Pakistan's Coming Defeat in Afghanistan

[Kasrkin]

Pakistan

This analysis is flawed.

There are three possible scenarios developing after the US/NATO withdrawal.

1) The Afghan government and security services not only stay intact but are able to retain control over previously held Pashtun areas of Afghanistan despite an active Taliban insurgency.

These relatively low, but still significant, levels of violence would tax Afghan national security forces, distract the central and provincial governments, threaten the security of the average Afghan, and generally retard Afghan stabilization and reconstruction. While such problems would be serious—though perhaps manageable for Kabul—they would by no means be favorable to Pakistan. A continuing insurgency in Afghanistan will further inflame passions in Pakistan’s own tribal areas and, given the links between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, will intensify the threats to Pakistan’s own internal stability at a time when the country’s economic condition remains parlous and its relations with the West are precarious. Most problematically, this outcome would deepen the estrangement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, induce Kabul to be even less accommodating of Islamabad’s concerns, and push Afghanistan into a tighter embrace of Pakistan’s rivals.

The assumption that the continuing insurgency in Afghanistan will inflame passions in Pakistan is simply incorrect. A withdrawal of foreign military forces will have the opposite impact and dampen ****** passions and rob the Pakistan Taliban of their founding ideological basis and operating space (to oppose Pakistan's military alliance with the US in Afghanistan). The TTP is already a spent force and is only likely to be weakened further. The Afghan Taliban are also likely to lose ideological and military momentum but because a skeletal western military presence is poised to remain the residual jihadist tendencies along the Durrand are likely to prioritize fighting the proxy Afghan government instead of the Pakistani state, especially if the Pakistani state initiates active military support for the Afghan Taliban. Having successfully directed the jihadist outward into Afghanistan with groups like the Haqqani Network, LeT and the Quetta Shura appeased and others like the TTP and TNSM uprooted or destroyed, the situation would not only be manageable but as reasonably favorable an outcome as Pakistan might expect. The author does not appreciate that Pakistan cannot disentangle itself from Afghanistan even if it wanted to given that the Pashtun tribal population dominates Afghanistan but that 3/4th of it resides across the virtually nonexistent border in Pakistan. Should Kabul get closer to India so too will Pakistan start supporting the Taliban in more direct ways in which case the Afghan government has much more to lose, and as long as the Taliban maintain a strong presence along the Durrand, which they probably will, Pakistan's strategic flank will remain secure.

2) The Afghan government and security services stay intact but the Taliban make significant battlefield gains and cease control of most if not all of the Pashtun areas.

The more serious, though still middling, outcome of the security transition could be a de facto partition of Afghanistan arising from a steady increase in Taliban control that is limited to the Pashtun-majority areas in the southern and eastern provinces. Beyond undermining Kabul’s effort to preserve a unified Afghan state, this consequence would put at risk the international community’s contributions toward reconstruction in Afghanistan. If Islamabad is satisfied by such a result, it should think again. Although the Taliban’s reoccupation of its heartland might appear to produce a barrier region controlled by Islamabad’s proxies, its worst consequences would not be limited to the inevitable meltdown in Afghanistan-Pakistan relations. Rather, the chief concern is the chaos that would ensue from Kabul’s military efforts (almost certainly aided by Pakistan’s regional rivals) to regain control of these territories—a chaos that would inescapably bleed into Pakistan’s frontier regions.

Yet Pakistan will be insulated from this 'chaos' more so than it is presently. Its not like US/NATO forces are not engaged in a war that has been bleeding into Pakistan's frontier regions for a decade. At least this way both sides will be at a rough parity in central Afghanistan resulting in stability in border areas immediately adjacent to Pakistan, hopefully this stability will be augmented by a ceasefire and negotiations in which Pakistan and its rivals partake. If Afghan government forces do succeed in upsetting this equilibrium through military force then Pakistan can always counterbalance; Pakistan certainly has geography and manpower on its side and is not lacking in military expertise. Ofcourse stability in the region will suffer, especially in Afghanistan, but as far as Pakistani policy makers are concerned atleast its not stability at the expense of Pakistan's strategic interests.

