Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

0 Frontline Pakistan
Pakistan’s support for the Taliban was certainly not based on any
ideological consideration. It was based on purely geo-strategic reasons,
aimed at asserting Pakistan’s influence over Afghanistan through a
Pashtun movement. The main objective was to get strategic depth visà-vis
India and isolate Iran. Pakistan’s military strategists believed that a
Pashtun-dominated friendly government in Afghanistan could provide
strategic advantage in the country against its arch rival, India, with whom
it had long been locked in bitter conflict on Kashmir. 33 They argued
that lack of geographical depth and hinterland would make Pakistan’s
security vulnerable in the event of a war with India. The attainment of
this ‘strategic depth’ had been a key element in Pakistan’s Afghan policy
since the 1980s. But the rise to power of the Taliban did not achieve this
objective, as the Taliban refused to accept a client position.
Pakistan received a rude shock when the radical Islamic regime
refused to recognize the Durand Line and also to drop Afghanistan’s
claim over a part of the North West Frontier Province. Pakistan’s
relations with Afghanistan had been strained since the end of British
colonial rule in the Indian subcontinent. Every Afghan government
had rejected the controversial Durand Line drawn by the British as an
international border with Pakistan. Afghanistan was the only country
not to vote for Pakistan’s membership of the United Nations. In the
1950s and 1960s, the Afghan government had sponsored a Pashtun
separatist movement in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. 34
The main objective of Pakistan’s policy since the 1980s had been
to establish a friendly or pliant government in Afghanistan, using
ethnic and religious connections. Throughout the war against Soviet
forces, Pakistan backed radical Pashtun mujahidin commanders like
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The decision to support the Pashtun-dominated
Taliban was driven by the same consideration. With its hardline
conservative world-view, the Taliban regime became an international
pariah. Afghanistan provided a safe haven for Islamic militants from
all over the world and that had a direct bearing on Pakistan. In fact,
Pakistan appeared to have provided the Taliban with strategic depth,
as their influence started spreading inside Pakistani Pashtun areas,
raising fears of the Talibanization of Pakistan.
Taliban rule turned the war-ravaged country into a base for Osama
bin Laden. The tentacles of the al-Qaeda terrorist network extended
into Pakistan, where it had strong allies among the ISI-trained Islamic
militants. The country became a conduit for training aspiring militants
across the world. That also created a nexus between groups fighting