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A Case of Mistaken Identities: 

The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan 

Siddharth Singh Chaudhari 

University of Michigan 

 
 
 

 

 

Abstract 

This article explains why Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban. It contends that Pakistan has 
extensive systematic incentives to do so. Furthermore, internal Pakistani dynamics enable and 
encourage support for the Taliban. The article considers the implications for the United States 
and the Afghan government. This work extends the existing literature and presents novel 
arguments. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  



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Introduction 
“Give your enemy a thousand chances to become your friend, but do not give your friend a 

single chance to become your enemy.” – Imam Ali 
On the 30th of November 2016, roughly three weeks after his scarcely believable triumph 

in the United States’ presidential election, President-elect Donald J. Trump spoke with the then 
Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, over the phone. As various news organizations have 
since reported, the conversation between the two leaders did not go according to plan. Having 
elected to eschew the State Department’s guidance altogether, the President-elect instead chose 
to compliment the Pakistani Prime Minister’s terrific character and remarkable performance and 
praise Pakistan’s exceptional people and boundless opportunities. While the President’s ringing 
endorsement of Pakistan and its leader may be described as exaggerated, his statements are 
somewhat in keeping with the United States’ foreign policy towards the South Asian giant. The 
U.S. government, after all, intended to contribute over $742 million in foreign assistance to 
Pakistan over the course of 2017 (Foreign Assistance – Pakistan). 

That figure is, by no means, an anomaly. Former President Obama acknowledged the 
complicated nature of his country’s relationship with Pakistan and even refused to visit the latter 
during his time in office. The U.S. government, however, granted more than $2.6 billion in 
foreign assistance to Pakistan between 2011-2016 (Foreign Assistance – Pakistan). In recent 
years, the nature of the relationship between the two countries has come under intense strain. 
Mounting evidence of systematic collaboration between elements of the Pakistani government 
and security establishment on the one hand and members of the Afghan Taliban on the other has 
repeatedly undermined the United States’ counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan. But as 
Pakistan remains  hostile to the United States vis-a-vis the Afghan War, the U.S. government 
continues to acknowledge the nation as a Major non-NATO ally (MNNA), placing it in an elite 
group alongside other stalwart supporters like Australia, Japan, and South Korea. As I hope to 
illustrate over the course of this essay, this constitutes a major strategic error on the part of the 
United States.  

This essay analyzes the Pakistani government’s position pertaining to the United States’ 
efforts to defeat the Afghan Taliban. Highlighting territorial sovereignty and financial 
considerations, I argue that Pakistan is likely to continue to support the Afghan Taliban covertly, 
as an ongoing rivalry with India, an unresolved border dispute with Afghanistan, and an 
avaricious security establishment leave an unstable Afghanistan in the nation’s strategic interest. 
My overarching aim, then, is to offer a response to the following question:   

➢ Why is Pakistan undermining the United States’ anti-Taliban strategy in Afghanistan?  
 
Key Contentions 
 This essay has been divided into seven sections. I begin with an overview of the scholarly 
literature on the role played by Pakistan in the War in Afghanistan. I, then, provide a brief 
history of the Afghan War. The third section dwells on the rationale behind the Pakistani 
government’s actions in Afghanistan from a realist perspective. The subsequent section contains 



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a discussion on Pakistan’s centrality within and contributions (both positive and negative) to the 
War in Afghanistan. The fifth section highlights Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty considerations. 
Here, I argue that Pakistan’s constant fear of a growing Indian influence within the Afghan 
government and the re-litigation of the Durand Line dispute by that government compels it to 
lend its support to the Afghan Taliban. Finally, I emphasize the role that greed has played in the 
Pakistani security establishment’s decision to enforce its government’s policy of siding with the 
Afghan Taliban. I conclude with a brief discussion of the policy implications of my arguments. 
  
Literature Review  

The scholarly community’s views on Pakistan’s involvement in the War in Afghanistan 
have evolved considerably since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Early assessments were 
cautiously optimistic. Akhtar, for instance, argued that while Pakistan’s attitude towards 
Afghanistan had been wolfish in the past, the events of 9/11 changed the nation’s calculus 
significantly (2008, 50). Electing to partner with the United States, Pakistan seemingly 
consigned age-old rivalries to the dustbin of history and invested itself in the quest for a stable 
Afghanistan, free from the shackles of Taliban rule (Akhtar 2008, 61-62). Others also 
emphasized this post-9/11 shift in Pakistan’s foreign policy behaviour and expressed renewed 
hope for cooperation with the United States (Kux 2001; Khan 2007; Khattak et al 2014).  

Recent contributions, however, have been far more critical. Several scholars have pointed 
out Pakistan’s involvement in a dangerous game in Afghanistan. A common criticism pertains to 
the incongruous nature of Pakistan’s strategy in the war-torn nation. Scholars observe that while 
the Pakistani government continues to identify itself as an ally of the United States in the fight 
against the Afghan Taliban, the country provides a safe haven for some of the terrorist group’s 
most influential leaders and military commanders within its own territory (Kruys 2009; Rashid 
2012; McGovern 2013; Nadiri 2014). Others have drawn attention to the material and logistical 
support – recruits, military training, funding, and weaponry – that Pakistan’s security forces have 
contributed towards the Afghan Taliban’s cause in the past decade (Constable 2007; Jones 2007; 
Mitton 2007). However, while Pakistan’s underhanded actions in Afghanistan have been 
criticized repeatedly in the scholarly literature, few scholars have studied the Afghan conflict 
from Pakistan’s perspective and reflected on the country’s motivations. The handful of accounts 
that do exist tend to over-emphasize Pakistan’s enmity with India while ignoring other important 
factors (Akbarzadeh 2003; Khan 2010; Mezard 2010). This essay, then, assesses the U.S.-led war 
against the Afghan Taliban from a Pakistani standpoint and attempts to build a holistic picture by 
highlighting the role an ongoing border dispute and avaricious security apparatus play in 
determining the South Asian nation’s strategy in Afghanistan.   

