05-12-2007, 08:57 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->SOLVING PAKâAFGHAN PUZZLEÂ Â
<b>A cautionary guide to Pak-Afghan relations </b>
Khaled Ahmed ft.com
In 2001, Pakistan got the second blowback, and this could be terminal, like the one the Russians gotÂ
Pakistan has always had problems with Afghanistan, starting 1947 when Kabul refused to accept that Pakistan had been born. Pakistan got busy with India on the eastern frontier and began fighting fruitless wars in the east based on little strategic thinking. It thought it could afford to neglect Afghanistan because Afghanistan could not threaten Pakistan. Afghanistan was landlocked and was dependent on Pakistan for goods that transited through Pakistan.
The British Raj was threatened only from the west, from Afghanistan, and thought it could make the western reaches safe by a âforwardâ policy. It was defeated by the Afghans in its first effort. That was the blowback of attempting to make Afghanistan âsafeâ by annexing it. In the following decades, the western reaches remained the danger area for the Raj. The British worked hard on the region abutting on Afghanistan; and down across the Indus River at Attock, they developed an extraordinary infrastructure of roads, bridges and canals.
The British also secured themselves in the west by agreeing the Durand Line with the Amir of Afghanistan. Without the boundary, Pakistan would have had more trouble that it was to have later. The British kept the border along the Durand Line as a kind of buffer region which they administered through an extremely gifted bureaucracy. Pakistanâs decision to retain the Tribal Areas along the border as buffers was fatal because its bureaucracy was simply not competent to run them. The second misunderstanding was the retention of the buffers as âtribal museumsâ.
Nationalism kept Pakistan facing India-ward, which was strategically a mistake. The revisionist Afghan state in the west should have been seen as the real long-term danger. It had influence in Kabul and it had an economic hold over Jalalabad, the border city nearest to Pakistan. It thus trumped other neighbours who controlled Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif but were distant from Kabul. The Cold War kept Pakistan out of trouble as the United States and the Soviet Union competed with each other for Kabulâs attention. Both superpowers were soon to make their blunders by walking in. Pakistan too was to make its blunder in their wake.
The Soviet Union âownedâ Mazar-e-Sharif, which gave it the illusion of owning Afghanistan. It walked into Afghanistan after the âcommunistâ Afghans educated in Moscow took Kabul and then started killing one another. The other âownersâ of Afghan border cities got ready to confront the Soviet incursion. The United States wanted to avenge Vietnam; it too weighed in. When the Soviets were defeated and made to run away, Pakistan thought it had won the war.
Pakistan had lost all the wars in the east because of the mandated ânationalist-revisionistâ ban on strategic thinking. It thought it had finally won the war in Afghanistan in 1988 fighting with mercenaries funded by the US and Saudi Arabia. It extended this solipsism to Kashmir and deployed the same non-state âmilitiasâ there. When the blowback struck Pakistan in the 1990s, both ventures began to look like another defeat. The blowback came in the shape of loss of internal sovereignty. A kind of duplication of the âdomain of disorderâ of Afghanistan became evident.
Pakistan had no strategic position vis-Ã -vis India. After each defeat, officers began vaguely to hint at the need to have a strategy. It did not happen. Instead India forced Pakistan to adopt the doctrine of âstrategic depthâ which was to be located in Afghanistan. It meant annexing Afghanistan â one again through proxy warriors â and running it through puppets. Afghanistan seduced Pakistan the same way it had the Brits and the Russians. In 2001, Pakistan got the second blowback, and this could be terminal, like the one the Russians got.
Meanwhile, Pakistan had collected another defeat at Kargil in 1999 before it could collect its wits and cope with what was coming next from the western border. The government fell, as if in imitation of what had happened in Moscow earlier. The second blowback was the loss of the âbuffersâ and the beginning of the creeping process of Talibanisation threatening areas as far as away as Islamabad. The state was responding to the nihilism of Islamic doctrines. The âbufferâ defeated the Pakistan army in 2006 in the only war it had fought after the defeat of 1971.
