Pakistan's war with the US over Afghanistan

Amir Taheri:

We can’t hide the fact: America and Pakistan are at war over Afghanistan.

 

The Pakistanis want a big voice in the government in Kabul. The United States backs Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who’s determined to prevent that.

Initially, this was a proxy war. The Pakistanis recruited, armed and deployed Afghans who wished to fight America. In the last year or so, however, we’ve seen more direct Pakistani involvement both in command and control and as an actual presence in anti-American operations, such as the recent attacks on the US embassy and other targets in Kabul.

 

The US side of the war initially was limited to drone attacks against suspected Afghan and Arab terrorist hideouts in Pakistani-administered tribal areas. But that changed when a US special-ops team went into Pakistan proper to kill Osama bin Laden.

Reports also say that the US military is preparing for “search and snatch” operations in Pakistani Baluchistan, where the Taliban has its headquarters.

According to the doctrine taught at Pakistani military colleges, Afghanistan provides the “hinterland” that Pakistan needs to face its historic enemy, India. Afghanistan is also the vital link between Pakistan and Islamic Central Asia.

  

More important, a hostile Afghanistan could play the Pushtun card against Pakistan. Under the British Empire, the Pushtuns were divided between Afghanistan and what was to become Pakistan in 1947. Since the 1950s, a pan-Pushtun movement has thrived on both sides of the border.

Thus, Pakistan feels it must have a say in Kabul, if only to keep the pan-Pushtun demons under control.

Pakistani doctrine also doesn’t allow for an Afghanistan allied to hostile powers, so Pakistan supported the Afghan “mujahedin” against the Soviet-backed communist regime in Kabul.

 

When that regime collapsed in 1992, the new Afghan government, led by Burhaneddin Rabbani, denied Pakistan a share in the spoils of victory. So Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence raised an Afghan force -- the Taliban, which came to power in 1996.

In 2001, Pakistan ended up the loser when Americans ousted the Taliban and installed forces hostile to Islamabad.

 

Despite that setback, then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf thought America, his putative ally, would prevent such hostile powers as India and Iran from dominating Afghanistan and would secure Pakistan a voice in the new Afghan government.

The Musharraf calculation lost all logic when the Obama administration chose what amounts to a cut-and-run strategy in Afghanistan. Faced with the prospect of a total US military withdrawal by 2013, the Afghan power elite, including the Karzai clan, is looking for new allies and protectors -- leading to a dramatic upsurge in Iranian, Indian and even Russian influence in Kabul. Iran and India are the second- and third-biggest aid donors to Afghanistan, just behind America. Tehran also delivers large sums of cash to Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians.

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It is a fact that is becoming harder to ignore.  We need to deal with it openly and quit pretending it does not exist.  Pakistan thinks the US can't afford to operate without it, but Pakistan could wind up being a big loser of more than just US aid.   They maybe be pushing the US closer to India and an independent Afghanistan may choose India over the corrupt culture of Pakistan.