 
A Brief History of the War in Afghanistan 

While the current Afghan War began in 2001 with the invasion of Afghanistan by a 
coalition of forty nations led by the United States, the country has suffered from political turmoil 
and conflict for decades. As Rubin and Armstrong point out, “For much of the modern era, 



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Afghanistan might credibly be defined as a large body of rocky land surrounded by neighbors 
who export their own conflicts onto its territory” (2003, 31).  

Trouble began in September 1979, when disagreements and internal rivalries between the 
leaders of the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) led to the ouster of 
President Nur Muhammad Taraki, one of the founding members of the party and a Soviet Union 
loyalist, by Hafizullah Amin. Educated in the United States and eager to strengthen his country’s 
relationship with Pakistan (a member of the Western Alliance at the time), Amin was 
immediately identified as a threat by the Soviet Union. Wary of its loosening grip over the PDPA 
and the increasing influence of the mujahideen (and, by extension, of the Pakistanis and 
Americans that financed and trained them) in various parts of the country, the USSR found itself 
under considerable pressure. Unwilling to surrender an important ally and neighboring country to 
Pakistani and American control, the USSR intervened militarily in December 1979, capturing 
and assassinating Amin within a matter of days. This, in turn, triggered a nearly ten-year long 
war that led to the loss of somewhere between 500,000 to 2 million civilian lives and destroyed 
each and every pillar of the Afghan state (Khan 2012, 212-213).  

In the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, factional infighting 
between the mujahideen (who had only recently united to thwart the Soviets) became the norm. 
A political vacuum emerged that permitted opportunistic states like Pakistan to construct their 
spheres of influence in the country (Rubin and Armstrong 2003, 31). By extending its support to 
the burgeoning Taliban movement, Pakistan invested its efforts in attempting to install a friendly 
authority in its neighboring country. The Taliban movement comprised of a loosely affiliated 
group of Afghan teachers and students from conservative religious academies (madrasas) in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan that intended to restore order in the country through the enforcement of 
Sharia law and tribal traditions (Rubin and Armstrong 2003, 31). Pakistan had been “intimately 
associated” with the group since its establishment in the early 1990s (Riedel 2013). Indeed, the 
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had trained Mullah Omar, the eventual supreme commander of 
the Afghan Taliban, at one of its training camps in the 1980s to fight against the Soviet Union 
(Riedel 2013). When the time came, then, the Pakistanis turned to their old ally and helped Omar 
establish the Taliban as a powerful organization in Kandahar. With considerable Pakistani 
support to rely on, Omar and the Taliban captured the Afghan capital of Kabul in 1996 and 
cemented their rule in the country, establishing the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. As 
the Taliban graduated from insurgency to governance and secured their monopoly over the use of 
force, Pakistan became one of only three countries (the others being the Kingdom of Saudi 
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to recognize the terrorist outfit as the rightful and 
legitimate government of the nation (Riedel 2013). 

By 2001, the Pakistani government had made itself indispensable to the Afghan Taliban. 
Pakistan supplied the Taliban regime with “hundreds of advisers and experts to run its tanks, 
aircraft and artillery, thousands of Pakistani Pashtuns to man its infantry and small units of its 
Special Services Group commandos to help in combat” with rival authorities (Riedel 2013). 
Simply put, “Pakistan provided the oil needed to run the Taliban’s war machine” (Riedel 2013). 



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A landmark event in the United States, however, altered this arrangement considerably.  
While the Western world was still reeling from the events of September 11, 2001, the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) quickly identified each of the nineteen hijackers 
responsible for the horrific attacks. For his part, Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, 
vehemently denied that his organization had recruited, trained, and financed the terrorists. 
Having returned to Afghanistan a few years earlier to avoid arrest, bin Laden had established a 
strong relationship with Mullah Omar and leveraged his connections with the Afghan Taliban to 
expand al-Qaeda’s operations across the world (Anderson 2015). As it became clear to the rest of 
the world that al-Qaeda had been using Afghanistan as its head office, bin Laden continued to 
plot, secure in the knowledge that he would never be extradited to the United States by the 
Taliban government.  

Within days of the September 11 attacks, the United States government demanded that 
the Taliban surrender bin Laden over to them and dismantle the al-Qaeda training camps that had 
sprung up across their territory. The Afghan Taliban refused to accept these demands and taunted 
the U.S., compelling the latter to initiate Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. The 
United States led operation dismantled the Taliban government in less than a week. By 
December 2001, large parts of the Afghan territory were under American control. Facing 
complete annihilation, the defeated Taliban fighters were ordered by Omar to retreat and flee 
from armed confrontation with their far superior enemy (Reidel 2013). While several militants 
returned home, others fled to Pakistan and found shelter in the city of Quetta, where Omar 
himself settled (Reidel 2013). After a few years of hiding and ignominy, Omar identified an 
opportune moment. As the U.S. became embroiled in the War in Iraq, Omar gathered his 
recovering troops and launched the now infamous Taliban insurgency. By 2004, Afghanistan had 
once again become a theatre of war.  

