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Why Borrow Trouble for Yourself and Lend It to Neighbors? Understanding the Historical Roots of Pakistan's Afghan Policy

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 37; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00927678.2010.520570

1940-1590

Feisal Khan,

South Asian Studies and Conflicts

Abstract Despite the long-standing Pakistan-Afghanistan border dispute and Afghanistan's irredentist claims on Pakistani territory west of the Indus River, Pakistan's current Afghan policy is a continuation of its “long confrontation” with India. Given the hostile nature of Indo-Pakistani and Pakistani-Afghan relations, Pakistan views its Afghan border as its vulnerable “back door” and is desperate to counter an Indo-Afghan alliance. The Pakistan Army, the key foreign policy decision maker in Islamabad, remains determined to prevent itself from being outflanked by India. Thus Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban is likely to continue unabated, because the Taliban is viewed as Pakistan's trump card to play against any pro-Indian Afghan government. Barring a radical rethink by the army, Afghanistan's Finlandization is likely the only viable long-term solution to the Afghan problem. Keywords: IndiaPak-Afghan relationsPashtunistanTaliban Notes 1. The entire text of the speech, and related news reports and analyses, are available at Barack Obama, “Obama's Address on the War in Afghanistan,” New York Times, December 1, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/asia/02prexy.text.html?ref=asia. Karzai had just “won” reelection in a campaign widely acknowledged by almost all observers as irrevocably tainted by massive fraud. The outgoing Bush administration had already approved a greatly enhanced drone-attack plan, along with limited U.S. ground incursions into Pakistan. See also David E. Sanger, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power (New York: Harmony, 2009), especially chapter 8. 2. See Mark Mazetti and Eric Schmitt, “Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say,” New York Times, August 1, 2008. 3. See Anthony Cordesman, “Shape, Clear, Hold, Build, and Transfer: The Metrics of the Afghan War,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2010, http://www.csis.org/burke/report; “Follow the Money: Why the US is Losing the War in Afghanistan,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008, http://www.csis.org/burke/report; “Losing the Afghan-Pakistan War? The Rising Threat,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008, http://www.csis.org/burke/report; U.S. General Accounting Office, “Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas,” April 2008, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08622.pdf; and S. A. McChrystal, Commander's Initial Assessment (Kabul, Afghanistan: NATO International Security Assistance Force, 2009). Even a cursory look at U.S. news media, academic journal articles, and official U.S. reports on the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan makes clear that these views are by no means anomalous. For example, consider the 2009 Foreign Affairs (an influential voice of the U.S. foreign policy establishment) roundtable discussion, “What's the Problem with Pakistan: Washington and the Generals,” Foreign Affairs, March 31, 2009, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/roundtables/whats-the-problem-with-pakistan. Such disparate analysts as Stephen P. Cohen, C. Christine Fair, Sumit Ganguly, Shaun Gregory, Aqil Shah, and Ashley J. Tellis reach these same general conclusions. The Long War Journal (http://www.longwarjournal.org/), originally just one blog among thousands but now widely cited by the mainstream media for the depth and accuracy of its analysis of the U.S.-Afghan War and related issues, concurs with the assessment of the Pakistani role in Afghanistan. 4. Harsh Pant, “Indian Foreign Policy Challenges: Substantive Uncertainties,” Asian Affairs 40, no. 3 (2009): 93. 