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02-28-2009, 05:38 AM
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Pakistan's Worry in Afghanistan
Quote:
April 11, 2008 | 2253 GMT
MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak
Summary
Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak is visiting India amid talks of New Delhi providing counterinsurgency assistance to Kabul. Increased Indian-Afghan cooperation — at a time when Islamabad’s Taliban card has become problematic — would place the Pakistanis at a disadvantage with India, its long-time rival.
Analysis
The Indian army will train Afghanistan’s army in counterinsurgency operations — the latest development in a growing alliance between India and Afghanistan that threatens the country sandwiched between: Pakistan.
For Pakistan, it would appear that this triangular relationship is coming full circle.
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak met with his Indian counterpart A. K. Antony in the Indian capital April 10 to discuss bilateral military cooperation, The Associated Press of Pakistan reported April 11.
While the Indian defense minister ruled out any military involvement in Afghanistan, the increased cooperation between New Delhi and Kabul puts Pakistan in a weakened position with its neighbors.
Wardak also visited the 15th Corps of the Indian army headquartered in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, and will visit the Indian air force’s training command and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore in southern India. These visits are coming amid reports that Afghanistan might be considering sending its air force pilots for training to India. Moreover, Wardak said his country would seek New Delhi’s help in maintaining Soviet-era helicopter gun ships and medium helicopters to provide logistical support to its armed forces.
NATO can also use the increased interest in Indian involvement in counterterrorism with Afghanistan as leverage against Pakistan to rein in militants on its soil.
India and Afghanistan are pushing the idea that the faster India trains the Afghan army, the quicker NATO can withdraw troops from Afghanistan. India’s goal is to gain a toehold in the Afghan military establishment, creating goodwill that it can cash in when the time comes. This prospect worries Pakistan, which sees India as its biggest rival. Antony assured Wardak that India would remain “actively engaged” in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of war-wrecked Afghanistan.
While it will be some time before the relationship between the Indian and Afghan militaries is solidified in a meaningful way, even the meager assistance India provides Afghanistan would be a significant enhancement of its military involvement, which until now has been mostly related to reconstruction and development work in Afghanistan. New Delhi’s key interest in Afghanistan has to do with its security vis-a-vis its neighboring rival, Pakistan, and the transnational Islamist militant groups headquartered in Pakistan.
To best understand the impact of India’s growing support in Afghanistan, one must understand Pakistan’s recent history of backing Islamist militant groups and how Pakistan has tried to use Afghanistan to gain strategic advantage against India.
Long before the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan during the 1980s, Islamabad viewed Kabul as aligned with New Delhi. Pakistan felt sandwiched between its archrival to the east and a hostile regime to the west. Another issue was secular left-leaning Pakistani Pashtun forces were pushing for a separate homeland for their ethnic group — a demand backed by Afghanistan in those days.
To deal with these threats, the Pakistanis decided to employ the Islamist card to counter Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Durand Line — the line drawn in 1893 that divides the Pashtun people, and a continual source of tension between the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Even before 1977, when the Islamist-leaning regime of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq came to power, the Pakistanis had aligned themselves with Afghan Islamist dissidents such as Gulbadin Hekmatyar. Then came the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan starting in 1979, when Islamabad’s backing for Afghan Islamists increased, with the support of the United States and Saudi Arabia.
By the time the Soviets withdrew in defeat from Afghanistan a decade later, the Pakistanis had successfully contained ethnic Pashtun nationalism. Pakistan unwittingly sowed the seeds of a deadlier Frankenstein’s monster in the form of jihadism, which would bite the hand of its creator years later.
The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan provided the Pakistanis the opportunity to direct its attention to Indian-administered Kashmir, the disputed region on the border that Pakistan has long sought to control. A separatist rising in Kashmir gave Pakistan a chance to play a new hand in its same Islamist militant strategy. As early as the 1947-1948 India-Pakistan War, the Pakistanis employed Pashtun tribesman in its bid to seize control of the parts of Kashmir that are now under Pakistani administration.
In 1996, the Pakistani military realized its objective of installing a pro-Islamabad regime in Kabul when it supported the Taliban, the extremist Islamist movement that controlled Afghanistan until the U.S.-backed coalition drove them from power after Sept. 11, 2001. Pakistan had hoped that with its rear flank secure it could then deal with India, especially in the context of Kashmir, which it unsuccessfully tried to do in the Kargil mini-war in 1999. Between the failure of the Kargil operation and the events of 9/11, Pakistan lost its ability to project power into Kashmir and Afghanistan. The Pakistanis also began to lose control over the Islamist militant landscape with the rise of al Qaeda, which brought together the various strands of militant forces that threatened both Kabul and New Delhi.
Thus, Pakistan opened a process of normalization with India and established a cooperation of sorts with Washington against al Qaeda but continued to maintain an ambiguous stance toward the Taliban. That was because the Pashtun jihadist movement was the only available card Islamabad could play as it pursued its interests in Afghanistan and keep India out.
By offering economic and developmental assistance to Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government, India has been able to establish a sphere of influence, which has alarmed the Pakistanis. Even so, Islamabad had been able to take comfort in knowing that it had an asset in the insurgent Taliban, which they could use to block Indian moves in Afghanistan.
However, things have changed. With the complex nature of Pakistan’s alignment with the United States and the gravitation of jihadist forces toward al Qaeda, Islamabad no longer has an effective response to India’s plans for counterinsurgency cooperation with Afghanistan.
The relationship between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban has been complicated by the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan.
Moreover, Pakistan’s ability to counter India’s moves has been weakened because it is going through internal convulsions brought on as a coalition government — formed by foes of President Pervez Musharraf — swept parliamentary elections, and Musharraf no longer heads the military. If, at some point in the future, the Taliban gain a larger share of power in Afghanistan, Pakistani influence would be limited because of the break between the Taliban and Islamabad.
With the Taliban no longer in the Pakistani camp as they once were, Afghanistan could return to being hostile to Pakistan. There is significant anti-Pakistani sentiment in Afghanistan because of the perception of Pakistani interference in their country. In contrast, Afghan attitudes in general are far more positive toward India because of the increased assistance India has begun to provide.
Thus, when it comes to Pakistan and its complicated relationship with neighbors Afghanistan and India, it appears what goes around comes around.
http://www.stratfor.com
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Its really time to think of the unthinkable :
A supply route through Iran.
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 I am the DARK that Rise to Kill..And Soar to Redeem!
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