No Man's Land

Neighbor's Interference
A report by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) coauthored by Rubin and Abubakar Siddique points out: "The long history of each state offering sanctuary to the other's opponents has built bitterness and mistrust between the two neighbors." Afghanistan sheltered Baloch nationalists in the 1970s while Pakistan extended refuge and training to the mujahadeen in the 1980s and then later supported the Afghani Taliban. Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan's then military ruler Zia ul-Haq promoted the jihad in Afghanistan, funded thousands of Islamic madrassas, armed domestic Islamist organizations, and in the process "militarized and radicalized the border region," says the USIP report.

Experts say that underlying Pakistani actions in the region is concern about bolstering security against India. The USIP report notes Pakistan sought to support a "client regime in Afghanistan" that would be hostile to India, "giving the Pakistani military a secure border and strategic depth." By supporting Islamist militias among the Pashtun, Pakistan's government has tried to neutralize Baloch and Pashtun nationalism within its borders. The International Crisis group in October 2007 reported that Pakistan still supports Pashtun Islamist parties in a bid to counter Baloch and Pashtun forces. "Using Balochistan as a base of operation and sanctuary" and recruiting from its extensive madrassa network, the report says, the "Taliban and its Pakistani allies are undermining the state-building effort in Afghanistan." Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly denied this.

Porous Borders
Both the Pashtuns and Balochis gain much of their income from cross-border smuggling, says the USIP paper. Thanks to the largely porous border and people from similar ethnic groups straddling both its sides, "the borderlands already have become a land bridge for the criminal (drugs) and criminalized (transit trade) economies of the region." The transborder political and military networks between the two countries are reinforced as well as funded and armed by criminal activities such as trafficking in drugs, arms, and even people.

Afghanistan is the world's largest cultivator and supplier of opium (93 percent of the global opiates market). According to the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium cultivation in the country is no longer associated with poverty. In fact, quite the opposite. The report says opium is now closely linked to the insurgency and the Taliban are again using it to get "resources for arms, logistics and militia pay," despite a foreign military presence.

The War on Terror
Since 9/11, "there is a large asymmetry of interests between Afghanistan and Pakistan," according to Carnegie's Grare. For Islamabad, Afghanistan is only one element in a larger game involving its policy toward India as well as its global standing, writes Grare. The relationship is mainly a bilateral issue for Afghanistan.

After 9/11, Pakistan allied itself with the United States in its war on terror. This created a dilemma for Pakistan, as it now had to hunt down the Taliban and the Islamic militant organizations it reportedly helped create in the first place. It also had to send its troops into the tribal lands where the Pakistani military has never been welcome. Incidents of Pakistani soldiers surrendering without a fight to militant organizations became common during 2007.