5. Rasul Bakhsh Rais, “Afghanistan and Pakistan: Difficult Neighbors,” NBR Analysis 19, no. 5 (2008): 18n10, http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=361. On Pakistan's lack of strategic depth—usually understood as a nation's vital population, industrial centers, and military centers being close to its borders and thus extremely vulnerable to enemy attack—see, for example, M. W. Chowdhury, “Pakistan's Strategic Depth,” Journal of the United Service Institution of India 139, no. 577, (2009), http://www.usiofindia.org/Article/?pub=Journal&pubno=577&ano=283; or Peter R. Lavoy and Stephen A. Smith, “The Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear Use Between India and Pakistan,” Strategic Insights 2, no. 2 (2003), http://www.nps.edu/Academics/centers/ccc/publications/OnlineJournal/2003/feb03/southAsia2.html. There are many Pakistani references to its lack of strategic depth, but I have included Indian and U.S. authors publishing in professional military journals to underline its importance, as it is customary among many Western analysts to dismiss Pakistani writings on this issue as mere paranoia due to its obsession with India. 6. Also known as “Pashtunistan.” The pronunciation depends on the dialect spoken—Pashto or Pakhto, and the language is itself usually referred to as Pashto in English. However, in Pakistan, the more common usage is Pakhtun to refer to the ethnicity. The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP—the old British colonial name) was officially renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in 2010, and, for the sake of uniformity and avoiding confusion, I will refer to Pakhto and Pakhtuns (except where quoting directly) rather than the more cumbersome Pakhto/Pashto and Pakhtun/Pashtun. The Urdu/Hindi pronunciation/corruption, Pathan, was adopted by the British, and some Pakistanis still refer to themselves on occasion as Pathans. There is evidence to suggest that the British colonial administration “encouraged” a pro-Pakistan vote in the Pakhtun-dominated NWFP at the time of independence; in any case, the extremely influential Khudai Khidmatgars (God's Servants) political party, allied with the Indian National Congress, boycotted the vote since the Pakhtunistan option was not on the ballot. It appears that Pakhtunistan was a Khidmatgar call that was appropriated by the Afghans. For details, see Rizwan Hussain, Pakistan and the Emergence of Islamic Militancy in Afghanistan (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2005). 7. See Hussain, Pakistan, or Selig S. Harrison, In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1981) for more details on the Afghan claim. This irredentist claim ignores the fact that Pakistan's Pakhtun population is likely near double Afghanistan's, and Pakhtunistan would require the forcible incorporation of many large, non-Pakhtun Pakistani ethnic groups (e.g., the Baloch). According to Dilip Mukerjee, the Baloch were referred to as “southern Pashtuns” by Afghan supporters of Pakhtunistan! See “Afghanistan under Daud: Relations with Neighboring States,” Asian Survey 15, no. 4 (1975): 302n1. In terms of linguistic legerdemain, since the Baloch have a wholly different language, culture, and history than the Pakhtuns, this is matched only by the Turkish reference to Kurds as “mountain Turks!” 8. For example, both sides regularly broadcast radio propaganda. Afghanistan issued official stamps and maps showing large parts of Pakistan incorporated into Pakhtunistan, and “Pakhtunistan Day” was a national holiday in Afghanistan. Hussain, Pakistan, 65. 9. Thomas M. Johnson and C. Chris Mason, “No Sign until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier,” International Security 32, no.4 (2008): 69. 10. Since 1936, Mirza Ali Khan, the Faqir of Ipi, a Tori Khel Wazir Pakhtun, had waged jihad—that is, a major insurgency—there against the British colonial government, which at its height tied down about 40,000 government troops for more than a year. The Pakhtunistan advocates in the Afghan government, which had given the Faqir refuge, were negotiating with the Germans for Afghanistan's entry into World War II as a German ally in exchange for British India as far as the Indus River and Karachi as Afghanistan's port. They were prevented from concluding an actual treaty only by the king's insistence on strict neutrality. Amin Saikal, Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival (London: Taurus, 2006), 113. The then-new Pakistani government was obviously well aware of the dangers posed by the Faqir and contemporary analysts who dismiss the Faqir's 1948–49 campaign ignore the Pakistanis' legitimate fears over the Faqir's ability to cause trouble. Milan Hauner reports that the Afghan government officially designated the Faqir as “President of the National Assembly