Then the remaining superpower invaded Afghanistan together with the NATO armies. Six years later in 2007, the states who have sent their troops there are barely willing to stay the course. Only the US, Canada and the UK are steadfastly facing the anarchism of the Taliban who are Pushtuns sans frontiers as far as Pakistan is concerned. Till 2004, the US gave no money to follow on the daisy-cutters it had hurled on the country. After that the process of bogging down which the US army gets into has prevented reconstruction.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>A cautionary guide to Pak-Afghan relations </b>
Khaled Ahmed ft.com
In 2001, Pakistan got the second blowback, and this could be terminal, like the one the Russians gotÂ
Pakistan has always had problems with Afghanistan, starting 1947 when Kabul refused to accept that Pakistan had been born. Pakistan got busy with India on the eastern frontier and began fighting fruitless wars in the east based on little strategic thinking. It thought it could afford to neglect Afghanistan because Afghanistan could not threaten Pakistan. Afghanistan was landlocked and was dependent on Pakistan for goods that transited through Pakistan.
The British Raj was threatened only from the west, from Afghanistan, and thought it could make the western reaches safe by a âforwardâ policy. It was defeated by the Afghans in its first effort. That was the blowback of attempting to make Afghanistan âsafeâ by annexing it. In the following decades, the western reaches remained the danger area for the Raj. The British worked hard on the region abutting on Afghanistan; and down across the Indus River at Attock, they developed an extraordinary infrastructure of roads, bridges and canals.
The British also secured themselves in the west by agreeing the Durand Line with the Amir of Afghanistan. Without the boundary, Pakistan would have had more trouble that it was to have later. The British kept the border along the Durand Line as a kind of buffer region which they administered through an extremely gifted bureaucracy. Pakistanâs decision to retain the Tribal Areas along the border as buffers was fatal because its bureaucracy was simply not competent to run them. The second misunderstanding was the retention of the buffers as âtribal museumsâ.
Nationalism kept Pakistan facing India-ward, which was strategically a mistake. The revisionist Afghan state in the west should have been seen as the real long-term danger. It had influence in Kabul and it had an economic hold over Jalalabad, the border city nearest to Pakistan. It thus trumped other neighbours who controlled Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif but were distant from Kabul. The Cold War kept Pakistan out of trouble as the United States and the Soviet Union competed with each other for Kabulâs attention. Both superpowers were soon to make their blunders by walking in. Pakistan too was to make its blunder in their wake.
The Soviet Union âownedâ Mazar-e-Sharif, which gave it the illusion of owning Afghanistan. It walked into Afghanistan after the âcommunistâ Afghans educated in Moscow took Kabul and then started killing one another. The other âownersâ of Afghan border cities got ready to confront the Soviet incursion. The United States wanted to avenge Vietnam; it too weighed in. When the Soviets were defeated and made to run away, Pakistan thought it had won the war.
Pakistan had lost all the wars in the east because of the mandated ânationalist-revisionistâ ban on strategic thinking. It thought it had finally won the war in Afghanistan in 1988 fighting with mercenaries funded by the US and Saudi Arabia. It extended this solipsism to Kashmir and deployed the same non-state âmilitiasâ there. When the blowback struck Pakistan in the 1990s, both ventures began to look like another defeat. The blowback came in the shape of loss of internal sovereignty. A kind of duplication of the âdomain of disorderâ of Afghanistan became evident.
Pakistan had no strategic position vis-Ã -vis India. After each defeat, officers began vaguely to hint at the need to have a strategy. It did not happen. Instead India forced Pakistan to adopt the doctrine of âstrategic depthâ which was to be located in Afghanistan. It meant annexing Afghanistan â one again through proxy warriors â and running it through puppets. Afghanistan seduced Pakistan the same way it had the Brits and the Russians. In 2001, Pakistan got the second blowback, and this could be terminal, like the one the Russians got.
Meanwhile, Pakistan had collected another defeat at Kargil in 1999 before it could collect its wits and cope with what was coming next from the western border. The government fell, as if in imitation of what had happened in Moscow earlier. The second blowback was the loss of the âbuffersâ and the beginning of the creeping process of Talibanisation threatening areas as far as away as Islamabad. The state was responding to the nihilism of Islamic doctrines. The âbufferâ defeated the Pakistan army in 2006 in the only war it had fought after the defeat of 1971.
Then the remaining superpower invaded Afghanistan together with the NATO armies. Six years later in 2007, the states who have sent their troops there are barely willing to stay the course. Only the US, Canada and the UK are steadfastly facing the anarchism of the Taliban who are Pushtuns sans frontiers as far as Pakistan is concerned. Till 2004, the US gave no money to follow on the daisy-cutters it had hurled on the country. After that the process of bogging down which the US army gets into has prevented reconstruction.
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