Afghanistan is currently at the centre stage of not only international but also domestic politics. The situation in the neighbouring country is once again casting a shadow on the delicate Pakistan-US ties.

Over the recent months, Pakistani leaders, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, have categorically stated that they will not provide any military bases to US forces as they withdraw from Afghanistan.

The war-torn country is once again at a crossroads. While Afghanistan was able somehow to maintain domestic stability early on during the Cold War, the gains were lost on account of tussles in domestic politics, which heavily relied on external support in the late 1970s. The Cold War rivalry brought the US into the country that consequently witnessed prolonged warfare.

From a realist perspective, Pakistan opted to side with the US in an effort to curtail the Soviet sphere of influence. Having signed a treaty of friendship in August 1971, the USSR had strategically consolidated its relations with Pakistan’s archrival, India, which militarily intervened in East Pakistan, ensuring the breakup of the country a few months later. Unsurprisingly, then, Pakistan supported the US-led war logistically, i.e., whereas some Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia, invested in both ideologically and financially. The US managed the warfare strategically, financially and discursively. The American liberal values were disseminated through news media and movies, globally. The USSR, engulfed in domestic political and economic issues, found it hard to counter America’s regional strategy and chose to disengage from Afghanistan in terms of Geneva Accords (1988).

Contrary to the popular perception, when the US left Afghanistan militarily, it did not abandon it in commercial terms. In fact, in the 1990s, certain US corporate executives with close commercial ties to the military-industrial complex, explored business opportunities in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. It was the fateful events of 9/11 that stopped these ventures and, instead, brought the US military might to the country which then witnessed heavy bombardment, including the use of ‘daisy cutters’, causing heavy human causalities as well as infrastructural and environmental destruction.

Paradoxically, however, despite massive military means deployed over the last 20 years, the US has failed to wipe out the Afghan Taliban. The latter survived on account of several factors including their use of guerilla tactics and regional support. For its part, the US appears to have revisited its regional policy in the recent past and is more focused now on the Indo-Pacific. It has, thus, shifted its strategic interests to that part of the world.

This does not mean that the US is totally neglecting South Asia. Indeed, within our region, Washington has been strengthening its strategic ties with India which is part of the Quad led by the former. The US may still keep an eye on Afghanistan and its immediate neighbours but that would be essentially at the tactical level. In other words, the US may not have lost the war in Afghanistan but it surely has lost interest in that country. Hence, in the foreseeable future the US priority in Afghanistan is to watch it closely in order to prevent the emergence of an anti-US government and/or non-state actor(s) that may develop an operational capacity to target American interests extra-regionally.

Currently, Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, has vowed to ensure a stable political transition in Afghanistan. In this respect, he is engaging not only with the Taliban representatives in Doha and elsewhere but also having a word with other Afghan stakeholders such as President Ashraf Ghani.

A conference was held in Tashkent on regional security on July 15 and 16. In the Uzbek capital, the two-day regional meeting was originally planned to deal with “connectivity” in South and Central Asia. However, it turned into a high-level gathering of senior US, Russian and EU officials. The meeting had representatives of US Homeland Security as well as Washington’s special Afghan peace envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad. Also attending was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, as well as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

A related concern for Pakistan is the increasingly anti-China stance of the United States reflected in the recent G-7 deliberations. Given the limited resource base and a dependent economy, Pakistan needs clarity of vision in terms of its foreign policy choices amid the fast shifting strategic alignments. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, Islamabad needs to be aware of global trends and not assign too much weight to local peculiarities.

Pakistan, represented by Prime Minister Imran Khan himself, also had an opportunity to discuss its concerns with the other stakeholders. Diplomatically, Pakistan’s current stance on a coalition government in Afghanistan leaves it in a Catch-22 bind. If it decisively supports the Taliban, as it did during the 1990s, it may antagonise anti-Taliban elements in and outside Afghanistan. On the other hand, an overemphasis on a power-sharing mechanism may not go well with the Taliban in the long run. Also, Pakistan’s relations with the US are currently of a transactional nature. The latter may require more options from Pakistan to keep Afghanistan in check. The US-Pakistan ties are thus likely to remain Afghanistan-centred.

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