for Pukhtunistan.” See “One Man Against The Empire: The Faqir of Ipi and the British in Central Asia on the Eve of and During the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 16, no.1 (1981), 207. Given the current Pakistani military operations in Waziristan, plus ca change… 11. Although the insurgency was rapidly crushed, throughout 1949–50, the Afghan army continued to launch crossborder raids into Pakistan, and Pakistani forces carried out retaliatory attacks, usually by ground attack aircraft. A Pakistani Air Force (PAF) raid on a hostile lashkar based in a village 2,000 yards inside Afghanistan was the immediate cause of the loya jirga's rejection of the Durand Line in 1949. Pakistan paid monetary compensation to Afghanistan for the raid. Barnett Rubin and Abubakar Siddique cite the PAF raid as the reason for the loya jirga's rejection of the Durand Line but make it appear as an unprovoked Pakistani attack on Afghanistan. See Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (2002; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 491; Hussain, Pakistan, 65; and Barnett Rubin and Abubakar Siddique, “Resolving the Pakistan-Afghanistan Stalemate,” United States Institute of Peace Special Report, no. 176 (October 2006), 7, http://www.usip.org/files/resources/SRoct06.pdf. 12. Unless otherwise stated, information in this section is from declassified U.S. State Department cables available at Paul Wolf's excellent Web site, “Pakistan: Partition and Military Succession: Documents from the U.S. National Archives,” http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/pakistan/pakistan.htm. 13. Julian Schofield, “Challenges for NATO in Afghan Pakistan Relations,” Canadian Institute of International Affairs, International Security Series, May 2007, 6, http://www.onlinecic.org/research/research_areas/strategic_studies. 14. M. Attiq ur Rahman, Back to the Pavilion (2005; reprint, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 104–5. 15. Babar Mahmud, “Pakistan Air Force: Squadron Histories,” September 2002, http://orbat.com/site/history/open1/pakistan_pafsquadrons.pdf. There were about sixteen squadrons in the PAF then, but several of these were new raisings and not operational yet; this was thus a sizeable commitment of the PAF's actual combat power. 16. Contrary to most accounts—such as Rubin and Siddique—Dupree clearly states that this was Daoud's unilateral action and that Pakistan responded that it would honor the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement, although this last may well have been for propaganda purposes. Dupree quotes Daoud as stating unequivocally that “the border will remain closed until the Pashtunistan issue is settled.” See Rubin and Siddique, “Resolving”; and Dupree Afghanistan, 544. 17. Rubin and Siddique, “Resolving,” 7. 18. Before that, he had been a very senior general, the commander of the Kabul military region, and the main instigator of the armed confrontation with Pakistan. Peter R. Blood, ed., Afghanistan: A Country Study (Washington, DC: GPO/Library of Congress 2001), http://countrystudies.us/afghanistan/index.htm. 19. Mukerjee, “Afghanistan,” 305. See also Hussain, Pakistan, 70. 20. The declassified U.S. State Department cables (see n12) dismiss the Pakistani government's statement that one of the reason the Pakistanis accepted the cease-fire with India in 1965 was because of threatening moves by the Afghan Army as self-serving justifications. 21. Quotations are from Hussain, Pakistan, 78–79. See also “Daoud's Republic July 1973–April 1978,” in Blood, Afghanistan, for details on the Indo-Afghan military alliance. There is a small Baloch minority in Afghanistan and Iran as well. As non-Persian speaking Sunnis, the Baloch are marginalized in Iran, and there has also been intermittent insurgency/banditry in Iranian Balochistan. 22. Harrison, In Afghanistan's, 37. The insurgency was eventually resolved by a blanket pardon issued by Pakistan's new military ruler, General Zia ul Haq (ruled 1977–88). Although accurate casualty figures are difficult to determine, commonly accepted figures put Pakistani army casualties at more than 300 killed, Balochi insurgent casualties at well over 5,000, and an unknown but much larger number of civilian casualties. There have been other insurgencies in Balochistan: 1948, 1958–59 and 1963–69, but these were more on the lines of large-scale dacoity (i.e., armed robbery and general lawlessness); this was a major threat to the state. The fifth Baloch insurgency has been ongoing since 2004. 