The Foreign Service Journal, September 2010

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 The Rivalry In the West, many defense officials, policymakers and an- alysts endorse a long-term commitment to Afghanistan based on the foreign policy tenet that extremists can prosper in un- governed parts of the world and attack the United States. An- other argument strengthening the belief that America and its allies must stabilize Afghanistan is the fear that Pakistan’s nu- clear weapons could fall into militant hands. In the July-August 2009 issue of The American Interest , Stephen Biddle, a civilian adviser to the former commander of U.S. troops on the Afghan front, General Stanley Mc- Chrystal, bluntly articulated the argument that America must prevent Afghanistan’s radicalism from engulfing Pakistan: “In- stability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the sec- ular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from ag- gravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaida nuclear-armed sanctuary there.” That kind of thinking has clearly influenced the Obama administra- tion. Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee last December, U.S. Secretary of De- fense Robert Gates warned: “Fail- ure in Afghanistan would mean a Taliban takeover of much, if not most, of the country and likely a re- newed civil war. Taliban-ruled areas could in short order become once again a sanctuary for al-Qaida, as well as a staging area for resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan.” That Afghanistan’s internal security situation presents chal- lenges to Pakistan is correct, as far as the analysis goes. But neither Biddle nor Gates explains how those challenges ne- cessitate America’s military presence in the region or how that presence enhances Pakistan’s stability. In fact, their rationale obscures several important questions: To what extent do for- eign military operations in the region — and Pakistan’s ac- quiescence to Western policies — spawn more recruits for al-Qaida–linked groups seeking to provoke a conflict between Pakistan and India? To what degree do India and America have similar vested interests in war-torn Afghanistan’s resur- rection? And why has Pakistan not gone after the original Afghan Taliban, much less al-Qaida, for the past nine years? It is an open secret that hawkish elements affiliated with the ISI have taken no substantive action against Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura, the North Waziristan-based Haqqani network, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami Group and other warlords commanding Afghanistan’s insurgency from inside Pakistan. Pakistan’s duplicity was vividly illustrated last February when the ISI seized Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, one of the Taliban’s top field commanders, but Islamabad re- fused to extradite him to Washington. According to former U.N. envoy Kai Eide, Baradar was in communication with the Afghan government at the time of his arrest — a sign that the ISI may have sought to thwart substantive peace talks that did not have Islamabad’s approval. Additionally, U.S., Indian and Afghan intelligence officials all allege that the ISI may have had a role in the July 2008 and October 2009 bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul. And Gilles Dorronsoro, an authority on Afghanistan at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes that Pakistan uses the Afghan Taliban against domestic Baluchi insurgents. As if Pakistan’s deleterious policies were not harmful enough to the Afghan mission, it is believed (though rarely discussed openly) that India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, uses consulates in Afghanistan to secretly funnel weapons to separatists in Baluchistan. C. Christine Fair, an assistant professor at Georgetown University and a sen- ior fellow with the Combating Ter- rorism Center at West Point, said in an online roundtable convened by Foreign Affairs : “I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan’s apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security com- petition with India ... Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan.” Many in the Pakistani military al- lege that India assists Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in the Fed- erally Administered Tribal Areas by smuggling weapons though Afghanistan. “What does an Indian consulate do in Afghanistan when there is no Indian population?” a Pakistani intelligence official asked the New York Times. After six decades of mutual hostility, three full-scale wars and numerous border skirmishes, it appears that the enmity between India and Pakistan, as well as the focal point of their proxy terrorism, has shifted from the disputed territory of Kashmir to the battlefields of Afghanistan. “In Afghanistan, as well as in Kashmir,” Muhammad Amir Rana argues in The A to Z of Jehadi Organizations in Pakistan (2004, translated by Saba Ansari), “Pakistan’s intelligence agencies hit a jackpot when they realized the efficacy of covert warfare as a potent method of bleeding a stronger adversary while keeping the element of plausible deniability.” Thrusting U.S. and NATO troops into this maelstrom of competing strategic interests and covert proxy warfighting (between two nuclear-armed powers, no less) is profoundly imprudent. Strategically, however, because of Pakistan’s un- stinting, sustained support for extremists, some analysts argue The clash of competing strategic interests between Islamabad and Washington goes unanswered by present U.S. policy.