IN several articles and an editorial published in recent days, the decades-old concept of Pakistan finding its strategic depth in a friendly Afghanistan has been implicitly or explicitly criticised.

However, one would like to draw attention to a fact quoted by a couple of correspondents over the past year. Namely, that an Indian scholar had stated over a year ago that India has its strategic depth in Afghanistan. That this has come to pass has now become irrefutable from what the former chief of Pakistan army, Gen ( r) Mirza Aslam Beg, revealed recently (Sept 30).

Among other things, he said India and the US had signed an agreement for strategic partnership after which Washington declared Afghanistan to be a part of South Asia. Consequently, India has been able to establish a very strong intelligence network in Afghanistan, “which works against all countries in its neighbourhood. This network is supported by CIA, Mossad, the German intelligence, MI6 and the French intelligence.”

Gen Beg said all the neighbouring countries in general and Pakistan in particular were feeling the impact of the network. He further said that only last week New Delhi and Kabul have signed a defence pact allowing India to deploy nearly 150,000 troops to Afghanistan by the end of next year.

The former chief also said that the EU involvement in Afghanistan, where Nato forces, including French troops, are stationed, resulted in a very intimate working relationship with India, whose repercussions can well be imagined. He observed that the pact between the US and India had also involved France through Nato and its two declared objectives were very sinister.

The first was to contain the rising economic and military power of China and the second was to curb the rising influence of the Islamists in the area. Besides, the very recently inked Indo-French nuclear agreement would enable India to build at least 40 to 50 nuclear warheads yearly and get access to nuclear technology for application in many areas.

To sum up, Gen Beg warned that Pakistan was being 'encircled' by the United States, India, Nato and the European Union under a well-thought-out plan and called upon Islamabad to review its defence and foreign policies to deal with the challenges ahead.

All of this goes to show that our concept of strategic depth has been fully vindicated and we must give due credit to those military strategists who had formulated it. Now, the consequences of losing that option have become frightfully clear. Imagine what the situation would have been if the US had not invaded Afghanistan. With Taliban still in power over there, we would have escaped many headaches. China, too, would have been better off.

Another telling new development is that not only Hamid Karzai but even the western powers, including America, now appear keen to hold negotiations with the Taliban and have reportedly sought Saudi and, perhaps, even Pakistani facilitation for the process (Sept 29). Many of us in Pakistan had been advocating such talks for years.

K. NAQSHBANDI

Karachi