23. Mukerjee, “Afghanistan,” 309. Mukerjee's geography is confused: he reports Parachinar as being east of Peshawar when it is actually west, on the Pak-Afghan border. A. H. Amin, “Afghanistan: Centre of the Global Strategic Game,” unpublished manuscript, 2006, http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-AFGHANISTAN, states that in 1974 Bhutto ordered the Pakistan Army to prepare for full-scale war with Afghanistan, overruling plans for a limited strike on Matun (in Khost Province) on the border in favor of a corp-strength attack on Kandahar. Bhutto was finally persuaded of the dangers inherent in an actual war with Afghanistan and instead ordered the training of Afghan dissidents. 24. For details, see the interview of Major General (retired) Naseerullah Babar in A. H. Amin, “Remembering Our Warriors: Babar ‘the Great,’” Defence Journal, April 2001, http://www.defencejournal.com/2001/apr/babar.htm. See also Harrison, In Afghanistan's, for more on the Afghan support of Baloch insurgents. Babar would later serve as Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Interior Minister, 1993–96 and be instrumental in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. High-ranking Pakhtuns in Pakistan, such as Babar, a decorated ethnic Pakhtun officer and former governor of the NWFP, are openly dismissive of Afghan pretensions to speak for all Pakhtuns in the world or that Pakhtuns in Pakistan are oppressed. 25. Massoud was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on September 9, 2001, as a favor to the Taliban—his ethnic-Tajik dominated Northern Alliance formed the post-Taliban U.S.-supported Afghan government. 26. Although Pakistani attempts to instigate major uprisings in Afghanistan were unsuccessful, Islamabad's support for the Islamists was enough to persuade Daoud to reconsider his earlier anti-Pakistani views (for details, see Hussain, Pakistan, 79–80). 27. Nikolas Gvosdev, “The Soviet Victory That Never Was: What the United States Can Learn from the Soviet War in Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs, December 2009, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/node/65674/. 28. Barnett and Siddique, “Afghanistan,” 8. Named after Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was deposed by Zia in a 1977 military coup and was hanged in 1979 after being convicted in a highly controversial trial of ordering an attack on a political opponent; the botched attempt resulted in the death of the opponent's father. The group was headed by Bhutto's son Murtaza and was responsible for a plane hijacking and some political assassinations but was never any threat to the Zia regime. Bhutto's daughter, Benazir, was prime minister of Pakistan twice (1988–90; 1993–96) and was assassinated—presumably by the Pakistani Tehrik-e-Taliban—in 2007 when staging her second comeback in Pakistani politics. 29. Gvosdev, “The Soviet Victory.” 30. Rais, “Afghanistan,” 18. Rais is a Pakistani academic, but his characterization of Afghan views of Pakistan is shared by other Pakistanis who have had experience in Afghanistan. A Pakistani foreign service officer told me that Pakistan views Afghanistan as its backyard: planting what it wanted, uprooting what it wanted, ignoring it, watering it, doing whatever it felt like to Afghanistan—“and the Afghans resent us for it.” 31. For example, the United Pakhtunistan Front (UPF) was established in New Delhi in 1967, with a former Indian federal cabinet minister as its president, and Morarji Desai, then deputy prime minister of India and later prime minister (1977–79), apparently gave its leaders a sympathetic hearing; the protestation of the UPF that it had nothing to do with the Afghan demand for Pakthunistan and was simply advocating for greater regional autonomy probably carried no weight with the Pakistani government because, in 1965, the government-controlled All India Radio had started rebroadcasting Radio Kabul's old Pakhtunistan propaganda. See declassified U.S. State Department cables referenced in n12 for details. 32. For a U.S.