A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) report containing data procured from 
27,000 interrogations with over 4,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda militants was leaked in 2012. The 
report claimed that the Pakistani security establishment had proved crucial to the survival and 
resurgence of the Afghan Taliban in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 invasion. The Pakistani 
intelligence agency, the ISI, offered shelter, training, tactical know-how, and funding to the 
organization while keeping information pertaining to the location of the group’s leaders hidden 
(Maqbool 2012). The Pakistani government and security establishment have repeatedly cast 
aspersions about the findings of this report. However, the fact that the Taliban re-emerged to 
snatch back what they regard as their territory cannot be disputed. Indeed, the Taliban also 
released a report entitled, “Percent of Country under the control of the Mujahideen,” in March 
2017. The report assesses the ongoing power-struggle between the Taliban, local warlords, and 
the U.S. backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani in 349 of the 400 known districts 
in Afghanistan. According to the report, the Afghan Taliban “fully controls 34 districts, 
including the district centers, and contests another 167 districts (these are districts where the 
Taliban claims it controls between 40 to 99 percent of the territory)” (Roggio 2017). 
Furthermore, the terrorist outfit claims that it maintains a considerable presence (10 to 39 



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percent) in another 52 districts and a minor presence in six districts (1 to 9 percent) (Roggio 
2017). These numbers have been largely verified by several news organizations and do not differ 
significantly from those provided by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan 
Reconstruction (SIGAR) in a recent report.  

There are many reasons that account for the Afghan Taliban’s dramatic return to power in 
several regions of the war-torn nation. Numerous mistakes by U.S. authorities, including a 
considerable reduction in the number of American troops left behind in Afghanistan since 2014 
and a shift towards addressing the threat posed by the Islamic State have no doubt contributed to 
the Taliban’s recent string of successes. As I argue in subsequent sections, however, the United 
States government’s over-reliance on the Pakistanis lays at the core of the Afghanistan 
imbroglio.  

 
A Realist Perspective on the Rationale behind the Pakistani Position 

In order to appreciate the Pakistani position vis-à-vis the Afghan Taliban, it is important 
to understand the countries’ relationship with the Afghan government (the terrorist group’s 
greatest enemy). Here, I turn to the principles of realism.  

The realist doctrine is built on the assumption that the international arena is characterized 
by the lack of an established authority figure or anarchy. In the absence of an established 
authority figure to monitor, outline objectives for, and resolve conflicts between states, 
individual states’ foreign policies are governed by a combination of internal and external factors. 
The size, location, capacity, and historical trajectory of a state, along with its system of 
governance and leadership, play a significant role in determining each state’s foreign policy 
behaviour in the international arena. But while states receive different scores on the 
aforementioned parameters, realists argue that all states pursue a common objective: survival. In 
an anarchic international system, “the survival of the state can never be guaranteed, because the 
threat or use of force culminating in war is a legitimate instrument of statecraft and foreign 
policy behaviour” (Ahmed 2010, 314). As a result, a state must do whatever it may take to 
ensure its survival.  

Survival is an abstract concept. From the Pakistani government’s perspective, survival (in 
the context of the War in Afghanistan) involves preserving its territorial sovereignty in the face 
of existential threats from India and Afghanistan. Territorial sovereignty refers to the Pakistani 
government’s right and power to preside over its territorial affairs without the threat of foreign 
interference or intervention. As I go onto discuss in a forthcoming section, the Pakistani 
government remains of the view that its right and power to conduct the country’s business is 
constantly compromised by its Indian and Afghan counterparts. This, in turn, prompts the 
government to attempt to weaken its adversaries by extending support to the Afghan Taliban and 
embroiling the Indian and Afghan governments in a frustrating and endless conflict.   
                                                                                                                               
 
 
 
 



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TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY 
 
 
         
 
PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT                                                                                              PAKISTANI SECURITY 
                                                                                                                                                ESTABLISHMENT 
 
                              
                                                             FOREIGN ASSISTANCE 
  

While the Pakistani government remains convinced that its right to rule is constantly 
jeopardized by its neighbors, it cannot maintain its sovereignty on its own. To secure this 
objective, the civilian government has had no choice but to engage in a symbiotic relationship 
with the Pakistani security establishment, comprised primarily of the Pakistani armed forces and 
the ISI. Members of the security establishment, however, have an agenda of their own that is 
independent of their interest in protecting the government’s territorial sovereignty. As I go onto 
argue in a subsequent section, Pakistan’s security apparatus has benefited tremendously from the 
United States’ foreign assistance to Pakistan and retained a financial incentive to keep the threat 
of a resurgent Afghan Taliban alive. It has secured this generous flow of capital by taking 
advantage of the civilian government’s credibility in the eyes of the American authorities. The 
Pakistani government and its quasi-independent security establishment, then, have both used the 
threat of a strong Afghan Taliban for their own ends.  

