The Foreign Service Journal, September 2010

outside hand is trying to destabilize the country, and conspiracy theories abound.” The mistrust is so pervasive that in March 2009, U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson was forced to release a statement rebutting claims made by Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz that the United States, India and Afghanistan were fomenting the lawlessness and terrorism engulfing Pakistan. Pakistan has long been wary of irre- dentist Afghan leaders stirring up trou- ble on its western frontier. Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, explains that various Afghan govern- ments have in the past tried to carve out of Pakistan a “Greater Afghanistan” by adjoining its Pashtun territories in the west. In response, Pakistan’s ob- jective “was to build up surrogates op- posed to the Pashtunistan concept … with a pan-Islamist ideology.” As alluded to by Sec. Gates and Gen. McChrystal, Islamabad’s fear of being squeezed on both sides by an economically, militarily and demo- graphically larger adversary stokes un- easiness and encourages counter- measures. Accordingly, while the in- clusion of India in the U.S.-NATOmis- sion is understandable from a develop- ment standpoint, the move is nonethe- less directly at odds with Pakistan’s longstanding objective of securing “strategic depth” in Afghanistan. In this respect, apprehensions in Pakistan about the Afghan mission need not imply that Pakistanis perceive a stronger Afghan state as a threat to their country per se; rather, Pakistanis simply remain distrustful of the un- specified objectives America and India have for the region. In turn, Washing- ton and Islamabad’s competing visions of Indian assistance to Afghanistan constitute a threat to the survival of the Afghan government. Needed: A Comprehensive Strategy The notion that Pakistan’s stability necessitates America’s presence in Afghanistan is based on a plethora of questionable assumptions. Worse, the policy fails to address three of the re- gion’s underlying problems. First, rather than pacifying the re- gion, the Western occupation intensi- fies the bitter, decades-long antago- nism between New Delhi and Islam- abad. Second, throwing support be- hind either India or Pakistan — or cooperating with both countries simul- taneously—will prove extremely diffi- cult. Finally, widespread suspicions in Pakistan that America and India are scheming to undermine its unity per- mit Pakistani hawks to justify their short-sighted support for Islamist prox- 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 41