pakistan's afghan policies and their consequences

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Pakistan's Afghan policies and theirconsequencesMarvin G. Weinbaum & Jonathan B. HarderVersion of record first published: 06 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Marvin G. Weinbaum & Jonathan B. Harder (2008): Pakistan's Afghan policiesand their conseq uences, Contemporary South Asia, 16:1, 25-38

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Pakistan’s Afghan policies and theirconsequences

MARVIN G. WEINBAUM & JONATHAN B. HARDER

ABSTRACT Pakistan’s Afghan policies, so consequential for its neighbour, have also had adeep impact on the country’s political landscape and society. This article examines howPakistan has pursued a two-track foreign policy toward Afghanistan that often encompassesincompatible goals. Pakistan’s leaders have also frequently ignored the long-term and wider implications of their policies domestically and regionally. The discussion looks at theconsequences of Afghan policies for Pakistan’s national identity and social cohesion. Themeans by which Islamabad governments have dealt with the challenge of Pashtun nationalismand its contribution to the development of ethnic assertiveness and Islamic radicalism are next examined. The article then describes the role of Afghan policies in transforming Pakistan’sborder regions with Afghanistan and the wider implications for the state’s legitimacy and

authority. It also points out the Pakistan Government’s ambivalence in its relationship toward militant extremists. A subsequent section considers the costs and rewards of Pakistan’s Afghan policies internationally; and Pakistan’s strategic partnership with the United States, includingits impact on the domestic economy and public attitudes, receives particular attention. Finally,the article recognises that, while Pakistan’s politics have entered a transitional stage, its Afghan policies are likely to continue to affect ethnic fissures, religious radicalism, and thelegitimate authority of the state.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan bear the scars of 60 years of unresolved issues over territory and national identity. Conflicting politicalalliances and ideologies, especially those once associated with the Cold War,have also helped define the relationship. In recent years, the two countries havebeen cited for their intersecting roles in the global combat against terrorism andtheir necessary joint contribution for bringing about regional stability andeconomic growth. Far less appreciated, however, are the domestic consequencesof their bilateral policies. This essay, which focuses on Pakistan, contends that onbalance its relations over time with its Afghan neighbour have had an adverseeffect on state and society in Pakistan.

Correspondence: Marvin G. Weinbaum, The Middle East Institute, 1761 N Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-

2882, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Contemporary South Asia 16(1), (March, 2008) 25–38

ISSN 0958-4935 print; 1469-364X online/08/010025–14 2008 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09584930701800370

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The following discussions first consider Pakistan’s goals for Afghanistan andhow they have helped frame broad national policies. The domestic challenges that these policies have posed for the country’s identity and political cohesion are thenexamined. The third section looks at the consequences for regime authority andstate legitimacy. The costs and benefits to Pakistan internationally of pursuing itsAfghan policies are next described and assessed. Throughout, there are indicationsof Pakistan’s difficulties in reconciling conflicting aims contained in thesepolicies.

Pakistan’s goals in Afghanistan

To assess the domestic consequences of Pakistan’s Afghan policies it is useful tobegin by identifying Pakistan’s perceived national interests in Afghanistan and its

major policy goals toward its neighbour. From Pakistan’s founding, the countryhas sought means to counter the demands of virtually every Afghan regime for anindependent state for Pakistan’s Pashtun ethnic population. The new state was tobe carved geographically from Pakistan’s northwest and to be known asPashtunistan. The second goal of policy toward Afghanistan has been to minimiseIndia’s influence and presence in Afghanistan. India is viewed as engaging inactivities in Afghanistan intended to destabilise Pakistan domestically and threatenit militarily. A long-sought and perhaps outmoded third goal for nuclear-armedPakistan has been to see Afghanistan as an asset in providing strategic depth in theevent of a wide conflict with India. By ensuring a safe haven for its forces,

Pakistan would presumably enhance its survivability and deterrent power. Afourth goal, clearly instrumental to achieving the others, has been to foster friendlyif not subservient regimes in Kabul. This has taken form in ways varying fromcultivating leaders to supporting insurgencies. Pakistan’s fifth goal has sought useof Afghanistan to attract the diplomatic and economic assistance of regional andextra-regional powers, most of all the United States. Through alignments withthese countries, Pakistan has hoped to strengthen its security and acquire leveragein its disputes, especially with India.