Even if Afghanistan were to eventually fail in these operations, the outcome would be deadly for Pakistan. Any Taliban control of southern and eastern Afghanistan would lay the geographic and demographic foundations for resuscitating the old Pashtun yearnings for a separate state, a “Pashtunistan” that would threaten the integrity of Pakistan. Given the current resentment of the Taliban leadership toward its Pakistani protectors, Rawalpindi should not be consoled by the prospect of a Pashtun buffer along Pakistan’s western borders.

The risk for this existed when Pakistan started supporting the Taliban in the first place but evidently they didn't care; they were right, the Taliban did not want to carve out a piece of Pakistan for themselves even when they dominated Afghanistan, why would it be different now especially if they need Pakistan more than ever? The Pashtun are way more antagonistic to the Northern Afghan ethnicities than they are to the Punjabis who have traditionally helped the Pashtun through the Pakistan army and vise versa.

Even if the Pashtun wanted their own state it should be remembered that the center of gravity for such a state would be in Peshawar and not in Kabul. Do Pakistani Pashtuns want to be part of a new Afghan state or a Pashtun state that includes Afghanistan? I seriously doubt that. A Pashtun state is simply a pipe dream without the active support of the vast majority of Pakistani Pashtuns who are unlikely to give up their relative stability and prosperity.

3) The Afghanistan government and security forces collapse along ethnic lines and the Taliban after reclaiming Pashtun areas begin a reconquest of the rest of the country.

The last and most dangerous potential outcome of the security transition in Afghanistan would be the progressive Taliban takeover of the south and east en route to a larger attempt to control all of Afghanistan. This would be a replay of the tragic events Afghans faced between 1994 and 2001, and would plunge the country into a Hobbesian civil war. All Afghan minorities as well as Pakistan’s larger neighbors would be implicated in a cauldron intended to prevent Islamabad from securing its desired “strategic depth” at their expense. A cataclysmic conflict of this sort would be the worst kind of disaster for Pakistan. It would not just provoke major refugee flows that would further undermine Pakistan’s difficult economic condition. It would also integrate the violence and instability currently persisting along Pakistan’s western frontier into a vast hinterland that opens up even greater opportunities for violent blowback into Pakistan itself. The disorder that such a scenario portends would not only put paid to any Pakistani dreams of “strategic depth”—assuming this concept was sensible to begin with—but it would end up embroiling Pakistan in an open-ended proxy war with every one of its neighbors.

Afghanistan would undoubtedly suffer but not Pakistan. This is not the 80s, Pakistan is unlikely to allow unhindered access to Afghan refugees as it once did and is already in the process of kicking the remnants from that war out. Pakistan's economic condition would hardly be any better if it decided to start the war in Pakistan's tribal areas instead where tribesmen and factions like the Haqqanis would be supporting their brethren in Afghanistan regardless of Pakistani state acquiescence. This way Pakistan can keep the war contained more effectively away from its borders while focusing on securing its interests along the Durrand. It was not civil war in Afghanistan that nearly destroyed Pakistan but Pakistan's support for the US in the WoT against the tribal Pashtun populace. Instability in Afghanistan is normative. As far as an open proxy war goes, it should be remembered that Iran wants America out more than Pakistan and is cozying up to the Taliban as well. The Indians are unlikely to get heavily involved in Afghanistan, certainly not to the point of sending troops, due to both domestic opinion and international scrutiny. We don't know how things will play out exactly, but its naive to assume Pakistan faces strategic defeat.

As much as we hate to admit it, Pakistani generals may have made some correct calculations after all.

 

[airmarshal]

First of all there is no withdrawal. Only combat troops are supposed to go. But no one knows the exact number to be withdrawn. US is not stupid to go back empty handed. It will keep its troops in smaller concentration. US has come here to stay.

Pakistan is not occupying Afghanistan. Like other countries in the region, it has its interests. So the 'impending defeat' is an over statement.

The article and its analysis is therefore flawed.