Critical Triangle continues....

It was always seen through the Soviet angle during the Cold War, and the terrorism angle during the War on Terror. Yet Afghanistan has strengthened (during the Cold War) or fractured (during the War on Terror) the US-Pakistan relationship like no other external force has. While India has always been the target of Pakistan’s revisionist tendencies, Afghanistan has invariably ended up the victim.

Till the Soviet invasion in 1979 it was largely seen as a buffer state, conferring frontline responsibilities on Pakistan. US military aid— specifically the US aide memoire of 1954 and the creation of alliance systems—strengthened the Pakistan Army’s position in the internal struggle of the 1950s that led to the 1958 army takeover in Pakistan.

This irretrievably securitised the national interests of Pakistan and turned it into a security state, where economic growth was dependent on its military viability. It was this outdated colonial attitude that saw Afghanistan turn to the Soviet Union for military and economic aid in the 1950s. It was this fatal decision that included higher training of Afghan officers in the USSR that led to the radicalisation of the military, the subsequent communist coup in 1978, and finally the Soviet Invasion in 1979.

Yet as this chapter has demonstrated, even the Soviet invasion did not bring about a strategic confluence between Pakistan and the US, but merely short term agreement on the modalities. If anything, events originating from Afghanistan have been critical in salvaging US-Pakistan bilateral relations twice during the bilateral nadir (sanctions after the Zia-ul Haq takeover in 1977, and Musharraf’s coup in 1999). The 1979 Soviet invasion effectively ended the deep antipathy the Carter administration had for the Zia-ul Haq dictatorship and, the events of 11 September 2001 produced a similar effect. It can, therefore, be said that while Afghanistan has never been a US peacetime priority, it has always ended up become a top wartime priority.

To be continued...