In pursuing these goals, Pakistan’s policies are often viewed by Afghansas overbearing and over-reaching. Having sheltered millions of refugeesduring the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and civil war of the 1990s,governments in Pakistan took for granted that the Afghans would feel deepgratitude. They came mistakenly to the conclusion that Pakistan had far morepower to influence than it actually did because it had also played so important a role in organising the resistance forces and managing the military campaignof the Taliban. Pakistan has, then, repeatedly misjudged their relationship andhas engaged in short-sighted policies toward Afghanistan. Perhaps the most serious has been a deliberate effort to exploit Afghanistan’s ethnic mosaic for strategic purposes through cross-border clientalism. To ensure the dependenceof a Pashtun-dominated Afghan leadership on Pakistan, Islamabad standsaccused of promoting adversarial relations between Pashtuns and other ethnic

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These two tracks in Pakistan’s Afghan policy coexist uneasily. They reflect deeper tensions between Islamabad’s conflicting objectives, pressure from theUnited States, and the perceived need to prepare for different scenarios for a post-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Afghanistan. The implementation of policy isalso confused as different arms of the state find themselves working at cross-purposes. Domestic groups advocating one approach or the other are left largelyunsatisfied, while Pakistan’s Afghan and American critics doubt its sincerity andcommitments.

National identity and cohesion

A legacy of British rule, the Durand Line that separates Afghanistan and Pakistanand divides their Pashtun tribal populations has soured relations between the two

countries for more than six decades. No Afghan government has ever recognisedthe legitimacy of the border. An Afghanistan unwilling to relinquish its irredentist demands thus becomes a security issue for Pakistan and is used to justifyinterventionist strategies, among them efforts to neutralise and subvert Pashtunnationalist sentiment. These policies, so consequential for Afghanistan, have alsohad a deep impact on Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s promotion of Pashtunistan has brought retaliation from Pakistan.During the 1950s, Pakistan kept its alliance partner, the United States, from givingmilitary assistance to the Kabul Government, thus leading the Afghan leadershipto turn to the Soviet Union for equipment and training. By periodically impeding

the transit of goods from the port of Karachi to landlocked Afghanistan, Pakistanseriously impaired the Afghan economy. A trade blockade in 1963 hastened thedeparture of Afghanistan’s pro-Pashtunistan Prime Minister Mohammad Daoud.In 1975, Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto lent covert support to aninsurrection by Islamist radicals. When it failed, Islamabad gave refuge to severalinsurgent leaders, who, in just a few years, would command Pakistan-basedmujahideen (freedom fighters) groups opposing the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and indigenous communists.

Pakistan’s decision following the Soviet invasion in 1979 to assist Islamicresistance forces, undertaken with massive support from the United States, SaudiArabia and others, had far-reaching effects on Pakistan’s politics and strategicplanning. It gave new life to the rule of General Zia ul-Haq who, by the late 1970s,faced a serious domestic challenge to his legitimacy following his overthrow andsubsequent execution of Bhutto. The jihad (struggle) against the Soviets andAfghan communists and the international support it received impeded anyrestoration of democratic rule and sustained the Zia regime until the time of hisdeath in 1988. During this period, the United States also suspended itscongressionally authorised sanctions originally intended to force Pakistan toreign in its nuclear weapons programme. The progress realised in these yearshelped launch what would become in the 1990s Pakistan’s formidable nuclear deterrent against India.


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An Afghan resistance sponsored by the regime of Zia and his allies designed todiscourage Soviet offensive ambitions in the region and wear down the Soviet army also provided Pakistan with an opportunity to blunt Afghan nationalism.Secular and leftist parties, some of which had championed the idea of a Pashtunstate, were deliberately excluded from participation in a mujahideen alliancefashioned by Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelli-gence (ISI). By also giving radical Islamist parties effective control over Pakistan’slarge refugee camps, Islamabad hoped to stifle secular Pashtun nationalism ralliedaround the former king in exile. Were the mujahideen parties to eventually capturepower in Kabul, a spiritually not territorially minded Afghan leadership wasexpected to feel deeply indebted to Pakistan and to have little interest in trying todismember it.

Organisational and ideological mobilisation undertaken to support the jihad in

Afghanistan had long-term domestic implications for Pakistan. During the militarydictatorships of Ayub Khan and Zia, the ISI became closely linked to the army andremained in many ways the agent of the army in its rivalries with other institutionsin Pakistan. Through the 1980s, financial support for the mujahideen wasfunnelled through the ISI, which expanded organisationally and assumed widediscretion in its activities. ISI military advisors oversaw Taliban militaryoperations during the 1990s and ensured access to equipment and volunteers. Inthis period of civilian rule, the ISI operated very independently—often activelyworking against the governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Officiallyauthorised to perform surveillance of Pakistani citizens, the ISI served the military