 
Pakistan’s Contributions to the Afghan War 

Before delving into the reasons behind Pakistan’s decision to continue to support the 
Afghan Taliban, it is worth reflecting on some of the contributions the country has made to the 
U.S-led War in Afghanistan.  

The events of September 11 left the Pakistani government in a quandary. Their previous 
support for the Afghan Taliban had been well documented. Indeed, Pakistan was the last nation 
to rescind the diplomatic recognition it granted to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The 9/11 
attacks gave the United States the moral high ground and widespread sympathy across the world. 
The United Nations Security Council’s decision to unanimously adopt Resolution 1368 granted 
an additional veneer of legality to the United States’ counterterrorism agenda in Afghanistan. 
Cognizant of the significant outcry that would result from them dragging their feet on what many 
at the time viewed as a black-and-white issue, the Pakistani government attempted to thread the 
proverbial needle. With contradictory interests at stake, Pakistan chose to “cooperate where its 
national security interests converged with those of the USA and avoid where they diverged” 
(Khattak et al 2014, 86). As the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Abdul Sattar once 
explained, his country’s policy vis-à-vis the War in Afghanistan now involved a “[y]es-but 
approach,” wherein the Pakistani government would unequivocally accept each of the United 
States’ demands in public, before expressing its reservations and disagreeing with key details in 
private (Nadiri 2014, 140). 

 



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Disagreements aside, Pakistan has aided the United States’ counterterrorism agenda in 
several ways since the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001. The country has granted 
members of the coalition access to its military bases for reconnaissance and rescue operations, 
provided logistical support, and contributed intelligence resources and airspace for targeted 
strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives (Akhtar 2008, 62). The Pakistanis also helped the 
U.S. establish a joint patrol along the Afghan-Pakistan border and deployed soldiers in certain 
areas of the tribal belt near the contested border for the first time in their history (Akhtar 2008, 
62). These efforts have directly contributed to the capture of dozens of al-Qaeda militants. 
Additionally, the Pakistani security establishment has also assisted in the search for and 
apprehension of a limited number of terrorists hiding within its own borders. A majority of these, 
however, have been low-level, rank-and-file targets, and few have served as members of the 
Afghan Taliban.  

Pakistan’s attempts to aid the United States in its anti-Taliban efforts have been 
undermined by an unwillingness to quash the Afghan Taliban within its own territory. The 
terrorist group remains highly active in Pakistan’s more accessible urban and peri-urban areas, 
generating funds and attracting recruits in some of the country’s major cities (Nadiri 2014, 142). 
Senior Taliban officials have repeatedly claimed in interrogations that they travel freely between 
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Quetta, and Haripur, under the guaranteed 
protection of the Pakistani government and security establishment (Nadiri 2014, 142). Indeed, 
several of these officials continue to maintain stable residences in these regions and lead 
comfortable lives, in full view of the Pakistani authorities. It is a poorly kept secret that the 
Pakistani government and security establishment are “thoroughly aware of Taliban activities and 
the whereabouts of all senior Taliban personnel” (Riedel 2013). The authorities in question, 
however, have done little with this information and largely turned a blind eye to the terrorist 
group’s operations both within and across the border.  

 
The Ongoing Indo-Pak Rivalry 

The Pakistani government’s ongoing rivalry with its Indian counterpart lies at the 
forefront of its decision to support the Afghan Taliban. A rivalry is loosely defined as a 
competitive relationship between two (or more) actors striving to achieve a common goal or 
preponderance over the other. The relationship between the Pakistani and Indian governments, 
however, is more than merely competitive. The arrangement between the South Asian giants “is 
included on virtually every comprehensive list of international rivalries. It is, in other words, an 
exemplary (and therefore troubling) case” (Mitton 2014, 361). The countries have engaged in 
four wars (in 1947-48, 1965, 1971, and 1999) since the partition of India took place in 1947. 
Frequent outbursts of violence have ensured that relations between the two nations remains 
defined by a lack of trust. Key figures on both sides of the unending conflict are convinced that 
the opponent will seize any opportunity to destroy them. Most recently, widespread outrage and 
protests in Indian-administered Kashmir in the aftermath of the killing of a prominent 
Mujahideen leader by Indian soldiers on July 8, 2016, have rekindled tensions between the 



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eternally distrustful neighbors. 
While the decades-old dispute over the future of Indian-administered Kashmir has often 

dominated the headlines, Pakistan and India have also found themselves on opposing sides in 
Afghanistan. Wedged in between Afghanistan in the west and India in the east, Pakistan is a 
narrow country that has long been wary of India’s relationship with its conflict-ridden neighbor. 
From the Pakistani government’s viewpoint, India has aligned itself with the U.S.-backed 
Afghan government, a spiritual successor to the Northern Alliance that fought the Pakistan-
backed Afghan Taliban in the 1990s (Mitton 2014, 362). After years of hostile relations with a 
Taliban regime partial to Pakistan, then, the Indian government has made friends of its own in 
Afghanistan. The Indians have gone to great lengths to consolidate these gains, offering foreign 
aid and investments as incentives. The Indian government has spent over $1 billion in 
development funds to “provide an array of benefits including health, education, energy, 
communication, and general infrastructure support” for their Afghan counterparts, with the 
promise of even more aid in the future (Mitton 2014, 362-363). India also contributed to the 
construction of the country’s new parliament building, incurring a cost of around $25 million and 
“linking the site of Afghanistan’s nascent democracy to India and the Indian people” (Mitton 
2014, 363). Even more worryingly, the Indian 

