BARRIE, ON, CANADA: This is with reference to Shahzad Chaudhry’s article of October 17 titled “What is America’s great game?”
In any conflict, the first casualty is common sense. The ruling elite in Kabul, if they allow themselves to be played, will be the biggest losers. As for Pakistan, purely from a strategic point of view, an Afghanistan that is not stable economically or politically is not necessarily going to go against Pakistan’s interests.
If that situation does materialise, Pakistan would benefit in that the route for Chinese goods would then be via Pakistan, to markets in the Middle East and further west.
Of course, one is not arguing that Pakistan should actually encourage this in Afghanistan, but perhaps what it can do is to factor Afghanistan out of the situation so that it becomes irrelevant, so to speak, to the emerging calculus.
The Iranians have done a good job of not letting the Afghan instability affect them. We need to learn from them. We can do this by enhancing our ties with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.
Mir Agha
Published in The Express Tribune, October 18th, 2011.
