Afghanistan’s Regional Context
In an interview on Monday with the Wall Street Journal, General Stanley McChrystal provided some commentary on the regional dynamics which stand to affect U.S. efforts in Afghanistan:
“We get overly fixated sometimes on al Qaeda, but the reality is there are regional issues here that are potentially more important than that and so that needs to be put as one of the key points.”
This was encouraging observation on the part of the ISAF commander, given that the competition among regional players to exert influence in Afghanistan will only become more intense as the United States’ 2011 drawdown date approaches. McChrystal went on:
“Everything in the region affects everybody else. You know it’s like in the solar system: Each planet actually does gravitational pull on all the others. Pakistan is clearly affected by a number of actors, India being large. And Afghanistan is affected by a huge number of actors.
I think the better we can make India and Pakistan relations, the better it is for everyone, particularly a relatively weak nation right now like Afghanistan because as those two significant nations have friction sometimes, it can affect Afghanistan in ways that are just huge. So I think it’s really important that the transparency and the trust with India be part of that calculation. And clearly the Pakistanis are worried about Indian activities inside Afghanistan and sometimes there’s a lot of misperception associated with those, so I think clarity there is essential.”
Reducing India-Pakistan tensions in the near-term may indeed allow the Pakistani military to feel more comfortable in shifting forces from its eastern flank to combat insurgents just inside its border with Afghanistan. We have seen this phenomenon in action, with the redeployment of more than 100,000 forces from Pakistan’s Indian to Afghan border (as reported in the Pentagon’s biannual report to Congress on progress toward security and stability in Afghanistan), and the Pakistani army’s continuing operations in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
But in truth, there is little India — or the United States, for that matter — can do to dissuade Pakistan’s national security establishment that Afghanistan remains a critical source of “strategic depth,” or that India’s engagement in the country — which has taken the form of a broad but low-profile “soft power” campaign — is anything other than an effort to encircle Pakistan. At the same time, India — whose objectives in Afghanistan have been clear and, as Dan Twining noted recently, coincide closely with those of the U.S. — should not be expected to reduce its presence in Afghanistan simply to mollify its rival.
Nevertheless, it is heartening that McChrystal is taking seriously the regional dynamics and their impact on the Afghan campaign. Apart from its evaluation of the improving trends in coordination of U.S. and Pakistani counterinsurgency efforts, the recent DOD report cited above gave the regional situation rather short shrift, outlining only briefly the activities of Afghanistan’s contiguous neighbors within the country, and providing little insight as to the United States’ strategy for managing regional challenges.
Beyond India and Pakistan, all of the region’s key players are becoming increasingly aware of what’s believed to be the emerging Afghan endgame, and they are keen to shape it to their advantage. As Christian Le Mière highlighted recently in Foreign Affairs, China has been aggressively courting Kabul, eager to expand trade ties with its western neighbor. There were also reports within the last week that the deputy chief of China’s People’s Liberation Army may have volunteered to train and equip Afghanistan’s security forces upon the departure of U.S. and NATO troops. The Central Asian republics, Russia, and Iran, of course, all have significant equities in Afghanistan’s future, as well.
In the year ahead, therefore, the United States faces the dual challenge of winning the war in Afghanistan while setting in motion a regional strategy to ensure that its investment in the country is not undermined by the forces of regional competition. It’s a daunting task, but one that is essential for ensuring a balance of power in Central and South Asia favorable to U.S. strategic interests in the long term. The U.S. can’t ignore the new Great Game.
Tim Sullivan is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