 

 
 

MAP EXHIBITING PAKISTAN’S POSITION BETWEEN AFGHANISTAN AND INDIA 
 

government has gradually ramped up its military involvement in Afghanistan. India has been 
providing comprehensive training services to Afghan military personnel and supplying defensive 
military equipment, including armored checkpoints and watchtowers to the growing Afghan 
National Security Forces (ANSF) (Mitton 2014, 363). The Indian government has also set up 
four new consulates in Afghanistan to complement the work already being done by its embassy 
in Kabul (Khan 2010, 179). The Pakistani security establishment has repeatedly claimed that 



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The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan 
Siddharth Singh Chaudhari 
 

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these consulates “are, at best, intelligence gathering sites and more likely bases for carrying out 
operations inside Pakistan” (Khan 2010, 179). The Pakistani government has also formally 
accused the Indian intelligence services of relying on these locations to recruit Afghans to carry 
out terrorist operations in Pakistan (Khan 2010, 179). 

The Pakistani government is fully aware of the benefits India is hoping to accrue from 
ingratiating itself with the Afghan government. A closer relationship between the two nations, 
for instance, will grant its biggest rival consistent “access to energy-rich Central Asia, with 
Afghanistan serving as a conduit and corridor” (Mitton 2014, 364). India is also likely to 
leverage any relationship with the Afghans to strengthen its security apparatus in their country 
and reduce its vulnerability to attacks from terrorist organizations operating out of Afghanistan. 
Most importantly, however, India may eventually see Afghanistan as a springboard to ratchet up 
the pressure on Pakistan’s western border. This, in turn, would leave the latter exposed to attacks 
from the east and the west and cement India’s hegemony in the Indian subcontinent.  

Throughout the course of its existence, Pakistan has been involved in a relentless race to 
achieve military deterrence with respect to its significantly larger neighbor to the east. The 
country currently maintains one of the world’s largest active militaries and boasts a defense 
budget that amounted to approximately 3.4% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 
2016 (Gady 2017). That budget was increased by roughly 7% for 2017-2018 fiscal year (Gady 
2017). In addition, Pakistan has maintained a fully-functioning nuclear arsenal, with most 
experts in agreement that the country is in possession of somewhere between 100-130 nuclear 
warheads. From the government’s point of view, however, the country’s military might will offer 
scarce comfort if India continues to make significant gains in its relationship with the Afghan 
government. Pakistan’s distrust for India has captured its government’s psyche for decades. The 
Pakistanis are convinced that “India’s intentions are to squeeze Pakistan by giving it two hostile 
borders” (Khan 2010, 181). India’s provision of aid and investment to Afghanistan belie its 
strategic interest in weakening Pakistan’s security on the western front and constitute a “direct 
affront to Pakistan’s sense of propriety in a country it has historically treated… as a client state” 
(Chaudhari 2011, 85). Given its simply extraordinary defensive commitments and frail economy, 
“Pakistan cannot afford the military establishment it has, much less a far larger one to prepare for 
a possible ‘second front’ against Afghanistan” (Khan 2010, 181). A growing Indian presence in 
Afghanistan, then, represents an existential threat in Pakistan’s backyard. It leaves the Pakistani 
government with the unenviable task of having to protect its territorial sovereignty from attacks 
hailing from the west and the east in the event of an Indian invasion. Consequently, the Pakistani 
government is likely to continue to offer support to the Afghan Taliban in the foreseeable future. 
The terrorist organization also views India as an enemy, given the latter’s support for the 
erstwhile Northern Alliance and current partnership with President Ashraf Ghani’s “illegitimate” 
government in Kabul. Short of invading Afghanistan and systematically dismantling its enemy’s 
infrastructure in the country, the Pakistani government’s only option is to continue to cooperate 
with the Afghan Taliban, an organization that is unlikely to turn against its old patron and 
provides a resilient barrier against Indian expansionism in the region.  



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The Durand Line Dispute 
 Pakistan shares an approximately 2400-kilometer-long border with Afghanistan referred 
to as the Durand Line. Established via an agreement between imperial Britain and the erstwhile 
Emirate of Afghanistan in 1893, the border is the subject of a long-standing dispute between 
Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

The nineteenth century witnessed the British and Russian empires, two of the world’s 
most powerful actors at the time, engage in what historians have since referred to as “the Great 
Game.” As Russia methodically conquered its neighbors and expanded its influence in Central 
and Southern Asia, Britain was alerted. Worried that the Russians would eventually set their 
sights on the wealthy colony of India, the British elected to invade Afghanistan with the hopes of 
using the Emirate as a barrier. Each of the Britain’s attempts to forcefully bring Afghanistan into 
its sphere of influence, however, failed miserably. With time running out, the British turned to 
Sir Mortimer Durand, the Foreign Secretary to India. An accomplished diplomat, Sir Durand 
reached an agreement with the Emir on November 12, 1893. The final, one-page long treaty, 
“resulted in a frontier that ran from the Karakoram Range in the northeast running south through 
the Spin Ghar mountains… before turning west along the Chagai Hills to the border with Iran” 
(Micallef 2017).  

