(IPS) analysis

Pakistan's dream of gaining dividends from its support for the Taliban, which captured the Afghan capital in Sept 1996, has been shattered by its dramatic withdrawal from Kabul this week.

Indeed, the Taliban's strategic withdrawal Monday to the southern portions of the country - and the opposition Northern Alliance's taking of Kabul and other cities - has also claimed as casualties key portions of Pakistan's foreign policy.

After all, Islamabad saw the Taliban as a stabilising force after it took Kabul on Sept 27 1996. Thus, the government of then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto declared that peace in Afghanistan would be beneficial because it addressed Pakistan's security fears and would boost trade in the region.

Today, with the Taliban retreating into trenches in the mountains to fight a guerrilla war, Pakistan's foreign policy experts, as part of the country's reshaped policy, have been playing a different role: working on a post-Taliban set-up and struggling to create a broad-based, friendly government in neighbouring Afghanistan.

But despite Islamabad's efforts to play a key role in any post-Taliban administration, Pakistan has lost the huge leverage it had for being the closest frontline state in the launch of US air strikes in Afghanistan.

This is because the United States can now use the bases under the control of the Northern Alliance in its military actions in Afghanistan.

International isolation

In the diplomatic arena too, some analysts doubt that Pakistan can still could force its point of view in the US-led 'war against terrorism' after the inroads made by the Alliance in the last few days.

In the end, Pakistan supported Taliban in the face of its international isolation - but even then did not enjoy reciprocity from it.

''Pakistan's foreign policy has been facing a dilemma for a long time on whether to delink itself from Taliban or not,'' explained Bashir Ahmad, senior research fellow of the Institute of Regional Studies.

''One of Pakistan's rationales was that by engaging the Taliban it can also moderate them. But it failed to exercise its influence even in getting back (from Afghanistan) terrorists involved in criminal activities in Pakistan, and in forcing them to hand over Osama,'' he added.

''Instead, in international opinion today, a close nexus has been established that Osama is Taliban and Taliban Pakistan,'' Ahmad pointed out.

The added worries for the country, as explained by the English-language The News on Wednesday, are: 'Taliban are on the run. So where will they go? The obvious and only place one can think of is Pakistan.'

''If that happens, (President Pervez) Musharraf's military regime will have to make critical decisions that may eventually decide their fate,'' it added.

The newspaper advised, ''If Pakistan would like to remain a partner in the international coalition, the Taliban influx into our territory will have to be stopped, by military force if need be.''

Moderate elements

Thus far, and even after the fall of Kabul, Pakistan remains the only country that recognises the Taliban. It has stuck to this position despite its support for the US-led attacks on Afghanistan - in the hope that some moderate elements from within the Taliban could become part of a future government.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recognised the Taliban government in 1997. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates followed suit, but both severed ties after the Sept 11 terror attacks in the United States, which Washington blames on Osama.

A foreign office spokesman said Pakistan's position in the past has been that it recognises as the government of Afghanistan anybody who is in control of Kabul and controls majority of the country.

''Pakistan's government will take a decision in that regard. At the moment, the position remains as it was in the past,'' he said this week.

He called for an early political dispensation in Afghanistan, saying it should not plunge again into the bloody civil strife that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and prompted internal infighting that led to Taliban control in 1996.

Musharraf has also called for Pashtun representation in the post-Taliban government, saying that at the moment the Northern Alliance Forces do not have any Pashtun representation.

''This must emerge because then it will be multi-ethnic as the Pashtuns are the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan,'' he emphasised here.

''There ought to be a UN force,'' Musharraf added. ''In a future dispensation when these operations culminate and political arrangements come to place, there ought to be some kind of UN force mainly.''

This, he said, should ''also be specially composed of OIC (Organisation of Islamic Countries) for the purpose of giving stability and balance to whatever new political arrangement takes place''.

Safeguard interests

But despite such pronouncements, Gohar Ayub Khan, former foreign minister, said that the situation in Afghanistan seems to be getting out of Pakistan's hands.

Now, he said, Islamabad needs to employ extra diplomatic skills to safeguard its interests because it is facing all the other countries opposed to the Taliban.

Looking back, he says Pakistan's over-involvement in Afghanistan was forced by the ''strategic situation'' in the region.

In 1979 when Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, he says, Pakistan had to join international coalition to defend itself because it lay between the Soviets' next target of reaching the warm waters of Arabian Sea.

In 1996, it had to support the Taliban to end civil war in Afghanistan and in the belief that the resulting stability could generate trade activity and allow Pakistan to be linked with the Central Asian republics through Afghanistan.

Maj Gen (Red) Rafiuddin Ahmed, vice president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, cited three factors that forced Pakistan to support the Taliban.

''One, Afghanistan's large Pashtun population having affinities with them, second, the strong religious parties in the country supporting the Taliban and third, the Taliban opposition getting support from the Indians,'' he added.

''These factors solicited Pakistan support which was distasteful but desirable, a necessary evil. Pakistan was hoping that the things would improve. But Osama bin Laden only aggravated the situation,'' Ahmed said.

Bad habit

Meantime, calls are rising for Pakistan to take a closer look at how it handled Afghanistan.

''It is also time for Pakistan to review its own future Afghan policy,'' said The Nation , conservative English daily.

''Pakistan had gotten into the bad habit of placing all its Afghan eggs in one basket, with the result that such a twist of fortune as the present has left us with little influence on events in Kabul and the prospects of an unfriendly government there,'' it argued.

In the changed environment, Dr Babar Shah, an Afghan expert in the Institute of Strategic Studies, said: ''Pakistan's major interests remain to bring in stability and to restore law and order so that social and economic infrastructure can be established for the welfare of the people.''

These interests include the return of some 3 million Afghan refugees to their homeland, Shah added. ''After that, Pakistan could look beyond Afghanistan by building a regional economic bloc.''