pakistani342
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A level headed article by Nirupama Subramanian - she's a frequent visitor of Pakistan, and occasionally appears on Pakistani Talk shows as a guest.
original here and excerpts below:
Pakistan is averse to discussing Afghanistan with India, fearing that would legitimise India’s interests in that country. But it would be in the interests of all three to do so
Two questions have increasingly taken centre-stage in discussions about what might happen in Afghanistan after United States withdrawal in 2014. One, if it will become a proxy battlefield for India and Pakistan, the two big South Asian rivals, and two, if anything can be done to prevent this.
William Dalrymple, for instance, wrote in an essay for Brookings Institution this year that beyond Afghanistan’s indigenous conflicts between the Pashtuns and Tajiks, and among Pashtuns themselves, “looms the much more dangerous hostility between the two regional powers — India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. Their rivalry is particularly flammable as they vie for influence over Afghanistan. Compared to that prolonged and deadly contest, the U.S. and the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] are playing little more than a bit part — and they, unlike the Indians and Pakistanis, are heading for the exit.”
...
The divergence surfaced starkly at a recent Track-2 dialogue convened by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung — a German think tank associated with the Social Democratic Party, which brought together retired bureaucrats, former generals, journalists, civil society representatives as well as one politician each from the two countries. One of the issues that came up for discussion was if there was at all a need for India and Pakistan to talk about Afghanistan.
Most, but not all, Pakistani participants and some Indians too were of the view that talking about Afghanistan was impossible so long as tension between India and Pakistan remained, and that right now Islamabad was in any case too preoccupied with the ‘reconciliation’ process in Afghanistan.
A suggestion was made by an Indian participant that in view of the approaching U.S.-set deadline for the withdrawal of its troops, and the possibility that a dialogue on other subjects between India and Pakistan was unlikely to resume until after the 2014 Indian elections, the two sides should consider discussing Afghanistan as a standalone subject in the interim. But this was dismissed by many Pakistani participants. Why should Pakistan jump to talk on something simply because India considered it important, asked one, when on every other issue, New Delhi behaves as if talks are a huge concession to Islamabad — including the recent Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif summit in New York.
But a far-sighted approach perhaps would be to consider that none of the likely scenarios in Afghanistan after the U.S. drawdown looks pretty,
...
By rejecting Kabul’s entreaties to New Delhi to play a bigger role in securing Afghanistan post-2014 than just training Afghan security forces, India has signalled it is sensitive to Pakistan’s concerns. As Afghanistan’s immediate neighbour, Pakistan is right to claim a pre-eminent stake in what happens in there, and India should have no quarrel with this. As was pointed out at the Track-2 meeting, Pakistan has suffered the most from the two Afghan wars; it provided refuge to Afghans during the first war in the 1980s. More than 100,000 Pakistanis live in that country. The two countries are linked by ethnicity, culture and religion; over 55,000 Afghans cross daily into Pakistan through the two crossing points Torkham and Chaman, not to mention the hundreds who cross over the Durand Line elsewhere.
What Pakistan could do in return is to acknowledge that as an important regional actor, India too has legitimate interests in Afghanistan, and also as a route to Central Asia. After all, if Pakistan considers itself to be the guard at the geo-strategic gateway to Afghanistan, it must also recognise that squatting at the entrance can only serve to neutralise rather than increase the gate’s geo-strategic importance. On the other hand, India-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan could open up a world of opportunities for both, and who knows, maybe even lead to the resolution of some old mutual problems. As both countries grapple with new tensions on the Line of Control, Afghanistan may seem secondary on the bilateral agenda. In reality, it may be too late already.
original here and excerpts below:
Pakistan is averse to discussing Afghanistan with India, fearing that would legitimise India’s interests in that country. But it would be in the interests of all three to do so
Two questions have increasingly taken centre-stage in discussions about what might happen in Afghanistan after United States withdrawal in 2014. One, if it will become a proxy battlefield for India and Pakistan, the two big South Asian rivals, and two, if anything can be done to prevent this.
William Dalrymple, for instance, wrote in an essay for Brookings Institution this year that beyond Afghanistan’s indigenous conflicts between the Pashtuns and Tajiks, and among Pashtuns themselves, “looms the much more dangerous hostility between the two regional powers — India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. Their rivalry is particularly flammable as they vie for influence over Afghanistan. Compared to that prolonged and deadly contest, the U.S. and the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] are playing little more than a bit part — and they, unlike the Indians and Pakistanis, are heading for the exit.”
...
The divergence surfaced starkly at a recent Track-2 dialogue convened by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung — a German think tank associated with the Social Democratic Party, which brought together retired bureaucrats, former generals, journalists, civil society representatives as well as one politician each from the two countries. One of the issues that came up for discussion was if there was at all a need for India and Pakistan to talk about Afghanistan.
Most, but not all, Pakistani participants and some Indians too were of the view that talking about Afghanistan was impossible so long as tension between India and Pakistan remained, and that right now Islamabad was in any case too preoccupied with the ‘reconciliation’ process in Afghanistan.
A suggestion was made by an Indian participant that in view of the approaching U.S.-set deadline for the withdrawal of its troops, and the possibility that a dialogue on other subjects between India and Pakistan was unlikely to resume until after the 2014 Indian elections, the two sides should consider discussing Afghanistan as a standalone subject in the interim. But this was dismissed by many Pakistani participants. Why should Pakistan jump to talk on something simply because India considered it important, asked one, when on every other issue, New Delhi behaves as if talks are a huge concession to Islamabad — including the recent Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif summit in New York.
But a far-sighted approach perhaps would be to consider that none of the likely scenarios in Afghanistan after the U.S. drawdown looks pretty,
...
By rejecting Kabul’s entreaties to New Delhi to play a bigger role in securing Afghanistan post-2014 than just training Afghan security forces, India has signalled it is sensitive to Pakistan’s concerns. As Afghanistan’s immediate neighbour, Pakistan is right to claim a pre-eminent stake in what happens in there, and India should have no quarrel with this. As was pointed out at the Track-2 meeting, Pakistan has suffered the most from the two Afghan wars; it provided refuge to Afghans during the first war in the 1980s. More than 100,000 Pakistanis live in that country. The two countries are linked by ethnicity, culture and religion; over 55,000 Afghans cross daily into Pakistan through the two crossing points Torkham and Chaman, not to mention the hundreds who cross over the Durand Line elsewhere.
What Pakistan could do in return is to acknowledge that as an important regional actor, India too has legitimate interests in Afghanistan, and also as a route to Central Asia. After all, if Pakistan considers itself to be the guard at the geo-strategic gateway to Afghanistan, it must also recognise that squatting at the entrance can only serve to neutralise rather than increase the gate’s geo-strategic importance. On the other hand, India-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan could open up a world of opportunities for both, and who knows, maybe even lead to the resolution of some old mutual problems. As both countries grapple with new tensions on the Line of Control, Afghanistan may seem secondary on the bilateral agenda. In reality, it may be too late already.
