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Pakistan holds the key to peace in post-US Afghanistan

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India and Afghanistan took a step close to each other after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hamid Karzai initialed three significant bilateral documents on Tuesday including the all encompassing strategic partnership agreement. Without prejudice towards commitment of New Delhi and Kabul to cooperate with each other, the strategic partnership agreement would be reduced to just a piece of paper till such time neighbour Pakistan continues to export terror to both the countries. It has now been proved beyond doubt that terror groups are strategic arms of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) with dedicated groups like Jalaludding-Sirajuddin Haqqani group and Taliban targeting Afghanistan, and Lashkar-e-Toiba focused on India. Even the bilateral agreements on mining and hydrocarbon exploration have no meaning until Pakistan sponsored terror stops in Afghanistan.

Much as India would want to stabilize Kabul, it is incumbent on the international community particularly the US to put pressure on Pakistan Army to dismantle the terror apparatus in that country so that peace prevails across the Durand Line. The fact is since the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, America has been doling out aid in the name of security and economic assistance to Islamabad in the hope that Pakistan turns off the terror tap.

However, ISI has different plans and has brutally targeted Indian Embassy and Indians in Kabul thrice during 2008-2010. It had the audacity to target American Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul on September 13, 2011 using the Haqqani network that killed seven people and injured 13. Although Washington has made noises about stopping assistance to Pakistan this year till it behaves on terror front, past instances show that Islamabad would like to play Russian roulette once again and force US to cough up assistance or promise that all hell would break loose in the nuclear armed Islamic nation.

America doles out some $2.75 billion worth of security assistance and compensation and another $1.5 billion economic assistance to Islamabad each year. But despite US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton virtually having a three-hour slanging match with Pakistan foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar on UNGA sidelines last month over Islamabad covert support to terror in Afghanistan, the ground situation is not expected to improve in near future.

While India would like to ensure that Kabul stands on its feet after decades of civil war and terror, it is hamstrung as it does not have either a land or a sea corridor to stabilize Afghanistan with Pakistan having no intentions of opening the Wagah-Khyber land route for New Delhi.

Iran’s Chahbahar port on the Gulf of Oman is an option but both China and Pakistan have informally conveyed to India that it would activate the Gwadar port if New Delhi moves to develop the port in Sistan province across the Baluchistan border.

India has close ties with Afghanistan’s neighbour Tajikistan but again only the air bridge across Amu Darya is available and that too with the help of Russia. So with Pakistan Army continuing to treat Afghanistan as its strategic depth, the bottom line is that Islamabad, like it or lump it virtually holds all the political and economic levers to land-locked Kabul. It is nobody’s case to say that New Delhi should wait for Pakistan to turn off the terror switch before it seriously invests in building road and economic infrastructure in Afghanistan. New Delhi has build the Zalranj-Delaram highway in eastern Afghanistan against all odds, constructed the 220 KV double circuit transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri in Baghlan province to Kabul and is now bidding for iron ore mining at Hajigak near Kabul but largely due to peace enforced by US led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). With US steadfast on its plan to pull out troops from Afghanistan by 2014, Afghanistan would yet again be at the mercy of Pakistan sponsored terror groups including Taliban until and unless the global community makes it clear to20Islamabad that terrorism is unacceptable as state policy.

It is not that the US or other western powers do not see through the Pakistan game. Gone are days of bonhomie between Rawalpindi GHQ and Pentagon. Even Pakistan’s closest ally Saudi Arabia has now given up on Islamabad as domestic problems mount for Al Saud house. The signing of the strategic partnership agreement also indicates that US has abandoned the pro-Pakistan Richard Holbrooke-Joe Biden line of the past and reposed their confidence in Hamid Karzai.
While there are all indication that US and the international community will ratchet pressure on Pakistan on terror front, Islamabad has now started to play the China card by vowing to help Beijing wipe out only Uighur terrorists in restive Xinjiang province. With China having the ambitions of becoming the next superpower and global peacemaker, the international community should also engage Beijing to rein in Islamabad so that terror swamps are drained in Pakistan and Afghanistan polity gets stabilized.

