Chapter 2 Pakistan’s Afghanistan Predicament
By– Aryaman Bhatnagar and Taruni Kumar


Pakistan has for long been wary of Afghanistan and its relationship with other countries in the neighbourhood, especially India. Kabul’s refusal to recognise Pakistan as a state in the initial years of its existence, demand for Pashtunistan and sporadic military forays in the early 1950s have been legitimate sources of acute paranoia in Pakistan.
From the mid-1970s onwards, Pakistan sought to counter this threat by supporting Islamists within Afghanistan. The Afghan Jihad in the 1980s provided the best opportunity for Pakistan to use these Islamists to leverage events in Afghanistan. The gamble paid off somewhat as the departure of the Soviet forces and the ensuing civil war in the country brought the Taliban, a regime perceived by Pakistan to be favourable to its interests, to power. Pakistan felt that with the Taliban in power it could be at the cusp of running Afghanistan as a proxy state.
The‘victory’didnot,however,lastlongandwhentheUScame to bomb the Taliban and al Qaeda strongholds in October 2001, Pakistan had to do a hasty backtrack and join the ‘Global War on Terrorism.’ The Taliban were driven out within weeks, leaving another set of Pashtuns and Tajiks, mostly anti-Taliban and anti- Pakistan, in control of Kabul and other provinces in Afghanistan.
But with shrewd posturing and duplicitous moves, Pakistan crept back, first sheltering and then sustaining the resurgence of the Taliban and its allies as the US diverted its attention to Iraq. As the US begins its drawdown in the next few years, Pakistan’s role has once again become central to the overall question of stability in Afghanistan.
The question is will Pakistan play a positive role in helping Afghanistan deal with multiple transitions? Or continue its traditional, contentious policy of supporting a pro-Pakistan and anti-India regime in Kabul with the help of its ‘strategic assets’—a well-known euphemism for terrorist and extremist groups fostered by the Pakistan Army.

To be continued...