as a means of domestic control.Given wide latitude and ample resources, the ISI encouraged and sponsoredarmed Islamist groups in Pakistan linked to Afghan mujahideen groups and helpedcreate a string of training camps on the Pakistan – Afghan frontier. 5 Tribal areasthus became the assembly points for the volunteers to train and fight inAfghanistan and the transit points for the supply of weapons. In an effort to buildsympathies for the anti-communist resistance, the ISI facilitated Saudi funding for mosques and madrasas (Islamic schools). These mosques and religious schools,mostly located in the vicinity of Peshawar, Quetta, and Karachi, promotedDeobandi teaching favouring a more political and doctrinaire Sunni Islam.Assisted by Pakistani troops and the ISI, groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba andHarakat-ul-Mujahideen also contributed to the intensified violence against civilians and Indian security forces in Kashmir in the 1990s.

For several years after 2001, under directives from Islamabad, the ISI’sinvolvement with Afghans became more indirect and circumspect. Jihadiorganisations such as Jaish-i-Mohammed and Lashka-e-Taiba meanwhile assumeda larger role in fund-raising and in the recruitment and training of a new generationof Taliban. Defeat of the Taliban did not dampen the sympathies for their cause inthe frontier areas, where social and customary legal practices resemble those of theAfghan Taliban. Years of trying to suppress Afghan nationalism also helped tomarginalise Pashtun nationalism in Pakistan in favour of a transnational religious

PAKISTAN’S AFGHAN POLICIES

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agenda, and helped to popularise a doctrinaire brand of Islamic law more broadlyacross the country.

It is generally acknowledged that for several years anti-Kabul forces loyal to theTaliban leader Mullah Omar in northern Baluchistan, the Haqqani family in NorthWaziristan and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami in the Bajaur agency wereallowed to regroup and establish command centres with virtual impunity. Theyalso contributed to radicalising many of those Pakistanis in the tribal agencies whobegan to call themselves Taliban. Madrasas have played a central role in helping torevitalise the Afghan Taliban and their allies, and in the creation of a PakistaniTaliban. By 2005, these religious schools had become a prime source for recruiting suicide bombers attacking within Afghanistan and Pakistan. 6 The ISI isincreasingly accused of facilitating, if not directly supporting, these militants.Although it is known to collaborate with US intelligence apparatus operating in

Pakistan, ISI officers are believed to retain strong Islamist sympathies.Forging alliances with Islamist parties and their jihadi allies created what haslong been a military – mullah nexus in Pakistan’s politics. Zia’s introduction of conservative religious policies in the country gave a strong boost to thisreligious – military alliance. In return for state support, the religious parties servedas open or covert electoral partners, and their affiliated jihadi groups were used asa surrogate force against enemies of the military regime, domestically, and in Indiaand Afghanistan. Afghan policy responsible for boosting radical political Islamexpanded an intelligence apparatus that shored up jihadi groups to help thegovernment monitor and, when necessary, stifle its political opposition. Funds that

were received from the United States and Saudi Arabia intended to sustain the jihad were diverted in part to strengthen the intelligence infrastructure. Theperceived Indian security threat that justifies a large pampered military in Pakistanalso helps to explain Afghan policy. The extraordinary lengths to which Pakistanhas gone to ensure pliable governments in Kabul shows their constant concern that Afghan leaders will provide opportunities for India to meddle in Pakistan with theintention of destabilising it. In a worst-case scenario, Afghan governments wouldallow an encircling India to create a backdoor military threat to Pakistan.Islamabad alleges that this has already begun with Kabul’s permission for India toopen consulates in such sensitive locations as Kandahar and Jalalabad.

The recent insurgency in Baluchistan has occasioned further suspicions.Islamabad is convinced that the insurgency has heavy Indian involvement,together with Afghan complicity. Baluch tribal groups are alleged by Pakistan tobe aided financially by India. Pakistan has no strong proof of material assistancefrom India passing through Afghanistan, and exaggerates an Indian presence in theborder regions. To allege a foreign hand to cover up internal dissent is, of course,almost routine in South Asia. But there are also long memories in Pakistan of Baluch resistance leaders and thousands of their followers being welcomed inAfghanistan after escaping from federal government forces in the mid-1970s.

