Pak resorting to proxies against India, Afghan: experts tell US lawmakers

Washington: Afghanistan's relationship with India is unacceptable to Pakistan, which is using proxies like Haqqani network and the Taliban against its neighbours, eminent experts have told US lawmakers.

"Afghanistan's strongest regional ally is India, that is unacceptable to Pakistan. India is an enemy while the Afghan government is an ally in the Indian government," Seth Jones, Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, Rand Corporation said during a Congressional hearing last week.

"Pakistan has resorted to proxy organisations to further its foreign policy goals both in places like Jammu and Kashmir against the Indians and in Afghanistan and that means support to organisations like the Haqqani Network and the Taliban, so it's a proxy war," Jones said in response to a question from Congressman Ted Poe.

"The Pakistani government is continuing with its policy, their strategy of strategic depth, that it views everything through the lens of fighting India," Bill Roggio, editor of Long War journal said during the hearing organised by the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation.

"That unfortunately some of these jihadist groups that have spawned from the Pakistani efforts to fight India to establish strategic depth in Afghanistan, it's come back to bite them with groups like the movement in Taliban and Pakistan, and other groups which have attacked the Pakistani state," Roggio said.

"Unfortunately, Pakistan seems unwilling to recognise this that it still while it fights the movement in Taliban and Pakistan, it continues what other groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and a host of other groups because they are willing to serve
as Pakistan's strategic depth," he said.

"Until the Pakistani government and leaders and military intelligence, until they come to grips with this, this problem is going to exist for decades," Roggio said.
Poe, who chaired the Congressional hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan said that in recent years the US has given over USD 33 billion in some form of aid to Pakistan.

"Pakistan directly or indirectly supports the Haqqani Network, in theory. That network as we mentioned earlier, has killed more Americans in the region than any other terrorist group. To me that is something that we should not accept. We
should not accept sending money to a country that support a terrorist group that kills Americans. I think there is a real problem with that," Poe said.

Jones said it's a serious problem. "I would support as the US did last year when it has a strike against the Taliban leader, as it did with Mullah Mansour to take that strike. I mean, I think it's worth considering the cost and benefits, but I would applaud the administration for targeting the Taliban leader last year," he said.

Poe alleged that Taliban is still based in Pakistan and it came as no surprise that when a US drone strike killed the leader of the Taliban in May 2016, he was in South-western Pakistan.

"The laundry list of evidence of Pakistan's support for terrorist goes on and on. We remember that when Al Qaida leader and America's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden was killed, he was found in Pakistan," he said.

"I believe Pakistan is playing us, they launch what they called counterterrorism operations in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, but quickly became clear they were only targeting the Pakistani Taliban and not the Afghan Taliban,"
he said.

Speaking about ISIS, he said: "ISIS announced the establishment of Afghan affiliate in January 2015 and is entrenched itself in the eastern part of the country. ISIS presence in Afghan further complicates the country's tourist
landscape."

He said these fighters ended up becoming the leaders of the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan known as "ISIS Khorasan Province".