Pakistan's Afghan role
The rupture in the broad security partnership between the United States and Pakistan has significant implications in the fight against terrorism. A key casualty of the rift is the area of "Af-Pak", a term the Obama administration uses for Afghanistan and Pakistan - and which it designates as a single theatre of operations where common policy approaches apply. What is worrying is that targets who operate with a fair degree of impunity on either side of the border of the two countries - the terrorist groups - will be tempted to step up their game even more now, and convert any space being vacated into their own strategic domain. Last month's US air strike which killed 26 Pakistani troops near the Afghan border - which precipitated the current downturn in relations - was a dreadful accident for which the US concedes responsibility.
Pakistanis are naturally incensed and want a more formal apology, which has not been forthcoming. But actions like cutting off supply lines to coalition troops will only encourage terrorists operating across and along the border areas. If the rift cannot be fully healed, the US and Pakistan must at least work to ensure there is a strong residual agreement in place under which some level of cooperation - intelligence and other exchanges - can take place. These groups must be denied any room to manoeuvre. The fact that terrorism remains a real threat must, surely, encourage Pakistan and the US to stay the course. But even as that process of engagement and re-evaluation of the relationship gets under way, the hope must be that Pakistan uses its considerable links in Afghanistan to stabilise the situation. Its political links with the Taleban, nurtured before the onset of the Afghan War a decade ago, will also give it an advantage in a post-conflict Afghanistan.
But Pakistan can play such a beneficial role only if its ability to manoeuvre internationally -- created by coherent foreign and defence policies -- is not subverted by rivalry between its elected politicians and its military. At the moment, this hope remains unfulfilled. There is an often-used quip which illustrates the situation: that whereas countries have armies, in Pakistan, the army has a country. While that is, of course, an exaggeration, it is true that the country's military and security establishments have had an inordinate influence on key areas of national life. Pakistanis deserve a system of firmer civilian control over these elements. Only then will Pakistan be able to exercise lasting and useful influence on an Afghanistan which is itself in search of a viable future.
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