The resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of Afghanistan's International Security Assistance Force has emboldened Pakistan's military to step up its efforts to broker a peace between key elements of the Taliban and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The general's departure has heightened uncertainty throughout the 38-member ISAF alliance over how to proceed in a war slipping dangerously close to failure. Only days earlier, Britain's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, took an extended leave of absence following reports of rifts between him and senior U.S. officials over Afghan strategy. The apparent dissension with the U.S.'s most important NATO ally comes at a time when virtually every country in the coalition is preparing to wind down its mission, threatening to turn what was supposed to be an aggressive push to end the conflict in 2010 into a year of chaos and collapse. Yet for other players, ISAF's troubles present a moment of opportunity. Pakistan is pushing into Kabul with offers of ending the conflict through a negotiated power-sharing deal with the Haqqani network, considered the most powerful insurgent network operating in Afghanistan. Pakistan's military and intelligence services maintain strong ties to the Haqqanis, despite U.S. demands that they crack down on the group.
According to a New York Times report, the Pakistanis have been waiting for a moment like the one offered by McChrystal's exit to activate that trump card. Karzai has lost faith in the U.S. administration and is looking for a partner that can bring peace to his war-torn nation. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, head of the Pakistani army, has offered that possibility for peace, telling Karzai he can guarantee a deal with militants.
But what would a Pakistan-negotiated peace deal look like? McChrystal's amicable relationship with Kayani provided leverage for the U.S. administration in the murky world of the Pakistani military. McChrystal's successor, Gen. David Petraeus, does not enjoy the same level of influence. Pakistani army officers, speaking to AOL News on condition of anonymity, say Kayani, a military man to the core, sees Petraeus as a lesser general than McChrystal. "He doesn't have the same kind of respect for Petraeus as he did for McChrystal," says one colonel. "General McChrystal is loyal to his military roots. In a way, he is a lot like General Kayani -- mistrustful of politicians and so completely focused on military strategy that he often comes into conflict with the political class. Petraeus is more of a politician, and this annoys General Kayani."
The growing rapprochement between Kabul and Islamabad, led by Kayani himself and Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence, the spy agency accused of supporting the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, presents a host of problems for the U.S. At the forefront is Pakistan's historic reliance on jihad ideology as a tool of foreign policy. If the Pakistanis have their way in Afghanistan, it would prove that policy successful. For the U.S. administration, the Haqqani network's ties to al-Qaida make any dealings with the group suspect.
"Haqqani will have to cut its ties to al-Qaida before the U.S. will accept any negotiated peace," says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, an expert on Pakistan's security and politics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. "Kabul's growing relationship with Pakistan's military establishment is a concern for the U.S. because it is deviating from that strategic line."
Inside Pakistan, militant groups like the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) have been encouraged by McChrystal's departure. Speaking to AOL News by phone, one commander says the move is evidence that the Taliban are winning the war. "Now the American people can finally see what their media has been hiding from them," says Assadullah Haq, a senior commander with the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the TTP, speaking from an undisclosed location in North Waziristan. "The Taliban have broken the backs of the U.S. and NATO. This is the beginning of the end."
For the Taliban, this is the moment they have been waiting for, he adds, with dissension among senior U.S. officials auguring "a repeat of the Soviet experience." That bold statement comes at a time when the TTP is supposed to be on the run, wedged into North Waziristan in Pakistan's war-torn tribal areas by a series of Pakistani army offensives over the past year. But Haq adds that the future of his group is assured by the victory of its counterpart across the border. "Their victory is our victory," he says. "There is no difference between us."
Rais reads the TTP's stance as opportunistic. "If there is a means, then they will shift their focus and align themselves with the Afghan Taliban," he says, adding that the beating the TTP has taken at the hands of the Pakistani military has left them searching for a new purpose. "But I don't think the Pakistani military will accept it, and the Afghan Taliban don't need them."
Nonetheless, over the past year, the TTP -- and the Mehsud faction in particular -- has demonstrated its desire to step up a few rungs on the militant ladder, orchestrating the failed bomb attack in New York's Times Square in May, the first operation it has carried out on foreign soil. The rhetoric coming from the group has shifted away from declarations of war against the Pakistani state and focused instead on the broader global jihad, primarily against the U.S.