Aditya Vashisht
The recent fight between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been stopped by a 48-hour ceasefire agreed to by both the nations. In the recent conflict, the Afghan Taliban forces responded swiftly to Pakistan’s attacks and have achieved success, as being stated by incoming news reports. The roots of the latest conflict run deep in the past. As such, it appears as the consequences of the flaws which Pakistan’s Afghan policy possessed and which have now come to haunt it.
The Durand line, which was demarcated by then British foreign secretary Mortimer Durand, to define Afghan and British Indian political zones, ran right through the land inhabited by the Pashtun people. Thus, a community which lived as a contiguous whole was divided on political and territorial basis. Such a division had been unacceptable to Afghanistan, which has a substantial Pashtun majority to which its ruling elites belonged. As such, one of Kabul’s major goals was to secure a proper political settlement of the problem surrounding the Durand line which would respect Pashtun autonomy and recognize its deep bonds with Afghanistan.
Pashtuns in Pakistan included many activists who demanded autonomy and called for the formation of ‘Greater Pashtunistan’ in league with Kabul. A prominent example is that of the famous Pashtun Gandhian, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who devoted his life after Pakistan’s creation to secure Pashtun rights for which he was jailed.
For Pakistan, the Afghan supported Pashtun nationalist movement was a great nuisance. It considered it as a grave security threat, since it would find itself sandwiched between an unreliable and aggressive Afghanistan and its arch-enemy, India. Pashtun nationalism was also an affront to its territorial integrity, since an erasure of the Durand line would bring Afghan boundaries close to the Indus river and the Punjab rather than the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region.
Though these threats were real, Pakistan had also another security objective. Given its hostility with India, Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders always feared an imminent attack by India to destroy it. Given its vertically elongated geography, Pakistan possesses little space horizontally to retreat and respond. This ‘strategic space’ could only be provided by Afghanistan. As such Pakistan’s ruling elite sought to secure a friendly government in Afghanistan which could provide it that space. This would require intervention in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, which was undoubtedly risky.
The chaos and disturbance brought upon by the communist rule in Afghanistan as well as the subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union gave Pakistan the appropriate opportunity to expand its footprint in Afghanistan. It wholeheartedly backed the Mujaheddin rebels who fought against the Afghan communists and the Soviets. What better could have transpired for Pakistan than the fact that it got the USA’s unconditional support in this endeavour. Another success was scored when Saudi Arabia also backed Pakistan.
Pakistan and its famous intelligence agency, the ISI, nurtured and funded Mujaheddin rebels in the hope that their success would secure to it a friendly government in Afghanistan dependent on Islamabad and Rawalpindi. These rebels had their bases in Pakistan where they benefited from the networks of Afghan refugee camps, Pakistani madrassas, US arms supply and narcotrafficking and goods smuggling.
One of these groups which Pakistan supported in the near future took birth on Pakistani soil. This group, formed of madrassa students, took the name of Taliban (which means students). Their extremism is well known by all of us but their success was achieved by establishing law and order and eliminating the corrupt regime of many Mujaheddin warlords which had come to dominate the Afghan political scene. As the Taliban achieved success on the battlefield, Pakistani military and civilian officials came round to back them, as such pinning their hopes of acquiring strategic space on the Taliban.
Pakistan’s support for Taliban was undoubtedly notorious, as all countries within Afghanistan’s vicinity, be it Iran, Central Asia and Russia, accused it of destabilizing the region by empowering a radical group for its own selfish gains. Even Washington could not hold back its disapproval for Pakistan’s stance. But in the face of all backlash, be it from the USA or the UN, Pakistan remained stubborn and refused to change its policy. It continued to back the Taliban regime.
As it is well known, the 9/11 attacks changed the whole situation. As a determined USA, removed the Taliban regime in its war against terror, Pakistan had to dampen its support for Taliban. But that was only a temporary pause as it was not going to abandon its security objectives for US interests. It continued to provide covert support to the Talibanis, who had not been entirely eliminated. As such it played an infamous double game, supporting both the US and the Taliban. The aim was to secure legitimacy for the Taliban so that Islamabad could secure its security objectives. Taliban victory in 2021 brought forth hopes for the Pakistani state.
The latest conflict obviously proves that Taliban is anything but a puppet of the Pakistani state. Clashes between both the nations are certainly not new. They occurred before during the 1950s and 60s. Pakistan’s attempt to find a political remedy to this problem obviously, as the recent fighting shows, hasn’t achieved much success.
Pakistan’s policy certainly had its own flaws. It was based on assumptions with weak foundations. Firstly, it failed to draw well a crucial lesson that while Afghanistan can be captured, it is very difficult to control it. The British(1839-1842), the Russians (then USSR, 1979-1989) and the Americans (2001-2021) learned this to their own peril. The Russians suffered from the breakup of their powerful state because of their attempts to stabilize Afghanistan. If such powerful states, with enormous resources at their disposal, could not succeed in making the Afghans dance on their own tunes, what chance does Pakistan, a debt-ridden state surviving on loans and grants have?
Another point is that Pakistani planners considered that religious extremism would blur societal bonds and relationships. Religious zeal would triumph over and thereby, suppress Pashtun nationalism. But instead the opposite happened. Instead, mixed with religious extremism, the Taliban-backed Pashtun nationalism became a dangerous force which now poses a critical threat to Pakistan’s national security. It has made the Pashtun inhabited Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region a hotbed of violence, creating instability. Recent Pakistani military operations in this region, ongoing for many years, are a testament to it.
The latest clashes also have a contemporary geopolitical angle to it, which includes US President Trumps’ demand for the Bagram air base, the US-Pakistan axis, Taliban foreign minister’s recent visit to India and the US-Israel axis against Iran. However, it is essential to recognize the past events which have now come to trouble Pakistan. It would be interesting to see how Islamabad and Rawalpindi cope from it, which would undoubtedly have implications for the whole region.
(Author is doing Masters in Western History. Views are personal. He can be reached at adityavashisht07@gmail.com.)
