Brian M Downing
Pakistan has closed the legendary Khyber Pass through flow critical NATO supply convoys. The stated reason for the closing, now in its fifth day, is in retaliation for an attack inside Pakistani territory by American forces on a Taliban band that had sought safe haven in Pakistan.
Regardless of any past understanding between the US and Pakistan, and regardless of where international law stands on the matter of hot pursuit, Pakistan has retaliated. Its move – whether temporary or not – has momentous implications for the US conduct of the war in Afghanistan and indeed for the geopolitics of the region.
Pakistani Politics
Why is Pakistan taking this step now? The US crossed into Pakistani territory back in 2008, with only short-lived and desultory comments from Islamabad. The US drone program in the tribal areas has long been decried by Islamabad and has even intensified in recent weeks, but Islamabad’s denunciations have been for domestic consumption: many drones fly from Pakistani airbases and Pakistani intelligence officers identify the missile targets. Clearly, the drones serve Pakistani interests.
Further, many of the drone targets have been Pakistani Taliban leaders, who effectively declared war on Pakistan last year and have been waging a murderous bombing campaign since their ground attack toward Islamabad failed badly. (Significantly, Afghan Taliban leaders are not often targeted by Pakistani intelligence.)
Pakistan might be angered that the drones have been targeting members of the Haqqani Network in their haven in North Waziristan. The Haqqanis are thought responsible for many of the bombing campaigns in Kabul and elsewhere, including some on Indian targets, and are considered to be tied to Pakistani intelligence, whose principal nemesis is India, not militants along its frontier. Indeed, those militants have historically been assets in the conflict with India.
The intensification of drone attacks might signify that the US is obtaining actionable intelligence either from US special forces inside Pakistan or from indigenous personnel – tribal figures amenable to payments or Pakistani intelligence figures with similar pliancy.
A more important cause of Pakistan’s action in the Khyber Pass is the government’s need to settle with the Pakistani Taliban. The military and government have treated duplicitously with the US and Islamist militants along the Af-Pak frontier. Pakistani generals liked to present themselves to each side as a dedicated ally against the other. The charade is over: on that, the US and the Pakistani Taliban agree. Under pressure from the US and militants alike, Pakistan must decide on one side.
Closing Khyber indicates that Pakistan is leaning toward the militants by establishing safe havens for them against NATO ground incursions. Pakistan is choosing domestic peace and firmer militant support against India.
The risk of losing US aid would be offset by greater aid from China – a country with a shared hostility toward India and one with far fewer of the qualms about military rule that the US occasionally exhibits. Indeed, it is likely that Pakistan took the step in Khyber only after consultations with and assurances from China, which of course has embarked on several bold stances around its periphery.
The US Response
It is becoming clear in Washington that Pakistan cannot be relied upon to fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan or even to secure supply routes to western forces there. Pakistan is leaning toward openly siding with China and the insurgents against western forces, most of which in any event are not likely to remain in Afghanistan more than a few years.
American concerns do not rest simply on recent policies coming from Pakistani generals. They come from the growing realization that Pakistan is simply not a stable country. It faces separatist movements in its western province of Balouchistan and in the Northwest Frontier Province as well; and an early grumbling of insurgency is heard from the land-starved rural dwellers of the Punjab. The government is frail and indeed has been further weakened by its weak response to recent floods.
Though supply routes through the Chaman crossing linking Pakistan with southern Afghanistan remain open, the US and NATO must find reliable supply routes – even if Khyber is reopened. These will be more expensive but they will be far less susceptible to insurgent attacks and the intrigues of Pakistani generals.
The principal alternate route is truck traffic from the Baltic Sea. Air routes from Kyrgyzstan and across the North Pole are also in use. The US is unlikely to rely on routes through Iran as long as the matter of the nuclear program persists, though it has not objected to its NATO allies using that option. (This of course would make US attacks on Iran even less likely than they are now and would make any Israeli attack more nettlesome.)
The growing breach with Pakistan might make the US and India draw closer. India has long supported northern peoples against the Taliban and is deeply involved with development programs in the north. The US could rely on Indian bases and logistical help to supply the war with the Taliban.
Pakistan’s closing of the Khyber Pass, though perhaps only temporary, has immense and ominous portents for the war in Afghanistan and the politics of the region. It signals at least the willingness of Pakistan to break with the US and work more closely with China – on security matters and on the economic development of Afghan resources.
Pakistan’s move could also elicit, by logistical necessity or geopolitical assessment, a US shift toward fuller support of India. This would of course bring new instabilities and dangers into the already parlous region.
©2010 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.