-centric account see, for example, Stephen Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004). For an account by a former ISI officer, see Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkins, The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story (New York: Cooper, 1992). For the definitive account of the rise of the Afghan Taliban and the role of the Pakistanis, Ahmad Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). On a side note, Rashid, a non-Baloch, served as a propagandist for the Baloch insurgents during 1973–77 and saw combat against the Pakistan Army before accepting Zia's amnesty and becoming a journalist. 33. Massoud was taken there for medical help after being wounded in the successful attempt on his life on September 9, 2001. 34. Details from Sreeram Chaulia, “India's Central Asian Struggle,” International Indian, June 2008, 22–23, http://www.sreeramchaulia.net/IndiaCentralAsia.pdf; Rahul Bedi, “India May Have to Quit Tajik Air Base,” NERVE News and Analysis of India, September 20, 2007, http://www.nerve.in/news:25350092631; and Sudha Ramachandran, “India's Foray into Central Asia,” Asia Times Online, August 12, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HH12Df01.html. These reports also indicate that India is training the Tajik Air Force and upgrading other Soviet-era air bases in Tajikistan; the main Tajik Air Force base, outside the capital, is supposed to be partially turned over to the Indian Air Force. In addition, in 2007, Indian Special Forces carried out rapid deployment exercises in conjunction with demonstrating the heavy-lift capability of the IAF; earlier reports that the Russians were attempting to force the IAF to turn the base over to them were not entirely correct as a joint-use agreement has been negotiated. The original plan called for the MiG-29 deployment, but this was (temporarily?) cancelled. 35. This will cut the transit time for Indian goods—whether civilian or military—reaching Afghanistan via Iran from eight to ten days to under four days; for details, see Sandeep Dikshit, “Iran Should Do More: India,” Hindu, September 7, 2007, http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/08/stories/2007090862461600.htm; and Indian-defence.com, “Chabahar Port Construction Will Not Be Affected by Politics: Iran,” February 21, 2006, http://www.india-defence.com/reports-1371. 36. For details, see DNA India, “India Hands over Zaranj-Delaram Highway to Afghanistan,” January 22, 2009, http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_india-hands-over-zaranj-delaram-highway-to-afghanistan_1224045. 37. Raja K. Gundu and Teresita C. Schafer, “India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Hostile Sports,” South Asia Monitor, 117 (2008): 1, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/sam117.pdf. 38. Rajat Pandit, “Brigadier Targeted for Role in Training Afghan Army,” Times of India, July 8, 2008, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Brigadier_targeted_for_role_in_training_Afghan_army/articleshow/3208668.cms. 39. Although Iran would be very disturbed over any large-scale Indian assistance to Balochi rebels in Pakistan (having its own Balochi insurgent movement, Jandollah, to deal with), it is unlikely to risk upsetting relations with India over relatively limited aid to Balochis in Pakistan. 40. Former Pakistan Army officer, interview with the author, February 5, 2010; aankhen dekhana (showing your eyes) is an Urdu/Hindi term that means “showing defiance,” generally with a connotation of ingratitude from the defiant one. All the serving and retired Pakistan Army officers I interviewed were assured that their identities would be kept strictly confidential. They ranged in rank from captain to general-officer rank, and I knew most personally, in one context or another, so they spoke very openly. Given the personal context, general tone of the conversation, and some of the comments they uttered (and not relevant to this topic), I am convinced that these are their actual views and not parroting the party line. The interviews were held in 2009 and 2010. 41. Leiutenant Colonel John Nagl, a trenchant critic of the Pakistani army and government, describes the campaign as “a very vigorous—not a very sophisticated—counterinsurgency campaign in Swat that continues today, but that, frankly, defeated the Taliban there.” Nagl is the author of Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (New York: Praeger, 2002), as well as one of the authors of the new U.S. Army Counter Insurgency Manual and president of the Center for a New American Security; a transcript of his interview is available at John Nagl, interview, Frontline: Obama's War, PBS, October 13, 2009, http://www.cnas.org/node/3465. 