Pakistan’s admission of Afghan refugees in Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), mostly Pashtuns, strengthened the ethnic identity and

assertiveness of Pakistan’s Pashtuns. But it also demonstrated how their


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nationalism differed from that promoted by Afghan Pashtuns. Rather thanseparation, Pakistan’s nationalists’ aims had always stressed the rights of Pashtunswithin a Pakistani state. The frontier province’s leading figure at the time of partition, Ghaffar Khan—although he had earlier preferred maintaining the unityof India—never echoed the Afghan call for detaching Pashtuns from Pakistan. Hisson Wali Khan, heading the Awami National Party, carried on the quest for greater recognition of Pashtun culture and language and a larger share of development funds from the federal budget for the NWFP.

Policies toward Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet jihad and the Taliban erathat so heavily impacted the border areas had less direct impact and carried lower salience for ethnic Punjabis and Sindhis. Yet all of the country has paid a pricesocially and economically. Despite Islamabad’s efforts to keep the large refugeepopulation inside camps, they migrated throughout the country in great numbers,

especially to urban areas and notably to Karachi. They augmented Karachi’salready large Pashtun community that had settled earlier and are blamed for anexplosive ethnic mix and breakdown in law and order. The Afghan refugees werebelieved to have contributed to the easy availability of guns that has been heldresponsible for a countrywide rise in crime and sectarian killings. Afghans are alsoaccused of promoting drug use among Pakistanis. Increasingly, Pakistan hasbecome a principle drug route for producers inside Afghanistan, both for further transit and to meet domestic consumption.

Even with international assistance, the refugee camps have been a long-termdrain on the national economy. While the refugees energised some business

sectors, notably in the NWFP, their monopoly over transport in the province hasbrought the resentment of many Pakistanis. An unsecured border has allowed for the smuggling of wheat into Afghanistan that has increased its price in Pakistan.Pakistan’s difficult relations with the Kabul Government together with a weaker competitiveness of goods have adversely affected Pakistan’s once fairly lucrativecommercial trade with Afghanistan. During 2005 – 2006, Pakistan lost 36% of itsmarket in Afghanistan, mostly to Iran. 7 Tehran’s political influence also expanded,especially in western Afghanistan.

Legitimacy and authority

Pakistan has seen growing challenges in recent years to its legitimacy andauthority. These challenges have included a surge in militant Islamism, mountingprovincial and tribal unrest, and the weakening of the institutional capacity of thestate. All three are apparent in its western border areas, and can be traced in largemeasure to its Afghan policies. By indulging and supporting extremists as a tool toretain and hold influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan introduced changes that undermined its ability to maintain its writ within its own borders. Policies onAfghanistan that altered traditional power structures in the Federally AdministeredTribal Areas (FATA) have resulted in wider domestic instability. Not inconsequentially, the reputation of Pakistan’s foremost institution, its military,

has suffered.


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The support for the mujahideen in the 1980s prepared the ground for a gradualradicalisation of the population in the NWFP and tribal agencies, as well as awidening of the differences among Pakistan’s ethnic groups. The population of the border regions was under heavy social pressure and coercion to support themujahideen , and opposition was very difficult since the insurgency carried thedual banners of Islam and self-determination and had the backing of the Pakistanistate and its foreign partners. Economic and social deprivation of young Afghanrefugees made their camps a fertile recruiting ground for the mujahideen . At thesame time, the influx of millions of refugees created resentment in segments of thePakistani public. Punjabis and Sindhis came to view the Afghans, both refugeesand mujahideen , as a burden, while many Pashtun nationalists were upset to seetheir homeland radicalised. This radicalisation also deepened the fissuresseparating Pakistan’s religious communities, namely Shi’a and Sunni, notably in

the NWFP.Policies over more than a quarter-century have gradually placed religion in amore central role in Pakistani politics on all levels. As a part of the support for themujahideen , Zia ul-Haq gave the ulema a more powerful position in the Pakistanistate. 8 In the tribal areas, the support for the 1980s’ Afghan jihad and the backingfor the Taliban regime in the 1990s resulted in the usurpation by Islamist militantsof the traditional secular tribal leadership. 9 The old and largely secular system of governance, which was in place in the FATA, was Islamicised. Previously, themalik (secular leader of a village or tribe) was the local political authority. He waselected by a jirga (tribal assembly of elders) in the village, and through an

Islamabad-appointed political agent received government funds and handledrelations with the state. The local mullah (Muslim religious cleric) was clearlysubordinate, and in most cases completely apolitical.

From Zia’s rule onward, the state started to fund the mullahs directly, givingthem financial independence. Over the years the mullahs took on an enhancedpolitical role in the community and gradually became more powerful than themalik . With new resources and status, the local religious figures were able toemerge as key political brokers and, very often, promoters of militancy. 10

Empowering the mullahs made these border areas more hospitable to radicalisedlocal tribesmen. With the malik significantly weakened it became harder, if not impossible, for disgruntled citizens to protest the presence of the Afghan fightersand foreigners through the malik . What little remained of the malik and politicalagent system of governance by Islamabad was largely removed by a militarisationof the tribal agencies by the Pakistani army that began early in 2004.

