Pak India Relations Vis

8/11/2019 Pak India Relations Vis

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Pak India relations Vis-a-vis Afghanistan

The hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in

Afghanistan. Most observers in the West view the Afghanistan conflict as a battle between

the U.S. and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on one hand, and

al-Qaida and the Taliban on the other. In reality this has long since ceased to be the case.

Instead our troops are now caught up in a complex war shaped by two pre-existing and

overlapping conflicts: one local and internal, the other regional.

Within Afghanistan, the war is viewed primarily as a Pashtun rebellion against President

Hamid Karzai‟s regime, which has empowered three other ethnic groups— the Tajiks, Uzbeks

and Hazaras of the north — to a degree that the Pashtuns resent. For example, the Tajiks, whoconstitute only 27% of the Afghan population, still make up 70% of the officers in the

Afghan army. Although Karzai himself is a Pashtun, many of his fellow tribesmen view his

presence as mere window-dressing for a U.S.-devised realignment of long-established power

relations in the country, dating back to 2001 when the U.S. toppled the overwhelmingly

Pashtun Taliban.

Beyond this indigenous conflict looms the much more dangerous hostility between the two

regional powers — both armed with nuclear weapons: India and Pakistan. Their rivalry is

particularly flammable as they vie for influence over Afghanistan. Compared to that

prolonged and deadly contest, the U.S. and ISAF are playing little more than a bit part — and

they, unlike the Indians and Pakistanis, are heading for the exit.

Since the Partition of the Subcontinent in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought three wars —

the most recent in 1971 — and they seemed on the verge of going nuclear against each other

during a crisis in 1999, when Pakistani troops crossed a ceasefire line and occupied 500

square miles of Indian Kashmir, including a Himalayan border post near the town of Kargil.

As tensions rose, the Pakistanis took ominous steps with their nuclear arsenal. President Bill

Clinton mediated a solution. In intense negotiations at Blair House in Washington over the

Fourth of July weekend, Clinton persuaded Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to order a pullback

of his country‟s forces to the Pakistani side of the line. That concession cost Nawaz his job

and, very nearly, his life. The army commander, Pervez Musharraf, mounted a coup and

sentenced Nawaz to death. Clinton intervened and Nawaz was exiled to Saudi Arabia.



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It is easy to understand why Pakistan might feel insecure. India‟s population (1.2 billion) and

its economy (GDP of $1.4 trillion) are about eight times the size of Pakistan‟s (180 million

Pakistanis generating an annual GDP of only $210 billion). During the period of India‟s

greatest growth, which lasted from 2006 to 2010, there were four years during which the

annual increase in the Indian economy was almost equal to the entire Pakistani economy.

In the eyes of the world, never has the contrast between the two countries appeared so stark

as it is now: one is widely perceived as the next great superpower, famous for its software

geniuses, its Bollywood babes, its fast-growing economy and super-rich magnates; the other

written off as a failed state, a world center of Islamic radicalism, the hiding place of Osama

bin Laden, and the only ally of the U.S. whose airspace Washington has been ready to violate

and whose villages it regularly bombs. However unfair this stereotyping may be, it‟s not

surprising that many Pakistanis see their massive neighbor as threatening the very existence

of their state.

To defend themselves, Pakistani planners long ago developed a doctrine of “strategic depth.”

The idea had its origins in the debacle of 1971, when, in less than two weeks, India

crushingly defeated Pakistan in their third war. That conflict ended with East Pakistan, which

had risen up against West Pakistan, becoming the independent state of Bangladesh.

According to the Pakistanis‟ narrative, the dismemberment of their country— which they

blame on India — made it all the more important to develop and maintain friendly relations

with Afghanistan, in large measure in order to have a secure refuge in the case of a future war

with India. The porous border offers a route by which Pakistani leaders, troops and other

assets, including its nuclear weapons, could retreat to the northwest in the case of an Indian

invasion.

For the idea to work, it is essential that the Afghan government be a close ally of Pakistan,

and willing to help fight India. When the Taliban were in power, they were seen as the

perfect partner for the Pakistani military. Although widely viewed in the West as medieval if

not barbaric, the Taliban regime was valued in Pakistan as fiercely anti-India and therefore

deserving Pakistani arms and assistance.

After the Taliban were ousted by the U.S. after 9/11, a major strategic shift occurred: the

government of Afghanistan became an ally of India‟s, thus fulfilling the Pakistanis‟ worst

fear. The president of post-Taliban Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, hated Pakistan with a passion, in part because he believed that the ISI had helped assassinate his father in 1999.



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With Karzai in office, India seized the opportunity to increase its political and economic

influence in Afghanistan, re-opening its embassy in Kabul, opening four regional consulates,

and providing substantial reconstruction assistance totaling around $1.5 billion, with an

additional $500 million promised within the next few years.

