The diplomatic effort to mend fences between the Karzai government, hamstrung by the resurgence of conservative mujahideen forces in the Afghanistan assembly (the Majlis), and the weakened President Musharraf, has been co-ordinated by Germany as the President of the G-8 and the European Union.The foreign ministers of both countries are due to meet next week at the G-8 meeting in Germany.
Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have skirmished in recent days over the Durand boundary. The cause of the initial attacks is unclear, as boundaries mean little in these tribal hinterlands. Yet they have been used by Karzai's government to aggrandize calls for Afghan unity and turn eyes away from the corruption and lack of security that has marred the reconstruction era.
Whilst the Pakistan intelligence services are reported to support proxies to undermine foreign Islamist influence within the Taliban movement, the fundamentalists have united in preparation of a post-Karzai government. Late last year, they passed an amnesty law that absolved warlords and Taliban from the accusation of war crimes.
The prospect of a war-crime tribunal was held like a Damocles' sword over any recalcitrant Afghan political personality - be it Burhanuddin Rabbani, Yunous Qanooni, Rashid Dostum or Rasool Sayyaf. In the able hands of former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, it did wonders while ensuring Hamid Karzai's election as president and in consolidating US dominance in Afghanistan.
What was astonishing was that the amnesty bill covered even Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Hezb-e-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Clearly, an Afghan "revolt" was afoot against the existing political order imposed by the US. Implicitly, it called into question the raison d'etre of the war, since the largest group in the mujahideen-dominated 249-member lower house of Parliament consists of the elected members of Hezb-e-Islami besides a sizable number of former Taliban figures (such as Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketti) who act as the Taliban's political wing in Kabul.
Whether an opportunistic and self-serving law passed by the shifting factions of the Majlis can be placed within the grander narrative that meaningful strategies provide, is very debatable. Medium term trends, such as the re-emergence of an Afghan national interest and the reawakening of Pakistani interest in the Taliban, serve as complexities within the reconstruction process. Yet, the weakened insurgency of 2007, forced to turn to Iraq's would-be emirs for terror tips instead of exporting battlehardened jihadis, has found that the seeds of conquest are far more difficult than the neglectful 1990s. Even Pakistan is unwilling to allow Al-Qaeda a free hand in the tribal borders and has begun to take steps that will ensure the insurgents revert to puppets, a resource that can be turned on and off at will, as Kashmir's bloodshed pays testament.
By the end of 2007, the insurgent Taliban may have passed from Al-Qaeda's gloves to a smaller role as a tool in Pakistan's need to maintain pressure on the West and the internal dissenters of Musharraf, if his dictatorship holds. The instability of Pakistan and the resolution of its crisis of legitimacy will have the strongest bearing over the development of the insurgency.