We can’t hide the fact: America and Pakistan are at war over Afghanistan.
The Pakistanis want a big voice in the government in Kabul. The United States backs Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who’s determined to prevent that.
Initially, this was a proxy war. The Pakistanis recruited, armed and deployed Afghans who wished to fight America. In the last year or so, however, we’ve seen more direct Pakistani involvement both in command and control and as an actual presence in anti-American operations, such as the recent attacks on the US embassy and other targets in Kabul.
The US side of the war initially was limited to drone attacks against suspected Afghan and Arab terrorist hideouts in Pakistani-administered tribal areas. But that changed when a US special-ops team went into Pakistan proper to kill Osama bin Laden.
Reports also say that the US military is preparing for “search and snatch” operations in Pakistani Baluchistan, where the Taliban has its headquarters.
According to the doctrine taught at Pakistani military colleges, Afghanistan provides the “hinterland” that Pakistan needs to face its historic enemy, India. Afghanistan is also the vital link between Pakistan and Islamic Central Asia.
More important, a hostile Afghanistan could play the Pushtun card against Pakistan. Under the British Empire, the Pushtuns were divided between Afghanistan and what was to become Pakistan in 1947. Since the 1950s, a pan-Pushtun movement has thrived on both sides of the border.
Thus, Pakistan feels it must have a say in Kabul, if only to keep the pan-Pushtun demons under control.
Pakistani doctrine also doesn’t allow for an Afghanistan allied to hostile powers, so Pakistan supported the Afghan “mujahedin” against the Soviet-backed communist regime in Kabul.
When that regime collapsed in 1992, the new Afghan government, led by Burhaneddin Rabbani, denied Pakistan a share in the spoils of victory. So Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence raised an Afghan force — the Taliban, which came to power in 1996.
In 2001, Pakistan ended up the loser when Americans ousted the Taliban and installed forces hostile to Islamabad.
Despite that setback, then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf thought America, his putative ally, would prevent such hostile powers as India and Iran from dominating Afghanistan and would secure Pakistan a voice in the new Afghan government.
The Musharraf calculation lost all logic when the Obama administration chose what amounts to a cut-and-run strategy in Afghanistan. Faced with the prospect of a total US military withdrawal by 2013, the Afghan power elite, including the Karzai clan, is looking for new allies and protectors — leading to a dramatic upsurge in Iranian, Indian and even Russian influence in Kabul. Iran and India are the second- and third-biggest aid donors to Afghanistan, just behind America. Tehran also delivers large sums of cash to Karzai and other senior Afghan politicians.
All that concerns the ISI — so Pakistan has abandoned the Musharraf policy.
The ISI has allowed the Taliban leadership, known as the Quetta Shura (Council), to operate fairly openly in Pakistani Baluchistan. (All the new phone numbers for Taliban spokesmen start with the country code for Pakistan.)
The Pakistanis have also revived several dormant non-Taliban armed groups, including the Haqqani network, rooted in the southern province of Paktia and responsible for several recent terror attacks in Kabul.
The Haqqanis allied themselves to the Taliban in 1996, when leader Jalaleddin Haqqani was appointed interior minister. In its new incarnation, however, the Haqqanis are more a Pakistani tool than a Taliban ally.
The ISI also has revived the Hizb Islami (Islamic Party) of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The terror network recently distanced itself from Iran and tried to make a deal with the Americans. One of Hekmatyar’s sons even met a CIA representative during a “seminar” in the Maldives. Yet no deal materialized, because America did not want to antagonize Karzai. Disappointed, Hekmatyar turned to his old allies in the ISI.
The Pakistanis plan to create a broad front of the Taliban, the Haqqani network, the Hizb Islami and several smaller groups that could bid for power once the Americans have left.
Several Arab countries support that plan, notably Saudi Arabia, which prefers to see Afghanistan dominated by Sunni Pakistan than Shiite Iran and Hindu India. The Haqqanis maintain their family home in Abu Dhabi and use United Arab Emirates banks for their transactions.
So far, the US-Pakistan war has been low-intensity. The problem, as always, is that wars are easy to start but hard to end.