Haggling over Afghanistan

Afghanistan’s future matters much more to Pakistan than to the United States. This elemental truth is forgotten in U.S. deliberations about how best to leverage Pakistan to achieve a political settlement in Afghanistan. Pakistani military and intelligence services have demonstrated that they are willing to risk ties with Washington to achieve a friendly government on their western border — a government that most Afghans and Washington would oppose. This is the central roadblock to U.S.-Pakistani relations and to a stable Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s leaders will continue to seek U.S. assistance even as they tirelessly pursue a government in Kabul that, after most U.S. troops withdraw in 2014, will be friendlier to them than to India. If the Pakistanis fail to ensure this negotiated outcome, they will employ allies to upend an Afghan government that they deem unfriendly.

Pakistani resolve is rooted in the assumption that, if India gains a strong foothold in Afghanistan, then Pakistan’s largest and most resource-rich province, Baluchistan, would be ripe for an India-supported insurgency. Pakistan’s military knows how this game is played — it played it in the Indian state of Jammu and in Kashmir for more than a decade after Soviet troops left Afghanistan in 1989. Baluchistan is as disaffected today as the Kashmir Valley was then.

Pakistani distrust is heightened by events of four decades ago: India severed East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from West Pakistan in their 1971 war. Pakistani leaders will not abide another territorial loss or an extended, foreign-backed insurgency, not when they are feeling so vulnerable. Pakistan has suffered the second-highest number of mass-casualty attacks — behind only Iraq — over the past five years. Pakistan’s military and intelligence services firmly believe that sooner or later, New Delhi will be unable to resist the temptation to dismember their country again. In fact, Pakistan’s dissolution would jeopardize Indian growth and security. And Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities have frozen a territorial status quo, which serves Indian interests. The prospect of a clash would be raised only if spectacular acts of terrorism originate from Pakistan. More