India‟s presence is still, even now, quite modest. According to Indian diplomatic sources,

there are actually fewer than 3,600 Indians in Afghanistan, almost all of them businessmen

and contract workers in the agriculture, telecommunications, manufacturing and mining

sectors. There are only 10 Indian diplomatic officers, compared to nearly 140 in the UK

embassy and 1,200 in the U.S. embassy. But the Pakistani military, which effectively controls

Pakistan‟s foreign policy, remains paranoid about even this small an Indian presence in what

they regard as their strategic Afghan backyard — much as the British used to be about

Russians in Afghanistan during the days of the Great Game.

For the Pakistani military, the existential threat posed by India has taken precedence over all

other geopolitical and economic goals. The fear of being squeezed in an Indian nutcracker is

so great that it has led the ISI to take steps that put Pakistan‟s own internal security at risk, as

well as Pakistan‟s relationship with its main strategic ally, the U.S. For much of the last

decade the ISI has sought to restore the Taliban to power so that it can oust Karzai and his

Indian friends.

To achieve this goal, the Pakistani military has relied on “asymmetric warfare”— using jihadi

fighters for its own ends. This strategy goes back over 30 years. Since the early 1980s, the ISI

has consciously and consistently funded and incubated a variety of Islamic extremist groups.

Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid calculates that there are currently more than 40 such

extremist groups operating in Pakistan, most of whom have strong links with the ISI as well

as the local Islamic political parties.

Pakistani generals have long viewed the jihadis as a cost-effective and easily-deniable means

of controlling events in Afghanistan — something they briefly achieved with the Taliban

capture of Kabul in 1996. By the same means, the Pakistanis have kept much of the Indian

army bogged down in Kashmir ever since the separatist insurgency broke out in 1990. The

generals like using jihadis because they help foster a sense of nationalism based on the twin

prongs of hatred for India and the bonding power of Islamic identity.



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It is unclear how many Pakistanis still endorse this strategy and how many are having second

thoughts. There are clearly those in the army who are now alarmed at the amount of sectarian

and political violence the jihadis have brought to Pakistan. But that view is contested by some

in both the army and the ISI who continue to believe that the jihadis are a more practical

defence against Indian hegemony than even nuclear weapons. For them, support for carefully

chosen jihadis in Afghanistan is a vital survival strategy well worth the risk.

It was in Kashmir in 1947 that Pakistan first used irregular tribal fighters to try to get its way,

sending Pashtun tribesmen over the border to march toward Srinagar, Kashmir‟s capital city.

Along the way they looted and killed and, among other atrocities, raped and murdered several

European nuns they found in a hospital and a convent. With covert British assistance in the

form of an airlift involving British transport planes, Indian troops eventually drove back the

Pashtun tribesmen. By the terms of a ceasefire signed on January 1, 1949, Kashmir was

effectively divided between India and Pakistan. The two countries would go on to fight

another war over Kashmir in 1965, and it has remained a cause of conflict ever since.

It was not just India that got off to a bad start with the new nation of Pakistan. Afghanistan

also had an uneasy relationship with the Land of the Pure (“Pak” means “pure”). Afghanistan

alone opposed Pakistani membership in the UN in 1947. As with India, borders and territory

were in dispute. Afghan leaders had never accepted the Durand line that the British drew in

1893 and, after Partition, Afghanistan was not about to recognize that line as its border with

Pakistan. The Afghan king, Zahir Shah, was especially keen to regain Peshawar, in a valley at

the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, which had once been the summer capital of the Afghan

empire. It had been in British hands since 1845, and was now to become part of Pakistan. To

this day most Afghans look on Peshawar as a lost Afghan city.

Mutual antipathy to Pakistan quickly brought India and Afghanistan together as natural allies

and in 1950 the two signed a friendship treaty. In the years that followed, India and

Afghanistan both attempted to destabilize Pakistan, giving aid and shelter to discontented

Pashtun and Baluchi nationalists. In 1961 Pakistan and Afghanistan went so far as to close

their borders and break off diplomatic relations with each other.

It was only the pressure of growing Soviet influence in Afghanistan in the 1970s that forced

the Afghan government to improve its relations with Pakistan. President Daoud Khan reached

out to Pakistan in 1977 as a counter-balance to the Soviets, and began talks with PrimeMinister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto with a view to settling their border disputes. In April 1978,



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however, Daoud was overthrown in a Soviet-backed leftist coup, after which India was able

to regain its pre-eminent place in Kabul. Throughout the 1980s India expanded its influence

in Afghanistan, contributing to an ambitious series of development projects — building

manufacturing plants and hydroelectric facilities, as well as supervising numerous irrigation

initiatives.

