Amid Afghanistan draw down: Musharraf warns of proxy war with India
Musharraf, who was a key US ally in its “war on terror”, now lives under tight security in his Karachi home, facing Taliban death threats and a litany of criminal cases. The 71-year-old who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, praised new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who made his first official trip to Pakistan last week in a bid to reset fractious ties with Islamabad.
Pakistan’s support is seen as crucial to Afghan peace as US-led forces pull out by the end of this year after 13 years battling the Taliban. But the former strongman said calming tension between India and Pakistan, running high at the moment after some of the worst cross-border firing in years is key to peace in Afghanistan.
“The danger for Pakistan is… the Indian influence in Afghanistan,” he said. “That is another danger for the whole region and for Pakistan because Indian involvement there has an anti-Pakistan connotation. They (India) want to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan.”
India and Pakistan both have long accused each other of using proxy forces to try to gain influence in Afghanistan.
“If Indians are using some elements of the ethnic entities in Afghanistan, then Pakistan will use its own support for ethnic elements, and our ethnic elements are certainly Pashtuns,” Musharraf said.
“So we are initiating a proxy war in Afghanistan. This must be avoided.”
Musharraf blamed India for supporting separatist rebels in Balochistan via training camps in southern Afghanistan, a common accusation in military circles.
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai routinely accused Pakistan of secretly backing the Taliban as a hedge against Indian influence in his country.
Pakistan denies the accusation, though it was one of only three countries to officially recognise the Afghan Taliban regime, in power from 1996 until 2001 when the US-led invasion resulted in its overthrow.
Musharraf criticised former Afghan president Hamid Karzai for sending officials for training in India and not Pakistan, saying “these small things add up to strategic problems”.
Ghani and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged at the weekend to move on from the sniping and bitterness of the Karzai years, with the Afghan leader saying three days of talks had undone 13 years of differences.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 19th, 2014.
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India has been playing a proxy war in Baluchistan for long. It has also used terrorist elements against Pakistan. It is naive to expect India to stop troubling Pakistan since Pakistan still wants a settlement to the Kashmir dispute, which India denies. Afghanistan seems to be playing a double game and she is trying to get favors from both India and Pakistan. An uneasy peace is becoming perennial without any hope of genuine long term peace.
Pakistan military Generals whether the retired ones or those in service are in extreme paranoia when it comes to India's peaceful development contribution in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a free state and have every right to establish diplomatic relations with any other country of the world. Usually, the Pakistani media, government, military and the people alike suggest India's excessive diplomatic footprints in Afghanistan to be ill-intended for Pakistan. There are thousands of Afghans who travel back and forth to India for education, health and business and that's why India have set up it's consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar Sharif and Herat. Now this is a coincidence that two of these major cities are adjacent to Pak-Afghan border. Also if Pakistan warrants that it will not play the proxy war in Afghanistan, rest assured India will never be prompted to play one in Afghanistan.