, the two having refused to shake hands before a battery of photographers and TV journalists. Karzai was livid with his Pakistani counterpart because the latter was not doing anything to stop Taliban fighters from entering Afghanistan on their usual killing missions.

The Jirga at Kabul was being written off even before it had started. Most tribal leaders from the terrorist ‘haven’ belts in Pakistan’s North and South Waziristan had stayed away for fear of reprisals from the Taliban terrorists. It is not clear who exactly will talk to the terrorists living in their safe Pakistani ‘haven’ when their hosts, the local tribal leaders, are so scared of them. Pakistani government is also clearly not in a position to talk to them either because by its own admission its writ does not run in that area.

On top of it the so-called military operations in these badlands of Pakistan have looked half-hearted at best with the government alternating between dubious ‘peace deals’ with tribal leaders and sending troops to the region which do not change the end result: the ‘haven’ remains safe. Musharraf stayed away from the inaugural session of the Kabul Jirga but later he made an abrupt show.

His absence at the inaugural session had set off speculation. He made it mysterious by offering the excuse of ‘prior engagements’ in Islamabad. Some said it was his way of protesting against the Americans who are increasingly asking him to be more sincere in the fight against terror. His show of childish petulance will further bring down Musharraf’s standing in the West, particularly the US.

On the morning he was to fly to Kabul, Musharraf was supposedly mulling imposition of the state of emergency in his country. A telephone call from the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice forced him to roll back the emergency plan. Thus, the earliest he could take a Kabul flight was only on the day of the conclusion of the Jirga.

Musharraf may still be a darling of the White House but foreign audiences as well in his own country do not trust his words. He may well start rehearsing for another delayed ‘confession’. If he is true to his character it will unfortunately not come before a lot of damage has been done. He told the closing session of the Jirga that there was no other option for Afghanistan and Pakistan than ‘peace, unity, trust and cooperation’. He also said that there was no ‘justification for resorting to terrorism’. Only the naïve or unfamiliar with the ways of Musharraf will take his words at their face value.

Gen Musharraf wanted the Kabul audience to believe that Islamabad did not want to undermine Afghanistan’s progress and added for effect that Pakistan would ‘never’ have ‘such a disastrous policy’ (undermining Afghanistan). But seen in the context of his ‘confession’ in the course of the same speech it was clear that while officially always denying, Islamabad was pursing a policy very unfriendly towards Kabul.

There is no reason to believe that Pakistan is about to jettison the policy of using terrorism to unsettle neighbours even when it talks of becoming a victim of terrorists, mostly holed up in the border region. In any case since Musharraf himself has acknowledged that his tribal region has become a haven for terrorists how can he contain them when his writ does not run in that region?

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