The gradual change in the power structure from the malik to the mullah unitedthe people under the banner of Islam, giving less prominence to national andethnic allegiances. It has coincided with a period of history that has seen a globalIslamic awakening, in which the struggle in Afghanistan played a key role.Pakistan’s mullah s have been able to benefit from this ‘larger cause’ for whichthey fought. They connected with a network of militants from all corners of theIslamic world who provided the newly assertive Islamists in Pakistan’s frontier

areas with important financial freedom and military know-how. The local leaders


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and their often youthful followers also profited from contacts with foreign fighterswho had taken refuge in the tribal agencies after 2001, as well as jihadiorganisations in Pakistan and offshoots of the country’s main religious parties. Asymbiotic relationship developed among the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, AlQaeda, and domestic extremist organisations. They have somewhat different priorities and are at times bitterly competitive. Their relationships with Pakistan’sintelligence services and security forces also vary. Yet they are in agreement over supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan that aims to drive out internationalforces and topple the current government of President Hamid Karzai. They alsoshare a disdain for Musharraf’s rule and Pakistan’s partnership with the UnitedStates.

The fighting in the FATA during most of 2004 – 2006 hurt Musharraf’s imagein both the border regions and in the country as a whole, and was very costly in

terms of military casualties and pride. It soon became apparent that despite the80,000 troops deployed, trained to fight a conventional war with India, thePakistan army had very limited capacity for effective counter-insurgency. Itstroops lacked the training and equipment and, too often, the motivation. Most Pakistanis failed to see the military actions in the frontier areas as their war and themilitary felt humiliated by its losses. Anxious to salvage something from their longcampaign, in September 2006 the government concluded a truce—the NorthWaziristan accord. In return for the removal of army checkpoints and troops fromthe area, the tribal leaders promised to root out the foreign fighters and prevent cross-border infiltration by militants.

In spite of the Musharraf Government’s efforts to sell the accord as a steptowards stability and peace, it was a deal very much on the militants’ terms. Theywere handsomely ‘compensated’ for their losses and allowed to retain their weapons stocks. 11 North Waziristan and South Waziristan, always lightlygoverned, were now virtually ceded to the local power centres. Justice, educationand social policies were taken over by the Pakistani Taliban, who practice astrongly conservative form of Islam. Not only was there a failure to halt border crossing by insurgents, border violence increased. 12 The agreement that thePakistani Taliban would not extend their views of Islam into the settled areasbeyond the tribal territories was ignored. Their reach has in fact been felt acrossthe NWFP, notably in the northern districts of Swat and Malakand. The extent of the militant Islamist influence became apparent in the standoff and defiance of state authority that brought the army’s July 2007 assault against Islamabad’s LalMasjid (Red Mosque), many of whose students were from the NWFP.

The North Waziristan agreement was only marginally about curtailinginsurgents entering Afghanistan. The deal with tribal elders, in reality negotiatedwith the Pakistani militants, and allegedly approved by Al Qaeda, was primarilyintended to halt the contagion of Talibanisation. The Pakistan army planned to usethe agreement to neutralise those groups with an anti-government agenda and toreassert its influence using the rivalries among tribal leaders and resentment against resident foreign groups. But even this default strategy suffered a setback

when Islamist extremists in Waziristan and the NWFP sought retribution for the


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Lal Masjid crackdown by attacking security forces. With its honour and respect at stake, the army has reacted with the aggressiveness that it had long resisted. Evenwith this new resolve, however, the army lacks the capacity to dislodge thePakistani Taliban from their redoubt in the frontier, and will have to negotiateanother political modus vivendi .

The inability of the Musharraf Government to act more forcefully against extremist groups in the tribal border areas and elsewhere in the country is mostlytraceable to the dismantling of the old system of governance that removed thearea’s most legitimate political structures. More broadly, its policy reflects years of catering to Islamist elements that served the military’s purposes during the jihad of the 1980s and the Taliban era. Policies toward the Afghan Taliban can be similarlyexplained. The Musharraf Government has had little incentive to cripple thislargely Pashtun fighting force viewed among its Pakistani ethnic cousins as an

