British historian says Afghan conflict resolution linked to Pakistan-India detente

Arguing that hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan, a British historian has stressed that realisation of peace can be possible if the two South Asian nuclear powers see Afghan instability as a common challenge to deal with.

William Dalrymple, who has authored nine books on historical subjects including on India and the Muslim world, analyses reasons and implications of the ‘deadly India-Pakistan-Afghanistan triangle’ in an essay posted by Washington’s Brookings Institution.

In the light of the three-way tension and the many incidents that have sparked this continuing conflict between New Delhi, Islamabad and Kabul, the historian looks to the future of Afghanistan after the US withdraws from the longest war in its history.

“The efforts Nawaz Sharif has made to reach out to India may strengthen the hand of the moderates in New Delhi. But whether he has the clarity of vision, the fortitude, the political will and the room to maneuver in that direction is an open question,” he writes.

“What is certain, though, is that the future will be brighter for all three countries caught in a deadly triangle of mutual mistrust and competition if Pakistan and India can come to see the instability of Afghanistan as a common challenge to be jointly managed rather than as a battlefield on which to continue or, worse, escalate their long and bitter feud,” Dalrymple concludes.

In his argument, Dalrymple, cites incidents in Afghanistan that allegedly represent Pakistan’s actions against Indian presence on Afghan soil and Indian activities that fuels the Pakistani opposition.

He also refers to the history of full-fledged wars and limited conflicts between Pakistan and India since their independence from Britain in 1947.

“It is easy to understand why Pakistan might feel insecure. India’s population (1.2 billion) and its economy (GDP of $1.4 trillion) are about eight times the size of Pakistan’s (180 million Pakistanis generating an annual GDP of only $210 billion). During the period of India’s greatest growth, which lasted from 2006 to 2010, there were four years during which the annual increase in the Indian economy was almost equal to the entire Pakistani economy.

“In the eyes of the world, never has the contrast between the two countries appeared so stark as it is now: one is widely perceived as the next great superpower, famous for its software geniuses, its Bollywood babes, its fast-growing economy and super-rich magnates; the other written off as a failed state, a world center of radicalism, the hiding place of Osama bin Laden, and the only ally of the US whose airspace Washington has been ready to violate and whose villages it regularly bombs. However unfair this stereotyping may be, it’s not surprising that many Pakistanis see their massive neighbour as threatening the very existence of their state.

The origins of the Indian-Pakistani rivalry in Afghanistan date back to 1947 independence, the historian contends.

“As the British walked away from their Indian Empire in the aftermath of the Second World War, they divided up their former colony between Hindu-majority India and overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan. It was in that context that Kashmir became a thorn in the side of both countries. The fate of what had been, under the Raj, the princely state of Kashmir, became an anomaly of Partition. With its large Muslim majority, Kashmir was an obvious candidate to join Pakistan. But the pro-Indian sympathies of both its Hindu maharajah and its pre-eminent Muslim politician, Sheikh Abdullah, as well as the Kashmiri origins of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, led to the state’s remaining part of India, which Pakistan has always regarded as unacceptable.”