Pakistan meanwhile began to arm the mujahedin, the Islamic radicals — some, like Osama bin

Laden, from outside the country — who fought the Soviet occupation. Their recruitment was

always controlled by the ISI, but was originally also funded by the Saudis and the CIA.

Pakistan also began sending the jihadis into Indian Kashmir during the 1980s. As Hamid

Gul — the ultra-hardline former director of the ISI during that period — once explained to me:

“If they [the ISI] encourage the Kashmiris, it's understandable. The Kashmiri people have

risen up in accordance with the UN charter, and it is the national purpose of Pakistan to help

liberate them. If the jihadis go out and contain India, tying down their army on their own soil,

for a legitimate cause, why should we not support them?" Next to him in his Islamabad living

room as he spoke lay a large piece of the Berlin Wall presented to him “by the people of

Berlin” for "delivering the first blow" to the Soviet Empire through his use of jihadis in the

‟80s.

In an attempt to limit Pakistan‟s influence after the fall of the pro-Soviet Afghan regime in

1989, India began its support of the Northern Alliance under the command of Ahmad Shah

Massoud, a Tajik leader who also had assistance from Iran and Russia. India continued to

supply Massoud with high-altitude warfare equipment, defense advisors, and helicopter parts

and technicians after the rise of the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban.

The period of Taliban rule, from 1994-2001, was the high point of Pakistan‟s influence in

Afghanistan. India, which did not recognize the regime, was forced to close its embassy and

all its consulates and, with ISI encouragement, Afghanistan quickly became the base for a

whole spectrum of anti-Indian groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, which, in 2008, would

execute the deadly assault on Mumbai.

As the Taliban, supported by regular Pakistan troops, pushed the Northern Alliance into ever

smaller corners of Afghanistan toward the end of the „90s, India as well as Iran continued to

send supplies to the increasingly beleaguered Massoud forces. In 2001 India built a hospital



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at their airbase in Tajikistan so that there would be a place to which they could ferry wounded

Tajik soldiers for treatment.

India and Pakistan‟s jostling in Kabul dates back to the Cold War and before. When war

broke out after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan supported rival anti-

communist factions. India sided with rebels opposed to Islamic extremism; Pakistan backed

the group that eventually became the Taliban. Since the Bush administration‟s 2001 invasion,

however, the US has pressured India to limit its Afghanistan role, to prevent Pakistan from

withdrawing support for the war and cutting vital US supply lines.

With the US now ready to bring its soldiers home, India and Pakistan are again wrangling for

control. Both foresee disaster if the other were to gain the upper hand. Islamabad fears that

India would use Afghanistan to aid insurgents in Pakistan‟s nearby Baluchistan province,

where rebellion has simmered since the 1970s. Pakistan also regards control over Kabul as

vital to its military doctrine of “strategic depth” — under which Afghanistan would serve as a

refuge where its leaders could lead a counterattack in the event of an Indian invasion.

For its part, India fears that resurgent Islamic militancy in Afghanistan will stoke violence in

Indian-administered Kashmir, by providing a safe haven and training ground for militants

like Lashkar-e-Taiba, perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. So far, India looks to belosing the struggle. New Delhi has earmarked nearly $2 billion for infrastructure projects and

humanitarian initiatives in Afghanistan since the US invasion. The most recent survey on the

subject, a 2009 BBC/ABC News/ARD poll, found that 74 percent of Afghans hold favorable

opinions toward India and only 8 percent feel the same about Pakistan. Yet Pakistan's proxies

seem poised to take over.

Meanwhile, India is loath to bolster its economic engagement with boots on the ground. “We

have to be very cautious because we don't want to begin to bear the burden of supporting the

new Afghan government against the combination of the Taliban and Pakistan by offering

security support,” said former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal in an interview to

GlobalPost. “Their needs will keep increasing.”

Consistent with that thinking, earlier this month New Delhi formally rejected Afghan

President Hamid Karzai's request for weapons to help his regime fight the Taliban. Indian

Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid obliquely parroted a refrain commonly spoken by US



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officials: “It is a fragile area, there are stakeholders, there are other people. We don't want to

become part of the problem." Or part of the solution, others contend.

Meanwhile, Pakistan has a head start in the latent battle for Afghanistan. Al ready, Pakistan‟s

Taliban allies control most of Afghanistan's southern countryside. President Karzai — who is

perhaps more friendly toward New Delhi than he is toward Washington — faces a likely

defeat in national elections next year.

The Obama administration has perhaps unwittingly helped Islamabad as well. By signalling

its openness to negotiate with the Taliban in June and leaking the possibility of a complete

withdrawal of US troops — the so-called “zero option”. America has further bolstered

Pakistan's hopes of regaining control over the war-torn country.

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Pak India Relations Vis