Unlike some critics of the Afghan war, I do not believe the conflict was unjust or doomed to failure. I simply agree with the assessment of the U.S. director of national intelligence in 2009: “No improvement in Afghanistan is possible without Pakistan taking control of its border areas.”
As any military strategist will tell you, support and haven in a neighboring country is the equivalent of counterinsurgency kryptonite. Yet that is precisely what Pakistan has provided the Taliban, undermining and extorting the U.S. for more than $20 billion in the process.
To be sure, Washington has made its share of mistakes, including attempting to conduct the Afghan war on the cheap (for the first five years of the conflict, the U.S.-led coalition was fewer than 40,000 strong, compared with the 400,000 Washington assembled for Operation Desert Storm). Afghanistan’s corrupt leadership, meanwhile, has contributed its share, consistently failing the Afghan people. But nothing has had as pernicious an impact on the war’s trajectory as Pakistan’s “double game.”
Optimists may seize on recent developments such as the emergence of a newChinese-sponsored round of peace talks with the Taliban or the death of the group’s longtime leader, Mullah Omar, as potential game-changers. Perhaps. But a long, depressing record of failed peace talks and the recent Taliban assault in Kunduz should give them pause. The offensive marked the first time the Taliban has captured a provincial capital since 2001 and, according to Afghanistan’s deputy army chief of staff, was supported by Pakistan’s security and intelligence services.
Ultimately, stability will elude Afghanistan so long as Pakistan seeks to keep the country weak, divided, compliant and free from an Indian menace that exists only inIslamabad’s imagination. Unless that calculus changes, or the U.S. is prepared to act like a global superpower and rein Pakistan in, America’s objectives will prove elusive, and U.S. troops will continue making sacrifices on a battlefield where the deck is stacked against them. Either get serious about Pakistan, or get out.