U.S. Cozies Up to Pakistan's Archrival for Afghan War

U.S. and Indian troops drill together, 2004. Photo: U.S. Army

In a move that could rankle Pakistan, the U.S. military is encouraging Islamabad's arch-rival, India, to deepen its involvement in the Afghanistan war. Apparently, the enemy of our frenemy is our friend.

During a trip to India on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called on the world's most populous democracy to bolster its training of Afghanistan's army and police. Training those Afghan forces is a crucial step to (mostly) extracting the U.S. from the decade-long war. But so is getting Pakistan to step up on a range of issues, from re-opening trucking lanes for resupplying the war to cracking down on terrorism to brokering an accord with the Afghan Taliban.

'We welcome [India's] playing a more active role in Afghanistan, a more active political and economic role,' an anonymous Defense Department official traveling with Panetta told reporters in India. The Wall Street Journal speculated that the move 'may be designed to tweak Pakistan.'

That might be an understatement. 'It will add to [Pakistan's] underlying fear that they may be sandwiched by India and an Indian proxy,' says Shuja Nawaz, a South Asia scholar at the Atlantic Council in Washington. 'Not a good way of getting them to help with the Afghan transition.'

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Capt. John Kirby, a top Defense Department spokesman, said that Panetta was expressing his 'fervent hope' that the Indians will 'continue to stay engaged in the region and in particular in helping Afghanistan as it moves forward.' Afghanistan wasn't the focus of Panetta's visit, Kirby added: 'He's in India to thank them for their efforts at regional leadership and to look for ways to deepen our defense cooperation with India and our relationship with India.'

That's something that already worries Pakistan. It sponsored the Taliban in the 1990s to ensure it had a pliable ally on its western border so it could focus on confronting India, its wealthier, larger adversary. India's presence in post-Taliban Afghanistan is unnerving to Islamabad. In 2008 and 2009, insurgents, possibly with ties to Pakistan's intelligence service, bombed the Indian embassy in Kabul.

The U.S. is walking a delicate balance with the two nuclear South Asian powers, trying to develop and deepen relations with both. It hasn't always worked: in 2004, President Bush approved a sale of F-16 fighter jets to the Pakistanis, angering the Indians. Now the U.S. is trying to work closely with India, a rising global power, while still keeping its delicate alliance with Pakistan intact.

But the spring of 2012 is a particularly delicate moment for that alliance. The U.S. and Pakistan have been unable to reach a deal to reopen Pakistan's ground supply lines for NATO troops in Afghanistan ' lines that have been closed since U.S. troops accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a November border disaster; a disaster apparently sparked by Pakistani soldiers providing cover fire for Afghan insurgents. (Which encapsulates much of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.) And if that wasn't arduous enough, the U.S. wants Pakistan to help forge a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Sidling up closer to India is surely a sensible long-term geopolitical move, but it might also be an impediment to the U.S.' near-term interest in wrapping up the Afghanistan war.

'Regional stability requires a productive U.S.-Pakistan relationship,' says Rick 'Ozzie' Nelson, a former official at the National Counterterrorism Center. 'While many in both nations would rather wipe their hands of the other, this is simply not a viable option. The U.S. and Pakistan must find ways to arrest their current bilateral death spiral and seek to identify mutually beneficial topics upon which to build a more productive partnership.'