V. V. SERGEEV

Key words: Pakistan, Afghanistan, States,

One of the main points of the new strategy for Afghanistan announced in December 2009 was US President Barack Obama. Obama called effective partnership with Pakistan*.

Washington is making great efforts to involve Islamabad in an active crackdown on the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda havens and the Afghan armed opposition in the Tribal Zone on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

However, Pakistan's position is far from clear. This is stated in the article by V. V. Sergeev.

The impact of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (IRP) on Afghan affairs and the state of affairs on the Afghan-Pakistani border in the Tribal Zone is one of the key factors determining the outcome of the war in Afghanistan of the international coalition, the backbone of which is made up of NATO troops led by the United States.

Since President Asif Ali Zardari came to power, Islamabad has stepped up its fight against the Pakistani Taliban. But Pakistan's position remains ambivalent.

It is influenced by such long-term fundamental factors as Pakistan's interest in drawing Afghanistan into its zone of influence, the widespread spread of extremist Muslim groups in the country and their tacit use in the Kashmir conflict and regional rivalry with India by certain circles, primarily by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Some American experts even believe that Pakistan, including the current government, is maneuvering between concessions in the interests of Washington and secret support for the DT.

IN THE NETWORKS OF EXTREMIST ISLAMISM

Many military operations of the Pakistani army against the local Taliban, which were conducted in 2002-2008, often ended in failure, which still happens today. This is due to the fact that a number of high-ranking representatives of the Pakistani army have clan and kinship ties with residents of the North - Western Border Province of Pakistan (NWFP) - the birthplace and stronghold of the local Taliban Movement. Since April 2010, by the decision of the National Assembly (Parliament) of the country, this province is officially called "Khyber Pakhtunkhwa", which in Pashto means"The land of the Pashtuns at the Khyber Pass". The new name once again emphasizes the blood closeness of the Pakistani and Afghan Pashtuns on both sides of the pass.

The situation began to improve when the Zardari government began moving Punjabi soldiers from the south-east of the country to fight the Taliban.1
However, the main difficulty for the Pakistani authorities is different-in the ideological background of the fight against the Taliban.

Pakistan is a state built on Muslim ideology, even its very name means "country of the pure". For Pakistanis, religious identity is more important than national identity.

DT positions itself as defenders of the Islamic faith, jihadists, and current " fighters for the faith "(Mujahideen).

It is extremely difficult for the official Pakistani authorities to explain to their own population how their army can fight against the "defenders of Islam".

Despite the fact that the number of suicide attacks and civilian casualties has increased significantly in recent years, many Pakistanis believe that the fighting against the extremists is just a concession made under pressure from the United States and solely in the interests of the Americans themselves.

* For more information, see: Rusakov E. M. Knutom i pryanikom [Knutom and pryanik] / / Asia and Africa Today, 2010, N8.

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In 2008, the Pakistani Parliament even passed a resolution calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities in the Northwestern Border Province. In other words, the propaganda advantage remains on the side of the Taliban fighters.

As a result, the population's sympathies are on the side of the Taliban, and any actions against them are explained by the machinations of America.

Pakistan needs a more balanced and long-term solution than just conducting a military campaign against DA.

At the same time, it should be noted that the Pakistani authorities are taking more effective measures to control the joint border - the "Durand line" - than the Afghan government. If on the Afghan side of the border there are 200 checkpoints, then on the Pakistani side there are more than a thousand 2. In total, up to 100 thousand Pakistani soldiers serve in the border areas, which is more than the entire Afghan army combined.

But what is Islamabad more interested in? In the fight against the Taliban or in securing the border along the "Durand Line", which is disputed by Kabul?*

WHO BENEFITS FROM CONFRONTATION?

As you know, the origins of the formation of the Taliban Movement in southern Afghanistan in 1994 were based on the Interdepartmental Intelligence Service of Pakistan3. With the help of DT, the Pakistani authorities tried to create an Afghan government that would take a friendly position towards Pakistan and hostile to India, and at the same time recognize the disputed border between the two states - the "Durand Line".

The project was crowned with success, but only partially. The Taliban did indeed capture 90% of Afghanistan's territory, but they refused to be Pakistan's puppets and act in the interests of Islamabad.

Nevertheless, the position of the Afghan Taliban dependent on Pakistani extremists suits some circles in Pakistan more than the approach of official Kabul.

Another possible reason for Islamabad's disinterest in completely suppressing the Taliban on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border looks rather cynical, but this makes it no less plausible.

The fact is that maintaining a certain level of tension in this area is financially beneficial for Pakistan. While fighting continues along the Durand Line, the United States continues to provide significant assistance to strengthen the border and develop democratic institutions. In practice, however, almost all of this aid is spent on the purchase of expensive weapons intended for a potential conflict with India.

From September 11, 2001 to October 2009, the United States allocated $15 billion to Pakistan, and since then-another $7.5 billion.4 Thus, the volume of financial injections increased almost 4 times compared to the $5.5 billion allocated over the entire previous decade.

