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Article Excerpt
Pakistan and Afghanistan are neighboring states in South Asia. The Taliban is primarily centered in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, affecting the politics of both countries. Pakistan is the country blamed for harboring enemies of Afghanistan during the Afghan-Soviet war (1979-1989). After the collapse of Soviet Afghanistan, that country became more fragmented and divided internally. The Taliban emerged as a major political and military force in 1996. They were supported by Pakistan both diplomatically and materially and harbored Osama bin Laden who was involved in the 9/11 incident. Pakistan decided to support the U.S. policy of war on terrorism and this meant Pakistan officially went to war against the Taliban. Pakistan's goal is to see a stable Afghanistan, but if the U.S. would withdraw its forces, elements in Pakistan might once again be tempted to favor the Pastuns in the governance of Afghanistan.
INTRODUCTION
Conflict is ubiquitous, all intellectuals and analysts are agreed. Post-conflict societies may find it extremely difficult to recover from cycles of conflict. In the twenty-first century, this is the situation with the post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Conflict here is not limited to internal domestic strife; it has become internationalized with the destabilization and stabilization strategies of its neighbors. (1)
Afghanistan has never been a peaceful country; it has for centuries been a conflicted state with warrior groups. That presents a complex situation because of its geopolitical locations, trans-ethnic populations, and rivalry among its neighbors.
War in Afghanistan from its revolution and revolt in 1978-79 to the Soviet war in 1990, and the U.S.-led international action against the Taliban regime has not only had a regional political and security impact, but has also changed international approaches toward South Asia in general and Pakistan in particular. Tribal rivalry and poverty in this region does not respect the territorial rule of law and sovereignty of state boundaries. Millions of refugees, the proliferation of arms and insurgencies, and a regional arms race are the result of international actors in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is an important and permanent neighbor of Afghanistan, sharing a common border and, since 9/11, a common enemy. In order to understand Pakistan's relations with this neighbor we need to examine three important factors.
First, and most important, the Afghan warrior groups that were interlocked in the civil war depended on external economic trading partners and alliances with various stares with different geo-political goals for the region. The post-Taliban Afghan (Hamid Karzai) regime has not replaced these old factional linkages with new support. Thus there is a convergence of political and strategic interests between the various Afghan groups and their foreign supporters to pressure the weak Afghan state into letting them operate separately from the control of Kabul.
Second, religious fundamentalist, ideological, and ethnic groups from within the region have established independent support networks with the Afghan groups. Afghanistan and neighboring states are finding it hard to challenge the influence of non-state actors that threaten the traditional order and stability of the nation-state.
Third, Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly Pakistan, have followed predatory policies toward Afghanistan, exploited many of its vulnerabilities as a weak state to their advantage. Their fears and ambitions, in the past, fomented internal rivalries that worked to destabilize Afghanistan. The intervention of major powers into Afghanistan has made a great impact on the Afghan groups. Afghanistan's internal strife has had a negative impact on Pakistani security.
Since the end of the Taliban regime and then war between the Afghan groups during NATO's supervision, the situation has begun to change. Land-locked Afghanistan has new major players, somewhat mirroring the different interests among the neighboring states on the question of organizing political power in that country and its future role in the region. The United States, NATO, and a larger international coalition has a United Nations mandate to reconstruct the Afghan state. The international presence and interest in reviving Afghanistan has pushed its neighbors back in the power struggle, but as they are now a nearly permanent part of Afghanistan's political system, they are waiting to see how Afghanistan rebuilds itself, how power can be shared, and what kind of role it will play among its neighbors. In the following sections, I will look at the interests, strategies and policy framework of the important neighbors of Afghanistan.
PAKISTAN
Among the regional states, Pakistan has been most affected by the Afghan conflict, and in return, has influenced the politics of the Afghan groups in varying degrees. For the past quarter century, successive bouts of war in Afghanistan have devastated its economy, society, and state institutions and have further deepened linkages, contacts, and a sense of the common destiny of Afghanistan and Pakistan based on the stability and peace in that country. But parallel to a feeling of common destiny is the issue of conflicting interests between the two countries. This has been the most fundamental and critical problem in Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan primarily for two reasons.
First, and foremost, Afghanistan has remained fragmented along regional, sectarian, and ethnic lines, and no group there could authoritatively claim to represent the national interests. Afghanistan has been politically divided into two major camps and several smaller ones. Each has sought economic and political support from foreign sources. Secondly, the involvement of the great powers and regional states has made it difficult for Pakistan to know what was in the common interest of the two countries and what was not. As a result, Pakistan was tied to particular neighboring Afghan groups that interacted with it consistently. Therefore, Pakistan has been divided over whether to work more for the good of those ethnic groups or for a stable Afghanistan. While these two destinies ultimately cannot be separated, it has often been difficult for Pakistan to decide what policies arc best in the Afghan political contest. Thus, whether Pakistan is seen as a friend or enemy of Afghanistan has been largely determined by the degree of closeness to any specific group and degree of material assistance it has provided to groups to fight their rivals.
Pakistan's Role in Afghanistan
Pakistan has played a key role in the Afghan conflict both during the Soviet war and after the collapse of the Marxist regime in Kabul. On a broad level, Pakistan's Afghan policy can be analyzed in two phases across three periods: the war of resistance against the Soviet occupation, the intergroup Afghan civil war, and the post-Taliban period.
The first phase that started with the Soviet invasion in December 1979 and lasted until the Geneva accords were signed in April 1988. Pakistan's goals centered on removing the Soviet occupation and helping the mujahideen replace the Marxist government in Kabul. The sudden collapse of the Najibullah regime in April 1992 was a turning point both in the political history of Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan's policy towards that country. A unified and friendly Afghanistan under a broad-based government has been the main concern of Pakistan since 1992. In understanding Pakistan's role, one has to look at a wide array of domestic, regional, and international factors that shaped its responses to the political and military situation in Afghanistan.
Pakistan staged counter-intervention in Afghanistan for two reasons. One was domestic and the other related to the security situation created by the Soviet intervention. Domestically, the military regime of General Zia ul-Haq was isolated and under tremendous stress from the political forces in Pakistan that wanted him to hold elections and transfer power to an elected government. Internationally, his regime was seen as brutal and illegitimate. But the Soviet occupation of neighboring Afghanistan gave the military regime the opportunity to exploit the Afghan security situation to gain domestic...
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