Viewpoints: End to Afghan war must involve India, Pakistan

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Viewpoints: End to Afghan war must involve India, Pakistan


By Sunil Dutta


The war in Afghanistan has entered its ninth year. As of Friday, 66 U.S. troops had died there in July – the record for any month – and $738 billion has been spent so far. The cost in blood and treasure continues to escalate. Our initial mission – preventing Afghanistan from becoming a base for al-Qaida and the Taliban – has since expanded into nation-building. The military's promises remain unfulfilled.

The "government in a box" failed to materialize, a large offensive promised in Kandahar was postponed indefinitely, and our support for "democracy" was exposed as a barefaced lie because of our support for Hamid Karzai – a symbol of corruption and election-stealer, whose own brother is the biggest drug smuggler in Afghanistan.

Our achievements? Our soldiers continue to die. The Taliban are stronger and bolder in their attacks. The murderous reach of the Taliban has extended from their stronghold in southern and eastern regions to the north. The country is awash in corruption as Karzai and other warlords in his Cabinet pilfer the aid money. Barely one out of ten dollars reaches the war-weary public. When confronted about corruption, Karzai threatens to join the Taliban.

Despite our failure, President Obama promises more of the same policy in Afghanistan, a continuation of a vague, unfocused, misguided and counterproductive strategy. Even a proposed withdrawal timeline is flexible and fuzzy.

We are failing in Afghanistan because we haven't focused on the right players: India and Pakistan. Afghanistan was a U.S. and Soviet playground in the 1980s; now it is a playground for India and Pakistan.

Since 1947, India and Pakistan have engaged in a proxy war in Kashmir; Afghanistan is an extension of the conflict in Kashmir. Allowing India to have a sympathetic government in Afghanistan would make Pakistan feel encircled by enemies. To fight against Pakistan's support for Islamic militancy in Kashmir, India, besides attempting to influence the government in Afghanistan, has also actively supported secessionists in Pakistan's western provinces. The war has been disastrous not only for the region; its tentacles have reached globally.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars over Kashmir. Pakistan has fostered Islamist militants to use as a proxy army against India in Kashmir.

To maintain "strategic depth" against India and to fight against India's influence in Afghanistan, Pakistan nurtured and backed the Taliban to take over Afghanistan, and supported and protected al-Qaida (which it continues to do, despite posturing about its support for the U.S. war on terrorism).

Terrorist attacks launched on India's Parliament and in Mumbai have been conceived and directed from Pakistan. It's because of Kashmir that India has undermined Pakistani influence in Afghanistan since the 1980s.

India, a country that ranks a miserable 134 out of 182 nations in the U.N.'s Human Development Index, has given over a billion dollars in aid to Afghanistan and has four consulates in addition to its embassy in Kabul. The United States, in comparison, has no consulates. India and Pakistan continue their hot war while bodies litter the ground from Afghanistan to Srinagar.

During the 1980s, when the CIA channeled massive amounts of weaponry and military aid to drive the Soviet military from Afghanistan, the money was sent via the notorious ISI, Pakistan's CIA equivalent. Free to chose who received the weapons and money, the ISI ignored independent and moderate elements and instead supported the jihadi warriors with the aim that they could also be deployed in Kashmir.

By the late 1980s, Pakistan had started to frame the Kashmir conflict in a global Islamic jihad context (infidel Hindus oppressing Muslims in Kashmir). Even during the full-fledged war against the Soviets, mountainous regions of Afghanistan were used by the ISI to train militants to fight in Kashmir. Vast amounts of aid and weapons meant for Afghan fighters were appropriated by the Pakistani military for its true enemy: India.

After the Soviet departure, the ISI sent the Taliban forces to capture Kabul in Afghanistan and escalated the conflict in Kashmir by sending jihadis to fight in Kashmir. U.S. lack of interest in the region allowed the situation to fester. Only after the attack on the the World Trade Center did we wake up to see that the jihadis trained by Pakistan, in Afghanistan's mountainous region, had turned their attention toward the United States. The war between India and Pakistan had finally involved us.

It is shocking that the Obama administration continues to ignore Pakistan's role in attacks on U.S. and coalition soldiers and the destabilization of the Afghanistan government while lavishing it with billions of dollars in aid and military hardware.

Pakistan clearly has two policies. The official policy, sold to the United States, is of promoting stability in Afghanistan. The unofficial policy is to support the jihadis – to appease the population, to overthrow the Karzai government and install a puppet regime, to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan, and to have a cadre of fanatic warriors who will continue the proxy war in India. Ignoring these facts, the U.S. continues to give weapons and aid to Pakistan, and Pakistan continues to support fighters who have by now killed more than a thousand U.S. soldiers.

In a sign of blowback, factions of the Pakistani Taliban have started attacking their own mentors. This fact has been compartmentalized by the military as they distinguish between the "good" Taliban (those who train in Pakistan and fight in Afghanistan – the Afghani Taliban) and the "bad" Taliban (jihadis who train in Pakistan but are upset at Pakistan's apparent support for the American presence in Afghanistan and Iraq – the Pakistani Taliban).

The Pakistani military has demonstrated that it will happily crush the "bad" jihadis and wink at the "good" ones. As a result, while Pakistan is being riven by the Islamic militants, the ruling elite continues to consider India the primary enemy!

When Pakistan's rulers are shown the evidence of ISI and military's support of radical Islamic groups, the groups are formally banned but in reality simply renamed and allowed to function. Individuals involved in acts of terrorism are openly protected by the Pakistan government. None of this is secret: U.S. intelligence agencies have linked several terrorist plots in the United States to networks in Pakistan, including Faisal Shahzad's May 2010 attempt to bomb Times Square in New York.

The seeds of pathological politics have settled deeply in Pakistani and Indian ruler's psyches, causing immense misery to more than a billion people in South Asia. Only external diplomatic initiative can resolve this conflict. Unless Pakistan feels secure in its relationship with India, it will continue to support the Taliban and other jihadi groups to destabilize Afghanistan, and by proxy, India.

The only way to bring peace to Kashmir and end the ruinous war in Afghanistan is through American diplomatic initiative.

The United States cannot defeat the Taliban without Pakistan's help. Pakistan will not change its policy of destabilizing both Afghanistan and India unless it feels secure in its relation with India. U.S. ignorance of these facts has resulted a bloody stalemate in Afghanistan. Even when parts of Swat Valley in Pakistan were taken over by the Pakistani Taliban, Pakistan refused to pull enough troops from its eastern border with India to fight its internal problem.

Pakistan's existential dangers come from within: using Islam for political expediency, deeply entrenched corruption, poverty and illiteracy.

However, Pakistan mistakenly continues to consider India as its enemy No. 1. In short, Pakistan will never give up supporting the jihadi elements until its rivalry with India is resolved. The only way to bring peace to Afghanistan is through New Delhi and Islamabad.

Sunil Dutta was born and raised in India to a refugee family that fled Pakistan after the 1947 partition. He is now a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department. The opinions expressed here are his own.


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