The agreement was plagued by controversies from the outset. The new border established 
by the treaty divided the Pashtun tribal lands, a region colloquially referred to as Pashtunistan in 
two, with half of the area now part of British India (modern-day Pakistan) and the balance 
remaining a part of Afghanistan (Micallef 2017). The division also led to the loss of the province 
of Baluchistan to British India (modern-day Pakistan), stripping the Emirate of its historic access 
to the Arabian Sea (Micallef 2017). Furthermore, while the original agreement was drafted in 
English, Dari, and Pashto, Sir Durand insisted that the English version must be treated as “the 
definitive copy” (Micallef 2017). This left the Emir at a disadvantage, given that he neither read 
nor understood the English language. The demarcation surveys that began in 1894, then, may 
have commenced without the informed consent of Afghanistan’s leader. The division was, 
nonetheless, completed by May of 1896.  

The legitimacy of the Durand Line has been questioned by the Afghans ever since. 
Successive generations of Afghan governments, for instance, have claimed that the  



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MAP EXHIBITING THE DURAND LINE 
 

terms laid out in the Dari and Pashto versions of the November 1893 agreement state, “the 
legality of the Afghan-Pakistan border should have lapsed in 1993, 100 years after the signing of 
the agreement” (Qassem 2007, 66). No documents, however, have ever been unearthed to justify 
these claims. Previous Afghan governments have also claimed that the British confiscated the 
original copies of the Dari and Pashto versions. These allegations have been strongly and 
repeatedly refuted by the British government. As things stand, then, there “is absolutely nothing 
in the Durand Line agreement or in subsequent documents between the British and Afghan 
Boundary Commissions which completed border demarcations until 1896, to indicate that the 
border was determined only for 100 years” (Qassem 2007, 66). Indeed, the original agreement 
has been ratified both formally and informally on numerous occasions, including in 1922 and 
1930.  

Questions regarding the legitimacy of their claims have not prevented Afghan 
governments from reviving the Durand Line debate from time-to-time. In the 1940s, for instance, 
as Pakistan became an independent nation, “the Afghan rulers refused to recognize the treaty and 
played the nationalist card of ‘Greater Pashtunistan’, laying claim to Dir, Swat, Chitral and Amb, 
Baluchistan and the princely states of Kalat, Kharan, Makran, and Las Bela” (Wagner and Khan 
2013, 73). In the 1960s, governments in Kabul continued to observe a Pashtunistan Day and even 
brought the Durand Line issue to the attention of the International Islamic Economic Conference 
and the United Nations (Wagner and Khan 2013, 75). More recently, former President Hamid 
Karzai stated unequivocally that Pakistan has “no legal authority to dictate terms on the Durand 
Line,” and that the Afghan government and people would never acknowledge the legitimacy of 
the arbitrary Afghan-Pakistan border (Siddiqui 2017).  

From the Pakistani government’s perspective, the Durand Line debate represents a zero-



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sum situation. Any meaningful attempts by the Afghan government to relitigate the issue pose an 
existential threat to the Pakistani government’s territorial sovereignty. The humiliation of 1971, 
when East Pakistan (modern-day People’s Republic of Bangladesh) declared its independence 
and separated from the homeland with the assistance of the Indian government and armed forces, 
still looms large in the memories of Pakistan’s elites. The areas that the Afghan government 
seeks to repatriate amount to approximately two-thirds of Pakistan’s territory as a nation 
(Micallef 2017). The loss of these areas, then, would lead the total collapse of the Pakistani state 
and cannot be tolerated by the government under any circumstances.  

In this instance, however, the Pakistani government’s reliance on the Afghan Taliban for 
support is complicated by the fact that the latter has also refused to acknowledge the legitimacy 
of the Afghan-Pakistan border. While he depended on Pakistani assistance throughout his time as 
the supreme commander of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Omar refused to recognize the Durand 
Line and argued that Muslims ought not to be divided by worldly barriers. The Pakistani 
government, then, has had to weigh its options carefully in recent years. Trapped between the 
proverbial rock (an Afghan government that is forever unwilling to recognize the Durand Line) 
and a hard place (an Afghan Taliban that shares the government’s disregard), the Pakistani 
government has had to bank on a cynical balancing game. Aware of the fact that President 
Ghani’s elected government has the recognition and support of the United States and the 
international community, Pakistan has hedged its bets and continued to provide aid to the Afghan 
Taliban. The Pakistani government’s calculus here is simple: a perpetual stalemate is preferable 
to a decisive outcome. If the Afghan Taliban is provided with sufficient resources to persist as a 
constant thorn in the side of the Afghan government, but not enough to overthrow the 
government altogether, the two parties will remain locked in an endless stalemate. This, in turn, 
will prevent both sides from finding the time and energy to revisit the Durand Line debate in any 
meaningful way. While such a strategy has risks associated with it, it has served the Pakistani 
government well so far. Unable to dismiss the other from the playing field, neither the Afghan 
Taliban nor President Ghani’s government have found themselves able to challenge the Afghan-
Pakistan border concertedly. Consequently, it is unlikely that the Pakistani government will 
abandon its support for the Afghan Taliban while the Durand Line debate remains unresolved. A 
stable Afghanistan, as things stand, runs contrary to the Pakistani government’s interest in 
preserving its territorial sovereignty.   