The assassination of former Afghanistan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Karzai appointed peace and reconciliation council, in suicide bombing engineered by Taliban on September 20, 2011 shows that mayhem and terror are never far away from Kabul. It is time that the US and the international community took some hard steps to convince Islamabad that its double game on terrorism must end. Until the security and economic assistance to Pakistan is conditional on the steps it takes to purge the radical Islamists from ISI and dismantle the linkages between Army and terror groups, Afghanistan would continue to be on the razor edge even if it signs strategic agreements with half the world.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan holds all the cards : Inside Story
 
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Author seems to be the one who knew how will it start and how will it end (Afghan Issue) simplistic article in short.

As for as cards are concern, world knows it - who's the bearer
 
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Forget India. What are you going to do to change the world opinion that Pakistan is extending tactical support to insurgents?

You mean the opinion in US and Bharat, not the world? We don't actually really care. 85% of your countrymen believed Iraq had WMDs. Your people are gullible who can be made to believe what your government wants you to believe. You've yet to provide any evidence for your allegations to begin with, so it doesn't really matter what you say. Here you've made yourself believe a conspiracy theory and a lie sanctioned by your government, just like with Iraq. So we don't actually give a sh*t what you think about us.
 
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It is time for u.s to get out of afghanistan, be a sport and accept that u failed. u r good as a killing machine nothing else.

TARIQ
 
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Forget India. What are you going to do to change the world opinion that Pakistan is extending tactical support to insurgents?

If we did then NATO forces would have been in much deeper shyt than they r right now.. and we wouldnt have lost 3000+ soldiers n 40,000 civilians nor 70 billion$ worth infra or crippled our economy.
 
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^ Dude, why bother your time appeasing this guy anyway?
 
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Follow China’s footsteps in Afghanistan
M K Bhadrakumar

Reuters featured a story on China’s involvement in Afghanistan just when the Delhi newspapers are reporting that India just walked into the ‘great game’ in the Hindu Kush. Reading it from Thiruvanathapuram in the southern-most tip of India gives a surreal feeling. How much at variance are the preoccupations of our pundits in Delhi and the throbbing concerns of small-town folks in India! Yet another foreign-policy disconnect?

The Afghan policies of China and India present a study in contrast. China is also a regional power like India and, arguably, China is not lacking ‘influence’ with the Hamid Karzai set-up in Kabul, either. Yet, Reuters’ thesis is that China is clear-headed and down-to-earth about its priorities and doesn’t want to follow the footsteps of Great Britain, USSR or USA.

China also is averse to turning that desperately poor country into a turf for testing out hubris or for settling scores with adversaries like Japan or the US. China is suspicious of the US and Nato’s intentions in Central Asia (and the Islamists eyeing Xinjiang), but is confident about its intellectual capacity to optimally safeguard its vital interests and core concerns, while husbanding its resources from being squandered away in futile adventures. Funnily, it is China that is credited with an overbearing security establishment that dominates foreign-policy - and not India!
Economic diplomacy is China’s preferred weapon. Unlike the case with India, US is pressing China for military involvement in Afghanistan and for providing a transportation route to that country. India, on the other hand, has been knocking at the American door for the past 6 years for some little role on the military front in Kabul, but US kept saying ‘Nyet’. :D
China is sceptical of the wisdom of opening the Wakhan Corridor lest ‘foreign devils’ appear on the Silk Road. Whereas, India which is geographically at a disadvantage, still wants to flex muscles and project its power once again into Afghanistan.
India doesn’t dip into historical memory.
Some disturbing questions remain. What was the final outcome of the enormous commitment of resources to the Najibullah regime or the Northern Alliance? Najib got overthrown. NA was all but vanquished despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that Indian mandarins spent on the ‘warlords’.
Will history be any different this time? Why don’t we trust diplomacy? We too claim to have a robust economic diplomacy. The best course would have been to leave Pakistan to vainly try to manipulate the fiercely independent Afghans, and ultimately collapse from sheer exhaustion - sooner rather than later? The tons of money that is going to be spent on the Afghan warlords could have been used to develop the backward regions in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, which India claims as its territories:agree:

Follow China’s footsteps in Afghanistan - Indian Punchline
 
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