ally, not an enemy.13

The future utility of the Afghan Taliban lies in what isforeseen by many in Pakistan to be a not-too-distant post-American, post-NorthAtlantic Treaty Organisation Afghanistan. In that event, Russia together with itsCentral Asia surrogates and Iran are expected to carve out spheres of influence in adisintegrating Afghanistan, and seek close ties with India. Afghan Pashtuns willthen serve Pakistan’s interests as a proxy force in creating a Pashtun buffer zone insouthern and eastern Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s government also has domestic political reasons for not trying todisband jihadi and other extremist groups that it sponsors, directly or indirectly.By keeping these organisations mostly intact across Pakistan, and their mission

alive, the government feels better able to monitor extremist elements and channeltheir energies away from anti-regime activity within Pakistan. Were jihadi groupsto be entirely dismantled, the government has reason to fear that manyindoctrinated and armed people would be seeded across the country, stokingfurther violence in urban areas. While some militant groups enjoy unofficialgovernment protection, others have parted ways with Musharraf, and even targetedhim. Pakistan’s ISI has been largely able to hold groups such as Lashkar-e-Taibain line, but others including Jaish-e-Mohammad and Harakat-ul-Mujahideen oftendefy the security apparatus. It is arguable that if successive Pakistani governments,and specifically the ISI, had never sponsored these jihadi groups, Pakistan wouldhave been spared many of its law and order problems.

The international fallout of Pakistan’s Afghan policy

Pakistan’s policies toward Afghanistan have strongly affected its relations with anumber of countries. Its decisions have deepened suspicions and have occasionedconfrontation with some traditional enemies and complicated relations with other states. The crucible of Afghanistan has been for Pakistan a particular source of difficulty for its relations with India, Russia and Iran. Yet Pakistan’s Afghanpolicies have at times also enabled it to acquire important allies and benefactors.Maintaining those policies has occasioned Pakistan to make commitments that

have left a strong imprint on its domestic politics. The costs and rewards for


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Pakistan over the past quarter-century are nowhere better illustrated than in thecountry’s mercurial relationship with the United States. With no other partnershiphas there been more domestic controversy or more at stake politically for Pakistan.

Many of Islamabad’s objectives in relations with Afghanistan are viewedthrough the prism of India. Afghanistan provides an arena in which Pakistan andIndia compete politically and economically. Pakistan’s quest for strategic depthagainst India is only the most obvious driver of its policy. Its determination toensure compliant regimes in Kabul has always been with an eye toward weakeningIndian influence. Sponsorship of Afghan leaders and political groups has regularlycalculated their expected or demonstrated partiality toward India. But attempts tointervene have only increased Afghan leaders’ efforts to offset Pakistan’sinfluence by turning toward India and strengthening the impression that Afghanistan would allow India to use its soil against Pakistan. 14

The lengths to which Pakistan has been prepared to go toward installingcooperative regimes in Kabul can be illustrated by the political price it was willingto pay for being patron to the Taliban between 1994 and 2001. Islamabad wasisolated in trying to justify the Taliban to the outside world. Pakistan’s Afghanpolicy appeared for much of the international community as one piece with itssupport for the Kashmir insurgency and terrorism. That policy poisonedIslamabad’s relationship with Iran, the Central Asian republics, and Russia. It also created serious complications with other countries, including its traditionalally China. Each of these countries viewed the Taliban rule as giving sanctuary toextremist elements. 15 Tehran remained convinced for some time that the Taliban

were a Sunni conspiracy hatched and underwritten by Pakistan and the UnitedStates. Iran retaliated by helping to arm Shi’a militants inside Pakistan at war withSunni extremist groups such as Sipah-i-Sabaha Pakistan and its offshoot Lashkar-e-Jangvi. The former Soviet Muslim republics represented promising futurecommercial and cultural partners for Pakistan. However, in backing the Taliban,Pakistan was fostering a group that boasted of its intention to spread radical Islamand topple their Soviet-era rulers. Pakistan’s policies in Afghanistan frustrated anypossibility of improving relations with India’s ally Russia, and the friendship withChina was strained by evidence that Islamist insurgents from southwest Chinawere known to be training with the Taliban.

The decision to partner with the United States in the jihad against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan and their local communist allies paid handsomedividends for the Pakistan leadership and military. Economic and militaryassistance that had ended with the military coup of 1977 resumed with the RonaldReagan Administration, and through the 1980s the United States was largelyreconciled to allowing Pakistan’s ISI to syphon off funds and supplies from thosedestined for the jihad in Afghanistan. Approximately $5.2 billion in overt andcovert aid intended for the Afghan insurgency was passed to Pakistan from theUnited States during the decade. 16 While resources from the United States andothers did aid Pakistan’s economy, most of the gains went to enriching themilitary. As mentioned, Washington failed to push Zia to keep his promise of

restoring democracy and maintained a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons


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programme. When the assistance ended in 1990 following the Soviet withdrawalfrom Afghanistan, it became clear that American interest in Afghanistan and in itsalliance with Pakistan did not go beyond the Cold War containment strategy.