The US authorities admit that up to 70% of aid is not spent for the purposes for which it is intended.5
Through the Taliban, Pakistan, as in the 1990s, aims to gain control of Afghanistan and use it in the confrontation with India. The worst case scenario for the Pakistani authorities would be a possible strengthening of India's role in Afghan affairs and the establishment of friendly Afghan-Indian relations. Preventing such a scenario may be even more of a priority for Pakistan than getting military and financial aid from Washington.

At the same time, there are objective reasons that prevent the restoration of order in the "Land of the Pashtuns at the Khyber Pass".

It should be noted that Islamabad does not have the ability to control all the Taliban groups on its territory. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of them do not obey the Pakistani authorities.

Unlike in the 1990s, the DT is currently fragmented, decentralized, and lacks a unified command. The armed opposition includes both ideological fundamentalists and professional militants, as well as criminal elements, drug lords, field commanders on the ground, as well as poor and ordinary peasants who fight and lay land mines in exchange for a small fee, and go to their native villages for the winter.

There are relatively few professional Taliban fighters who are constantly fighting, especially foreign ones, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the most part, ordinary Afghans and Pakistanis, usually of Pashtun origin, participate in the battles, fighting intermittently against a foreign military presence. There may be several Taliban commanders in the same province who do not obey each other and only occasionally coordinate their actions.

The word "Taliban" has become a trademark used by irregular Pashtun armed groups. These formations are in some ways the ideological heirs of the Pashtun tribal militias that have existed for hundreds of years. Exactly

* For more information, see: Panichkin Yu. N. Restless border / / Asia and Africa today, 2010, N 3.

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they played an important role in the three Anglo-Afghan wars.

Because the Taliban does not have a single leader, negotiating with them or trying to fully control the Taliban is doomed to failure in advance. It is no coincidence that in 2008, when more than 40 different groups united (albeit very conditionally) in the Organization of the Pakistani Taliban under the leadership of Baitullah Mahsud (destroyed by an American drone in August 2009.6, the Interdepartmental Intelligence of Pakistan found out about it after the fact) 7.

At the same time, many foreign experts believe that some of the Taliban formations are actually controlled by the Pakistani authorities. They are used as detachments for conducting indirect military operations against India in the state of Kashmir, as well as for various operations in Afghanistan.

Thus, Islamabad's control over the Taliban is very conditional, and it really not only does not intend, but also does not have the ability to restore order on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

On the side of the Pakistani Taliban and the secret patronage of Interagency Intelligence, which still harbors unrealistic plans to achieve some kind of geopolitical parity with India by using the Afghan factor. It is unlikely that the powerful military lobby of Pakistan will allow a thorough defeat of the Pakistani Taliban. In addition, such a task would require the involvement of large army forces and high costs. The terrain along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is also quite difficult.

Washington has never been able to get the Pakistani authorities to play by its rules. The possibilities for exerting pressure on Pakistan are not unlimited: This country remains an important American ally in the region. In the end, Zardari, like the former President of Pakistan, P. Musharraf, is maneuvering between the US line and his own Afghan strategy, which contradicts the American one.

THE SECRET WAS REVEALED

At the end of July 2010, the well-known independent information resource WikiLeaks published over 90 thousand secret Pentagon documents about the war in Afghanistan.

Among other things, they told about Islamabad's ambiguous position towards the Afghan Taliban, to put it mildly, and Washington's long-term undercover struggle against the insidious games of Pakistani intelligence.

Interagency Intelligence (IP) is a kind of state within a state. It often follows its own line, regardless of the government or even the army.

According to publicly available classified materials, intelligence officials meet directly with the Taliban to organize militant groups fighting against American troops, and even conduct terrorist attacks against representatives of the Afghan authorities.

The totality of the disclosed documents suggests that in their daily activities, US military personnel in Afghanistan are daily confronted with a multitude of terrorist cells controlled by Interagency Intelligence. Some reports even suggested that Pakistani operatives were working with al-Qaeda operatives8.

The documents once again confirmed the discontent of the American command with the fact that the Taliban pursued by the Americans are hiding in Pakistan. Sometimes militants openly cross the border in cars and trucks and quietly hide in the depths of Pakistani territory, where the Americans cannot pursue them.

According to the published documents, it confirms the long-held conclusion that due to the" amateur activity " of intelligence, in fact, it turns out that Pakistan is playing a double game - on the one hand, fulfilling some American requirements, on the other - pursuing its own policy in Afghanistan, controlling part of the terrorist underground and generally undermining the efforts of the United States in the region..