42. Khalid Qayuum, “Pakistan Has Killed 4,000 Terrorists in Eight Years, AAJ Says,” Reuters, September 10, 2009, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=aDRU5k4DVSOI. 43. Cyril Almeida, “Kayani Spells Out Threat Posed by Indian Doctrine,” Dawn, February 10, 2010, http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/12-kayani-spells-out-threat-posed-by-indian-doctrine-420-bi-08. 44. Robert Birsel, “Pakistan Offers to Train Afghan Security Forces,” Reuters, February 1, 2010, http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-45827820100201. 45. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this crucial distinction. 46. From subsequent conversation it became clear that he did not literally mean Indian rule over Pakistan but de facto hegemony, such as India enjoys over Nepal. 47. Sanger, The Inheritance, 243–45. This entire exchange seems too unbelievable to be true. It is inconceivable to me that a Pakistani major general discussing Pakistan's support for the Afghan Taliban (in English no less!) with a subordinate would not notice that a number of Americans had entered the conference room. Assuming that the report is accurate, to my mind, it is only possible for it to have taken place because the Pakistanis wanted McConnell to know that as long as the Indians were in Afghanistan, Pakistan would support the Taliban against U.S. and NATO forces. 48. In an intriguing twist to this tale, the official transcript of this was taken off the Pentagon's Web site. U.S. Department of Defense, “Q&A Session, #4561,” http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/default.aspx?mo=2&yr=2010 (accessed February 12, 2010). This despite the fact that the transcript had been e-mailed to various media outlets. For references to both the questions asked and the fact that the transcript is no longer available, see Spencer Ackerman, “The Depth of Official Pakistani Anger at Us,” AttAckerman, February 6, 2010, http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/2010/02/06/the-depth-of-official-pakistani-anger-at-us/. The New York Times reported on the rancor of the Q&A and the open hostility of senior Pakistani military officers but not that the actual transcript had been removed: Elisabeth Bumiller, “Gates Sees Fallout from Troubled Ties with Pakistan, New York Times, January 23, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/asia/24military.html?scp=1&sq=gates%20pakistan%202010%20national%20defense%20university&st=cse. I obtained a copy of the transcript, and there is actually nothing in it that would warrant removal, especially after it had already been so widely disseminated. 49. Barbara Crosette, “State of the World—2008: Interview with Lakhdar Brahimi,” Nation, December 24, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/crossette. Anti-Pakistani attitudes are widespread at all levels of the ANA as well. Serving military officers, cadets, and recruits at the Kabul Military Training College, a major ANA training establishment, responded with “Pakistan” and not “Taliban” when asked, in Dari, “Who is the enemy of Afghanistan?” C. Christine Fair, Georgetown University, personal correspondence with author, based on her field research in Kabul in 2009, March 5, 2010). 50. Ahmed Rashid, “A Deal with the Taliban?” New York Review of Books, February 25, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23630. See also New York Times reports from January and February 2010 that detail new U.S. overtures in this regard. 51. Abdulkader H. Sinno, “Achieving Counter-Insurgency Cooperation in Afghanistan by Resolving the Indo-Pakistani Rivalry,” NBR Analysis 19, no. 5 (2008): 11, http://www.nbr.org/publications/element.aspx?id=361. Sinno thinks that any such agreement would have to include a U.S.-led resolution of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Given longstanding Indian policy on Kashmir, it is extremely unlikely that the United States could ever induce India into discussing any agreement on Kashmir that would be even remotely favorable to Pakistan. At best, the two countries might agree to recognize the de facto border between Indian and Pakistani Kashmirs as the de jure border. Even this would be wildly unpopular among large segments of the Pakistani population and would likely be denounced by every Islamist group, moderate and radical, in the country.