Islamabad’s grudging support for the military intervention in Afghanistan in thewake of 11 September 2001 revived the United States – Pakistan partnership. Asduring the 1980s, Pakistan’s reward for its reversal on the Taliban and itscooperation with American counter-terrorism operations accrued disproportio-nately to the country’s leader and its military. The Pressler Amendment nuclear sanctions were lifted, thus permitting a 5-year, US$3 billion aid programme—one-half of it directly slated for the military. Roughly an additional US$1 billion a year has gone for funding the army’s efforts since 2001 in support of counter-terrorismoperations and overall security along the Afghan border. This brings US aid toPakistan from 2002 to 2007 to an impressive total of US$10.5 billion. 17 Pakistan

has again qualified to purchase advanced fighter jets from the United States andreceived compensation for the non-delivery of an earlier consignment of F-16s. Atraining programme for military officers suspended during the 1990s was revived.

On the civilian side, the United States gave a strong stimulus to Pakistan’seconomy by rescheduling US$3 billion in debt and supporting the InternationalMonetary Fund’s additional US$9 billion in debt relief. 18 A large part of thedevelopment portion of the 5-year programme has been in the form of budgetarysupport. A US$750 million development aid programme was sought from the USCongress in 2007, designed to transform the FATA into a more governable region.Yet aid that is so heavily pitched to security and regime stability will do little to

ameliorate the social and economic problems faced by Pakistan’s citizens. Most inthe Pakistani public disapprove of the actions of Pakistan’s military in the frontier and the war in Afghanistan, a sentiment that only intensified with the army’srenewed intervention after the breakdown of the Waziristan agreement. 19

Cooperation between intelligence agencies that has led United States and Pakistanto apprehend Al Qaeda and Taliban figures has aroused suspicions, and aggressiveactions by US Special Forces along the border are viewed as threatening toPakistan’s sovereignty. These fears were given greater credence in the summer of 2007 when a US National Intelligence Estimate found Al Qaeda networks to havebeen reconstituted along the tribal belt. 20

It is a widely held opinion in Pakistan that Musharraf’s policy is meant to pleasethe United States and to primarily serve American interests, and that the benefits of the partnership with the United States have been one-sided. Popular acceptance of Musharraf’s decision to abandon the Taliban in late 2001 was largely due to theexpectation that Pakistan would in return earn handsome rewards from the UnitedStates. But Washington’s 2006 offer of nuclear cooperation with India and itsrefusal to consider an agreement with Pakistan are seen as testimony that theUnited States has cast its lot economically and strategically with India.Washington also is perceived as thwarting Pakistan’s attempts to address itsserious energy requirements by opposing a gas pipeline agreement with Iran.Further sore points are the delay in concluding an investment agreement with

Pakistan, and Washington’s refusal to restore previous favourable textile policies.


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Islamabad would also welcome US policy that encourages New Delhi toshow greater flexibility in the ongoing composite dialogue between India andPakistan.

Overall, Pakistan’s decision to accommodate US pressures in its policies towardAfghanistan has been a liability for Musharraf. Collaboration with the UnitedStates on Afghanistan and the borderlands has been conflated in the public eyewith American policies in the Arab Middle East and has been portrayed by manyof its critics as anti-Islamic. There is wide opposition to American legislation tocondition further assistance to Pakistan on its counter-terrorism efforts. The entirepolitical spectrum, religious and secular alike, has been similarly unified incriticising those in the United States who have advocated using American forcesunilaterally to attack Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border areas. With Pakistan ina state of political transition and Afghanistan an increasing source of friction, the

terms and endurance of the United States – Pakistan strategic partnership are indoubt.

Conclusion

Pakistan’s Afghan policies over the past 30 years, whether pursued for domesticpolitical or strategic reasons or under US and international pressures, have come at the expense of the country’s political stability and social cohesion. These policiescarry heavy responsibility for intensifying Pakistan’s ethnic fissures, weakening it economically, fuelling religious radicalism, and bringing about an attenuation of

the state’s legitimate authority. They have affected the balance of political power within Pakistan, most of all by reinforcing military ascendance. While Pakistan’spolicies toward Afghanistan have attracted foreign resources, this assistance hasregularly been a source of domestic controversy and dissent.