Even during the Bush administration, the US army command secretly made claims and accusations to the Pakistani side that the IR was involved in some of the terrorist attacks that occurred in Afghanistan. Islamabad was even presented with a list of individuals from its intelligence service who were believed to have collaborated with the militants.9
In late 2009, Obama sent a letter to Zardari warning that the United States would no longer tolerate contacts between the Pakistani knights of the cloak and dagger and the Taliban.10
As rumors of Pakistan's aid to the Taliban spread widely, some representatives of the United States of America and the United States of America expressed their support for the Taliban.-

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Congress members requested relevant information from the CIA and the Pentagon, but each time they received vague and incomplete information. A number of senators and congressmen did not doubt and do not doubt the help of the Pakistani side to the militants. Usually, such accusations are met with an angry rebuke from the Pakistani authorities, who constantly claim that they severed all ties with the militants many years ago. Thus, the very fact of the existence of links between the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban Movement, even if some time ago, is no longer disputed by Islamabad.

The American authorities believe that despite the fact that the Pakistani intelligence service does not verbally allow employees who conduct activities that do not correspond to the state line to join its ranks, there is a deeply secret S Wing structure in the ranks of the IR. It conducts operations in Afghanistan against the Government of India. 5 Wing, which enjoys broad autonomy in its operations, continues to employ employees associated with the Talibs.11
Information from WikiLeaks confirmed the inextricable link and continuity of the Afghan armed opposition, which fought against the Soviet troops, and the modern Afghan-Pakistani Taliban. Thus, Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who commanded the IR in 1987-1989 and directed the distribution of American aid to it, is currently a high-ranking intermediary between Pakistani intelligence and Al-Qaeda. He not only maintains contacts with the militants, but also gives them recommendations on which targets in Afghanistan should be attacked.

Despite the fact that Afghan wars have been going on without stopping since the 1970s, until relatively recently Afghanistan did not know such a phenomenon as suicide bombers: until 2006, there were only isolated cases of their use.

Recently, almost every major attack on government or army institutions in Afghanistan has been carried out without the participation of suicide bombers. As it turned out, it was starting in 2006 that Pakistani intelligence began mass recruitment of suicide bombers for their use in Afghanistan.12
The complexity of US-Pakistani relations in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area is also evidenced by the first leaked information that a whole secret army of Afghan Pashtun mercenaries (3 thousand bayonets) is operating in the Tribal Zone under the auspices of the CIA, hunting for DT and Al-Qaeda militants.13
PAKISTAN'S IMPASSE

Thus, certain Pakistani circles, primarily the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, not only provide secret assistance to the Taliban militants and thereby undermine the efforts of the US administration to normalize the situation in Afghanistan, but also use the militants to wage their secret war on the territory of their northern neighbor.

However, it is unlikely that the published facts and intelligence will have a serious impact on relations within the US-Afghanistan-Pakistan triangle. The stated information in one or another volume was already known to the American authorities, experts and journalists.

But there were no practical consequences of using the available information. Washington from time to time tried to raise the issue of assistance from the Pakistani intelligence service to illegal armed groups, but each time received a response that this information is not true.

Pakistan periodically conducts military operations along the "Durand line", which, as a rule, bring very modest results, but allow Islamabad to declare that it is fighting terrorism, and ask America for financial or military assistance.

Nevertheless, Islamabad provides some military assistance to the Americans and allows them to use their territory for the transit of military cargo to Afghanistan. Until now, the Karachi-Peshawar-Khyber Pass-Kabul route remains the main such transit route, and the passage in the area of Quetta in Balochistan is also used.

Washington does not have many opportunities to radically change the state of affairs. Pakistan officially remains America's most important ally in a region where the United States, with the exception of Afghanistan, which can be ignored, has virtually no allies. Nearby are Iran, which is "unfriendly" to America, neutral India and China, in partnership with which Washington has enough problems without this region.

Washington cannot afford to quarrel with Islamabad in this situation. But this state of affairs clearly does not contribute to the plans of the White House, which is trying to turn the course of the Afghan campaign in its favor.

Shibil Siddiqi. 1 Afghanistan - Pakistan Relations: History and Geopolitics in a Regional and International Context. Implications for Canadian Foreign Policy, p. 38 - http://www.gordonfn.org/resfiles/siddiqi_afghan-pak%20final2.pdf. P. 38.

2 Ibidem.

3 См., например: Rashid A. Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. Yale University Press, 2002.

4 About Those Billions - http://www.new sweek.com/2009/10/21/about-those-billions.html, 21.10.2009.

5 Ibidem.

6 In the Western media, Baitullah Massoud is called Mahsud. This is probably done so that he is not confused with Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Shibil Siddiqi. 7 Op. cit.

8 См.: Mark Mazetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Andrew W. Lehren. Pakistan Aids Insurgency in Afghanistan, Reports Assert - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26isi.html?_r=1, 26.07.2010

9 Ibidem.

Jaffe Greg, DeYoungKaren. 10 Leaked files lay bare war in Afghanistan // Washington Post, 26.07.2010 - http://www.washing-tonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/25/AR2010072502 092.html?nav=emailpage

Mark Mazetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt 11 and Andrew W. Lehren. Op. cit.

12 Ibidem.

Whitlock Craig, Miller Greg. 13 U.S. Covert Paramilitary Presence in Afghanistan Much Larger than Thought // Washington Post, 22.09.2010 - http://www.washington-post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/22/AR2010092206 241.html?sid=ST20100 92106707

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