Mennonite Weekly Review

With the war in Afghanistan entering its ninth year and the death toll rising, Americans are wondering if this war is winnable.

President Obama’s decision to add 30,000 troops has renewed debate, with some arguing more troops will not solve the conflict and others responding that a self-imposed troop withdrawal deadline will bring defeat.

Yet few realize the real debate should focus not on Afghanistan, but on its neighbor Pakistan, a country with far greater impact over the region’s destiny.

While Pakistan has historically been a land with a moderate, West-leaning Muslim population, the Pakistani military government, and especially its intelligence service, has had a close relationship with the forces that make up the Taliban.

The relationship was born in a common Pashtun ethnicity and a common hatred for the Soviet army, which invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and occupied it for the next decade.

In the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Taliban emerged as the group most able to bring stability. The Pakistani intelligence service, wanting stability and security on its northern border, provided the Taliban weapons and support as its armies took over the Afghan capital. To this day Pakistan’s intelligence services strongly support the Taliban.

Muslim Pakistan was a U.S. ally in the 1960s, when its independently minded neighbor and rival India decided to take a non-aligned position between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the 1980s this close relationship deepened, as Pakistan was the staging ground against the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan. The United States gave $5 billion in military and development aid to support anti-Soviet activities.

When that threat died along with the Soviet Union, Pakistan was seen as a counterbalance to the rising nuclear ambitions of India, and warm relations with the United States continued.

After 9/11, the U.S. relied heavily on Pakistan, donating $9 billion in military aid to, in theory, help support U.S. efforts to rid the area of the Taliban and keep them from regaining a stronghold in the rugged mountains bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So, more than a bit ironically, the United States has given a country that has actively supported the Taliban billions of dollars to help get rid of the Taliban. Now it turns out Pakistan diverted as much as $7 billion to build its nuclear program and to fund its 60-year conflict with India over the Kashmir region.