Pakistan News And Discussion-12

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Pak-Afghan Relations   
Great game 3.0 </b>
Alexis Debat
The scars of the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship run far deeper than any jirga can reach 

It is hard to condemn President Musharraf for his lukewarm commitment to the Pakistan-Afghanistan “peace jirga”, which he personally concluded this week. In fact, it is difficult to imagine why he endorsed this public relations event in the first place. As all of us know, the road to hell in the Pashtun areas is paved with jirga statements, “peace agreements” and commitments to reconciliation. Those in Kabul or Washington who expected a true peace process to emerge from this half-baked exercise in tribal diplomacy will have a long and rainy way home. The scars of the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship run far deeper than any jirga can reach; the remedies offered so far speak volumes about the true commitment of Afghanistan’s friends and protectors to its edifice.

It is striking to see how little has changed in the relationship between Afghanistan and its eastern neighbor in the past century. Kipling himself would feel at home in the intricacies and verbal logorrhea of bilateral relations. This is because the stakes have not changed, and they are still of the tallest order. If Kashmir sits at the apex of Pakistan’s existentialism, Afghanistan is the cornerstone of its geopolitical ambitions. To put it bluntly, Pakistan’s capability to control Afghanistan is what gives the former its strategic value. First, as a gateway to the “heartland” (a term coined in 1904 by British geographer Sir Harold Mackinder to label the Eurasian landmass), and second, as a crossroads between the two most crucial regions of the 21st century: Asia and the Middle East. This, in turn, raises Afghanistan’s own stakes in the relationship to a level nothing short of existentialist, as Pakistan has made clear for the past 30 years that it would not allow a viable Afghanistan outside of its orbit. At the same time, Kabul’s centralized and chronically inefficient government continues to invite the sponsorship and various agendas or timetables of many foreign powers.

The strategic “game”, then, is almost the same. And it is nothing but “great”. But the players are new, and Pakistan’s hand in weaker than ever. In one of the most dramatic miscalculations in modern history, Islamabad paid the highest price for its failure to put Osama Bin Laden on a plane to Washington by losing its most valued strategic asset: its unique and historical leverage on Afghanistan. The United States abruptly and blindly replaced the Taliban with an inefficient and barely legitimate government supported by Pakistan’s enemies: the Northern Alliance and India. The latter, which since the mid-90s had been funding the former, moved very quickly to consolidate this strategic advantage and turn Afghanistan into its own protectorate. It sent a military unit, the “Border Roads Organization”, to build infrastructure across the border from Pakistan. It opened more consulates and trade missions in Afghanistan than in the United States (including in such odd locations as Spin Boldak, from where the Indians are rumored to fund and arm Baloch insurgents in Pakistan). The message was clear: by denying Pakistan its strategic depth and its geopolitical ambitions, India is gaining crucial leverage against a potential flare-up on Kashmir; or even, once NATO and the US leave, positioning itself to impose on Pakistan the dreaded “grand bargain”: Afghanistan against Kashmir.

One of President Pervez Musharraf’s main foreign policy goals in the past 6 years has been to try and leverage the Taliban movement to undermine what is essentially an adversary government in Kabul. So when US officials kindly ask the Pakistani government to step up its efforts against Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal areas, it simply asks Pakistan to send its army to war against its own people to salvage a regime supported by its enemies. Everything you need to know about the state of US foreign policy lies in this fundamental, inexplicable denial that in South Asia, as in the Middle East, there is no escaping the big picture. A “grand bargain” between Pakistan, India and Afghanistan is possible, but it will involve simultaneous compromises (including Taliban factions in the Afghan government), tradeoffs (a comprehensive agreement on Kashmir) and a bold military effort (in Pakistan’s tribal areas). The irony is that only the US government can operate on such a broad and ambitious level to deliver peace in the region, yet at the same time no foreign power is currently less capable of delivering this kind of Kissingerian diplomacy.

<i>Alexis Debat is a Senior Fellow at The Nixon Center, Washington DC where
he directs the Centre’s programme on Terrorism and National Security. He
is contributing editor of The National Interest and formerly a counter-
terrorism official in the French government </i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->