 
The Greed of the Pakistani Security Establishment 
 While the Pakistani government’s aim to preserve its territorial sovereignty offers a 
concrete purpose for the country’s security establishment to pursue, greed has also played an 
important role in its decision-making. To explain the effect of avarice on the Pakistani security 
establishment’s decision to implement its government’s policy and cooperate with the Afghan 
Taliban, I begin by analyzing the country’s military expenditure.  

Pakistan’s military expenditure, i.e. the total amount that the Pakistani government 
spends on maintaining the country’s security establishment (which is made up of the country’s 



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The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan 
Siddharth Singh Chaudhari 
 

30 
 

armed forces and intelligence agencies), has been consistently high in recent decades. The nation 
spent roughly 6.8% of its GDP on military expenses in 1988 (SIPRI 2016).  While this figure had 
been halved by 2016, the economy had grown considerably (SIPRI 2016). As a result, the 
military’s budget doubled from roughly $4.5 billion in 1988 to over $9 billion in 2016. 

 

 
 
 The security establishment’s demand for resources, however, has also increased. 
Consequently, in recent years, it has received a generous amount of foreign assistance from the 
United States in return for its cooperation in the War on Terror. In 2013, for instance, the U.S 
planned to provide $348 million in foreign aid to the Pakistani security establishment (Foreign 
Assistance - Pakistan). That figure equates to roughly 4% of Pakistan’s military budget for the 
same year. Similarly, the U.S. planned to contribute $328 million in aid in 2016, which amounts 
to approximately 3.6% of the Pakistani military budget for that year (Foreign Assistance – 
Pakistan). The United States’ generous financial aid, then, has added to the Pakistani security 
establishment’s already lavish budget. Indeed, it has helped senior officials of the Pakistani 
armed forces to engage in widespread corruption in recent years. Senior officers have invested 
heavily in dozens of highly profitable local businesses, ranging from marriage halls and dairy 
farms to factories, banks, and insurance firms (Shams 2016). As Siddiqa observes, “Today the 
Pakistani military’s internal economy is extensive, and has turned the armed forces into one of 
the [country’s] dominant economic players” (2007, 18).   



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To secure this steady supply of foreign aid from the United States (and other countries), 

the Pakistani security establishment has had to focus on two interrelated objectives. First, as I 
stated earlier, the armed forces and ISI have extended their consistent support to the Afghan 
Taliban, thereby ensuring that the terrorist group remains an ever-present threat to the Afghan 
government and the U.S. remains fully-committed to an expensive and long-term 
counterterrorism strategy in the region. Indeed, the Pakistani armed forces have had a long 
history of supporting religious extremists in Afghanistan for their own ends (Siddiqa 2007, 86). 
Secondly, the Pakistani armed forces have had to retain the faith of the United States and 
convince the latter that they can be relied upon in the fight against the Afghan Taliban. To 
achieve this aim, the armed forces have taken advantage of their considerable influence in the 
Pakistani government.  

The Pakistani armed forces occupy a unique and prestigious position at the heart of the 
country’s security establishment. The Constitution of Pakistan grants the country’s armed forces 
the ability to “subject to law, act in aid of civil power when called upon to do so” (Pakistani.org). 
In practice, this has allowed the Army to reserve “the right to abandon its declared political 
aloofness and intervene in governmental affairs whenever the high command determines that the 
civilian government is not acting properly, and that its actions or performance are undermining 
political stability, military institutional autonomy, and national security” (Shah 2014, 221). As a 
result, the Army has used its constitutional leverage to overturn elected governments and 
implement martial law on several occasions and even stage coups to establish its own rule at 
other times. In times of civilian rule, the Pakistani armed forces’ influence in government has 
ensured that the country’s Ministry of Defense remains organized in a manner that allows 
serving and retired military officials to “occupy central positions in the ministry… [thereby 
making] it possible for them to control and monitor the work according to the desires of the 
military establishment” (Anwar and Rafique 2012, 381). The armed forces’ pervasive presence 
in the halls of Pakistan’s government, then, has allowed its members to take advantage of any 
credibility that the civilian government has accrued with the United States and use it to guarantee 



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The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan 
Siddharth Singh Chaudhari 
 

32 
 

a steady stream of foreign aid. Indeed, the Army has routinely tightened the screws on 
government officials, pressuring them to reassure the U.S. government of its “commitment” to 
implementing the latter’s counterterrorism agenda in Afghanistan.  

The Pakistani security apparatus, then, has established and maintained a symbiotic 
relationship with the country’s government. In exchange for preserving the government’s 
territorial sovereignty (which is also in the security establishment’s best interests), the armed 
forces have utilized the civilian government’s connections and credibility to placate the 
Americans and guarantee a regular flow of foreign aid for their various initiatives and personal 
enrichment. While the lion’s share of the security establishment’s funding stems directly from 
the Pakistani government, the United States’ generous foreign assistance continues to offer an 
additional incentive for the Pakistani security establishment to support its government’s decision 
to keep the Afghan Taliban afloat.  

 
Policy Implications for the U.S. and Directions for Future Research  

As I have outlined in previous sections, the Pakistani government’s (and security 
establishment’s) interests in Afghanistan are fundamentally contrary to those of the United States 
at this moment in time. Here, I discuss the policy implications for the U.S government. 

