Resolve India-Pakistan Tension

Blame for the problems of Afghanistan is widespread. The Pakistanis are at fault; no, the Afghans; no, the United States. NATO isn't stepping up to the plate. Is it the Taliban, Al Qaeda, or Pakistan's intelligence service that is pulling the strings? Is President Hamid Karzai powerless, or is he boosting the warlords, or is he a puppet for Americans, or all three?

But a large part of the problem is being missed. There is talk about the U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan tripartite, but it's the wrong focus. The focus should be on the Afghanistan-Pakistan-India triangle.

During the Cold War, Afghanistan was a proxy battleground between the United States and the Soviet Union. One could argue that America was the winner in that battle (the Soviet Union and Afghanistan certainly weren't), except that America's actions then created the threat from the Taliban. There were no winners.

America and the Soviet Union brought two other neighbors into that Cold War fight: Pakistan and India. India stood by the Soviet Union, as it quietly did in many other areas. Pakistan and its intelligence service became the middleman between the United States and the mujahedeen, who later formed the Taliban.

When Soviet forces pulled out in 1989, Pakistan continued to support the rebels; India supported the forces that years later became the Northern Alliance. The battle for influence in Afghanistan has not stopped. India is working on hearts and minds, opening consulates and providing over $750 million in infrastructure and training support, while Pakistan is trying to bridge the hostility that has existed since the Afghan and Pakistan governments ended up on different sides. And so the proxy war continues with a different cast.

As long as India and Pakistan remain hostile to each other, Afghanistan is strategically important to both. It is vital to Pakistan that it not have unfriendly powers on both its east and west borders, just as from India's perspective, Afghanistan would provide a good strategic high-ground to squeeze Pakistan. Economically, too, Afghanistan holds great promise. The United States last year tied Afghanistan and Pakistan together through the creation of Reconstruction Opportunity Zones, which would get U.S. tax exemptions. Afghanistan also is key to the trade routes and energy pipelines of Central Asia. So, if the United States is going to reverse this sad decline in Afghanistan, it will need the support of both India and Pakistan. These two great nations should learn from past mistakes — fighting over Afghanistan is not the solution. The costs are too great. Washington and Kabul need to find ways to invest both nations in helping to make Afghanistan a success.

This is going to require a fundamental change in attitudes in both the Indian and Pakistani governments. But there are some concrete efforts that could start the process.

First and foremost, a quadrilateral group composed of India, Pakistan, the United States and Afghanistan should be created to put both New Delhi and Islamabad in a position where they would engage one another on solutions to Afghanistan's problems.

Second, Pakistan should start to allow Indian goods to travel through Pakistan to Afghanistan, significantly reducing the costs of much of the assistance that India currently provides.

Third, the four countries should put more effort into renewing the long-discussed pipeline through the three nations, providing much needed energy to the region and an alternative to the Iranian pipeline.

Eventually, India, Pakistan and the United States should consider a joint Provisional Reconstruction Team in the northwest of Afghanistan, away from the Pakistan border.

All these efforts are going to be long in coming. But, unless a way to mitigate the underlying Pakistan-India tension in Afghanistan is found, the country will continue to be a battleground for this largely unspoken war. The benefits of building cooperation and trust in Afghanistan will help address the wider India-Pakistan conflict and enhance security across the region.

XeniaDormandy is executive director for research at the BelferCenterat Harvard's KennedySchoolof Government. This article first appeared in The BostonGlobe.