In formulating its Afghan policies, Pakistan’s leaders seem often to ignore thelong-term and wider implications of their decisions both at home and abroad.Preoccupied with foreign policy goals such as achieving American military aid,gaining strategic depth and avoiding encirclement, Islamabad has turned a blindeye to domestic radicalisation and the impact of this radicalisation on its ability togovern within its own borders. It has acted too often out of convenience rather than conviction in choosing its allies, with the government’s credibility among itsown people a frequent casualty. Pakistan has also failed to recognise the inherent contradictions of its two-track policy, between reserving a Pashtun card in theevent of a failing Afghanistan and normalising its economic and political relationsfor the benefit of both countries.

A series of events that began in March 2007 with the ill-advised attempt byMusharraf to remove Pakistan’s chief justice set in motion what may be atransitional phase in Pakistan’s politics. It is uncertain whether a redefinition of themilitary – civilian relationship is at hand, one that allows for a re-emergence of active party politics or the assertion of direct military rule. Whatever the outcome,these domestic political changes can be expected to influence Pakistan’s policies

on its Afghan border and with its Afghan neighbour, and thus its partnership with


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the United States. Pakistan’s national identity and internal unity are also unlikelyto escape their impact.

Notes and references1. Barnett Rubin and Abubakar Siddique, Resolving the Pakistan – Afghanistan Stalemate (Washington DC: US

Institute of Peace Briefing, October 2006), pp 17 – 18.2. Ibid , p 18.3. Rhoda Margesson, Afghan Refugees: Current Status and Future Prospects (Washington DC: Congressional

Research Service, 26 January 2007), p 3.4. See poll results reported in The New York Times , 13 September 2007, p 13. For the full findings of the public

opinion survey, see hwww.TerrorFreeTomorrow.org i , accessed 16 September 2007.5. Shaun Gregory, ‘The ISI and the War on Terrorism’, Unpublished paper, Department of Peace Studies,

University of Bradford, UK, p 6.6. UNAMA, ‘Suicide attacks in Afghanistan’, Report of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA),

Kabul, 7 September 2007, pp 11, 28 and 90.

7. Khalid Mustafa, ‘Pakistan suffers huge blow of over Rs 25 bn’, The News International , 18 June 2007,hhttp://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2007/june/jun182007.html i , accessed 25 June 2007.8. Husain Haqqani, Pakistan—Between Mosque and Military (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment For

International Peace, 2005), pp 145 – 146.9. For a discussion of Pakistan’s direct aid, including military support, to the Taliban see newly declassified

documents published by the National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington DC,14 August 2007, hhttp://www.nsarchive.org i , accessed 1 September 2007.

10. C. Christine Fair, Nicholas Howenstein, and J. Alexander Their, Troubles on the Pakistan – Afghanistan Border (Washington DC: US Institute for Peace Briefing, December 2006), p 5.

11. Ibid .12. David S. Cloud, ‘US reports surge in cross-border Afghan attacks’, International Herald Tribune , 16 January

2007, p. Also see Associated Press, ‘Taliban attacks triple in eastern Afghanistan since Pakistan peacedeal, US official says’, 27 September 2006, hhttp://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/27/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Taliban_Attacks.php i , accessed 5 October 2006.

13. General James Jones testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 21 September 2006 placedthe Taliban command in Quetta, Pakistan.

14. Ironically, when Afghanistan had one of its best opportunities to capitalise on Pakistan’s vulnerability, it showed restraint. Afghan King Zahir Shah is known to have assured Pakistani President Ayub Khan in 1965that Afghanistan would not take advantage of its neighbour while it engaged in its war with India.

15. Marvin Weinbaum, Afghanistan and Its Neighbors: An Ever Dangerous Neighborhood (US Institute for Peace Briefing, June 2006), p 9.

16. Larry Goodson, Afghanistan’s Endless War (Seattle WA: University of Washington Press, 2001), pp 145 –146.

17. K Alan Kronstadt, ‘Pakistan – US relations’, CRS Report to the Congress, 6 June 2007, p 44. The total aboverepresents an extrapolation through fiscal year 2008. Also see Craig Cohen, A Perilous Course: US strategyand assistance to Pakistan (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), p 61.

18. Marvin G. Weinbaum, ‘Pakistan and the United States: a partnership of necessity’, in Daniel Benjamin (ed.), America and the World in the Age of Terror: A New Landscape in International Relations (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2005), p 109.

19. Op cit , Ref 4.20. In early testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, then National Director of Intelligence

John Negroponte on 11 January 2007 stated that Al Qaeda had established safe haven along Pakistan’sAfghan border.


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pakistan's afghan policies and their consequences

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