Sunil Dasgupta, the director of the University of Maryland’s political science program and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has written a paper for the US Institute of Peace titled ‘Regional Politics and the Prospects of Stability in Afghanistan’. With the latest round of skirmishes on Durand Line border, and no sign of success in peace efforts with Taliban, it seems prospects of stability are going further distant. Dasgupta’s paper is good read for broader understanding of the Indo-Pak rivalry and Afghanistan. Below are excerpts, full report could be read at USIP website.

“As the United States plans its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country faces three interrelated challenges: a weak national state, rising Islamic radicalism based in Pakistan’s tribal belt, and zero-sum regional politics. The stage is set for a balance-of-power contest between India and Pakistan played out in Afghanistan that could fuel another civil war in the country.”

When General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, spoke to his people on September 20, 2001, about his decision to abandon the Taliban and work with the United States in fighting terrorism, he had been worried about the possibility of a U.S.-India alliance aimed at Pakistan. Less than two months later, as India mobilized its armed forces in response to the December 13 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament, Pakistan redeployed large numbers of troops from the Afghan border to the Indian border, undercutting the objective of cutting off al-Qaeda’s escape from Afghanistan into Pakistan. The Pakistan Army’s inability to cut off their flight was one of the greatest failures of the Afghan war. The Taliban regrouped in the mountains straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan and have since turned the conflict into America’s longest war.

India and Pakistan are both poised for a balance-of-power competition in Afghanistan. Indians have responded to calls for greater participation in Afghanistan with enthusiasm.

“By 2012 India had spent $1.5 billion, pledged another $500 million, and sent nearly three thousand people to Afghanistan to help build roads, railways, power lines, schools, and hospitals. With Afghanistan as the new point of acute India-Pakistan competition, the proxy war might widen. The Pakistan Army could decide to respond by renewing support to Kashmir separatists. The result could be increased cross-border shelling and perhaps another nuclear crisis. An Indian threat could also bring the radicals and the Pakistan Army back together after some years of a frayed relationship.”

If the United States continues its drawdown in Afghanistan without addressing the structural challenges stemming from the India-Pakistan balance-of-power contest, a new civil war is all too likely. There are generally two ways to alter this structural reality: Pakistan could agree to expanded Indian presence in Afghanistan as part of a regional peace plan, or India could withdraw from Afghanistan to assuage Pakistan’s security concerns. There are other variations on these two themes, but any real effort to resolve the problem must embrace the logic of one of the two choices.

“The possibility of a regional peace plan currently looks slight but potentially promising in the context of the debate over how many U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014. If Washington and Kabul agree on a relatively larger troop presence, India and Pakistan would have more time to build on their own bilateral peace process, which could include an arrangement on Afghanistan. One possibility is that India could restrict itself to the Northern non-Pashtun areas, leaving southern and eastern Pashtun regions as a Pakistani sphere of influence. In this scheme, Kabul, secured by an international force, could serve as a buffer. If Washington and Kabul agree on keeping only a small contingent of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, we should expect minimal cooperation. The problem is that the chances of the United States agreeing to have its troops stay on in significant numbers are diminishing. Though there is growing belief among professional foreign policy and military experts that the United States may have to remain longer in Afghanistan, Obama seems politically and personally committed to bringing home all but a handful of troops.”

“A reduced U.S. presence and lack of India-Pakistan agreement will require a significant shift in thinking in Washington and New Delhi. An attempt to balance India’s and Pakistan’s engagement in Afghanistan is not likely to lead to peace, because there is no balance: India has superiority in soft power, and Pakistan has clear military advantage. A direct confrontation between soft and hard power results in only one outcome—military victory—which is why advocates of soft power see it as working in the background, as an embedded rather than instrumental capacity.

• The U.S. and Afghan governments would prefer to see India and Pakistan work together. India-Pakistan cooperation can be minimal, where India limits its presence to the north while Pakistan has greater influence in the south. But even this minimal cooperation requires sizeable U.S. presence to verify and monitor the activities of the two South Asian rivals in Afghanistan. Maintaining significant U.S. presence in Afghanistan could dampen the India-Pakistan competition in Afghanistan and allow the Kabul government to consolidate.
• If the United States does not maintain a meaningful presence in Afghanistan to enable India-Pakistan cooperation, the next best alternative would be for the Obama administration to seek unilateral disengagement with the Indian and Pakistani governments. To this end, Washington could resume its former policy of “de-hyphenation,” whereby the United States and India could pursue long-term bilateral objectives, such as technology transfer, while Pakistan feels more secure with diminished Indian presence in Afghanistan. Unless the conditions underlying the contest between India and Pakistan over Afghanistan change, a new civil war in Afghanistan is all too likely.

The Indian consensus on Afghanistan is limited; there is no mainstream support for Indian military intervention in the country. Without military force—in the absence of U.S.-provided security—the Indian presence in Afghanistan remains vulnerable to Pakistan-backed Taliban attacks. India’s Afghan allies might be able to provide some security, and New Delhi may boost these efforts by supplying weapons, but this leads to the civil war no one wants. The United States taking the lead in developing a new Afghan policy, however, is tantamount to a U.S. return, which the American public does not want. Without continued American support, though, the Indian position in Afghanistan is tenuous.

A clearer vision in Washington could change the situation. The problem in Afghanistan has changed. Al-Qaeda, as an organization, has transformed from a centrally controlled unit to a networked enterprise with different groups aligning themselves to it from time to time.

The United States is shifting its focus from Afghanistan to Pakistan, but without resolving the structural conditions in Afghanistan, it is likely to have to return. Today, the situation in Pakistan is the most difficult foreign policy challenge a U.S. president has faced since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis because external actors—the United States, the United Nations, Europe, Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, and certainly India—have very little leverage in the country. Outsiders can get Pakistan to deliver on short-term objectives, such as allowing NATO convoys to transit, but only Pakistanis can bring about long-term change in the nature of the state and national identity—and Pakistanis, for their own and sometimes understandable reasons, do not want to do it yet.”