• Pakistan’s rivalry with India began shortly after the creation of the two nations in 1947. 
The relationship between the two countries has had its ebbs and flows ever since. Mutual 
suspicion and fear, however, prevent any major rapprochement from taking place 
between the two countries in the foreseeable future. Consequently, the Pakistanis will 
continue to support the Afghan Taliban, given that the terror outfit offers a resilient 
barrier against its enemy’s growing influence in Afghanistan. The U.S. government, then, 
ought to consider forging a stronger alliance with India instead. The two countries share a 
common interest in overcoming the Afghan Taliban. Moreover, India’s increasing 
investments in and trade with Afghanistan are likely to strengthen the hold of the latter’s 
U.S.-backed government and bring prosperity to the war-torn nation. This, in turn, will 
reduce support for the Taliban among everyday Afghans.  

• The Durand Line debate represents an existential threat to the Pakistani state. The U.S. 
must acknowledge this fact and realize that until the dispute is resolved conclusively, the 
Pakistanis will support the Afghan Taliban and foment instability in Afghanistan. 
Supporting the Pakistani or Afghan position will only serve to alienate the scorned party 
and create further problems in the conflict-ridden region. Consequently, the United States 
government should remain neutral on the subject and allow the governments in question 
(as well as tribal leaders) to arrive at an agreement at their own pace and on their own 
volition. 

• The U.S. government’s foreign aid to the Pakistani security establishment continues to 
stoke the fires of greed. The former ought to consider either reducing the amount of aid 
its provides to the latter significantly or attaching stricter conditions to its contributions. 



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This may prompt the Pakistani armed forces to make at least a nominal effort to curb the 
Afghan Taliban, if only to regain the Americans’ trust and continue to fill their coffers. 

  



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IJOIS Spring 2019, Volume V 
Program in Arms Control & Domestic and International Security 

 
 

37 
 

Riedel, Bruce. "Pakistan, Taliban and the Afghan Quagmire." Brookings. July 28, 2016. 
Accessed September 15, 2017. https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/pakistan-taliban-and-
the-afghan-quagmire/. 

Roggio, Bill. "Afghan Taliban lists 'Percent of Country under the control of Mujahideen'." FDD's 
Long War Journal. March 28, 2017. Accessed September 15, 2017. 
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/03/afghan-taliban-lists-percent-of-country-
under-the-control-of-mujahideen.php. 

Rubin, Barnett R. and Andrea Armstrong. 2003. "Regional Issues in the Reconstruction of 
Afghanistan." World Policy Journal 20 (1): 31. 
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com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/232588661?accountid=14771. 

Shah, Aqil. 2014. The Army and Democracy : Military Politics in Pakistan. Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press. Accessed September 14, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. 

Shams, Shamil. "A spotlight on the Pakistani military's corruption | Asia | DW | 22.04.2016." 
DW.com. April 22, 2016. Accessed September 15, 2017. http://www.dw.com/en/a-
spotlight-on-the-pakistani-militarys-corruption/a-19207488. 

Siddiqa, Ayesha. Military Inc. Ann Arbor, MI: Oxford University Press, 2007. 
http://www.saifullahkhalid.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/09/military1incbyayeshasiddiqa_3.pdf. 

Siddiqui, Naveed. "Afghanistan will never recognise the Durand Line: Hamid Karzai." 
DAWN.COM. June 21, 2017. Accessed September 15, 2017. 
https://www.dawn.com/news/1318594. 

Tarock, Adam. 1999. "The Politics of the Pipeline: The Iran and Afghanistan Conflict." Third 
World Quarterly 20 (4): 801-819. 
doi:http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1080/01436599913569. 
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com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/1779888068?accountid=14771. 

"The Constitution of Pakistan: Chapter 2." Pakistani.org. Accessed September 15, 2017. 
http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part12.ch2.html. 

Toscano, Roberto. "Iran's Role in Afghanistan." January 2012. Accessed September 15, 2017. 
"U.S. Foreign Assistance." ForeignAssistance.gov. Accessed September 15, 2017. 

http://www.foreignassistance.gov/. 
Wagner, Christian and Amina Khan. 2013. "The Changing Character of the Durand 

Line." Internationales Asien Forum.International Quarterly for Asian Studies 44 (1): 71-
84,213,215. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?url=https://search-proquest-
com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/1468418263?accountid=14771. 

Yusuf, Moeed. 2017. "A Marriage Estranged: The Strategic Disconnect between Pakistan and 
the United States." Asia Policy (24): 46-52. 
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com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/docview/1927767895?accountid=14771.  

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/pakistan-taliban-and-the-afghan-quagmire/
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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/03/afghan-taliban-lists-percent-of-country-under-the-control-of-mujahideen.php.
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http://www.dw.com/en/a-spotlight-on-the-pakistani-militarys-corruption/a-19207488
http://www.dw.com/en/a-spotlight-on-the-pakistani-militarys-corruption/a-19207488
http://www.saifullahkhalid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/military1incbyayeshasiddiqa_3.pdf
http://www.saifullahkhalid.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/military1incbyayeshasiddiqa_3.pdf
https://www.dawn.com/news/1318594
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http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part12.ch2.html
http://www.foreignassistance.gov/
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	A Case of Mistaken Identities:The Real Friends and Foes in the War in Afghanistan



