On November 12, 1893, Henry Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary for British India, concluded an agreement with representatives of Afghan ruler Amir Abdur Rahman Khan for the demarcation of a 1,640-mile line establishing a de facto boundary between British India and Afghanistan. The now-famous Durand Line split both the Pashtun and Baloch ethnic groups, with parts of “Pashtunistan” and Balochistan straddling each side. On the day I flew over the line, Afghanistan still refused to admit its legitimacy as an international border with Pakistan.
The purpose of my trip to Islamabad was to meet with our ambassador there, Anne Patterson, and then to hold my first meeting with General Ashfaq Kayani, Pakistan’s chief of the army. I’d known Ambassador Patterson from my TF 714 command and found her to be a deeply impressive veteran diplomat.
I’d met Ashfaq Kayani once, back in 2006, when I met Secretary Rumsfeld in Rawalpindi for a late-night meeting with President Musharraf. At the time, Kayani was serving as the director of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Kayani’s biography told the story of the United States’ fraught relationship with Pakistan over the prior two decades. When a major, he had won a spot at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the 1987–88 academic year, he earned a masters in military arts and sciences and wrote a thesis entitled “Strengths and Weaknesses of the Afghanistan Resistance Movement: A Study of the Capabilities of the Afghan Resistance Problem, Created by the Soviet Invasion of 1979.” He was writing, then, about a movement still idealized by many Americans as anticommunist freedom fighters—Rambo III hit theaters that May, during Kayani’s second semester, and had Stallone’s character on a mission to resupply the mujahideen with Stinger missiles. Kayani was an exchange student from an ally helping us fight our Soviet enemy. In a short time, that all changed.
In 1989, the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, and with their exit America’s strategic interest in the region disappeared. No longer needing Pakistan to help us arm the rebels and frustrated with its persistent nuclear ambitions, the United States refused to vouch that Pakistan was not seeking to gain nuclear weapons. (Earlier, the American government had given Pakistan a pass when the United States needed its assistance in our proxy war.) Thus, in 1990, the Pressler Amendment, passed five years earlier, kicked into effect, immediately cutting off all military aid to Pakistan. It also stopped the United States from bringing Pakistan’s military officers to learn and drill with our own—a move that left them feeling spurned. Kayani was one of the last Pakistani officers to be brought to Kansas.
Now, two decades later, with Pervez Musharraf no longer president, General Kayani, in his new role as head of the army, wielded tremendous power. From the Joint Staff, I’d watched Chairman Mullen make a significant effort to build rapport with him. The backdrop of recent events in the region made for a sensitive situation. Clear evidence that the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, conducted by Pakistani terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba, were orchestrated from inside Pakistan caused Americans deep frustration. And ongoing accusations that Pakistan’s military and intelligence services supported the Afghan Taliban complicated Mullen’s and my efforts. Pakistanis were quick to respond with concerns over American violations of their sovereignty, primarily through drone strikes, an ever-perceived U.S. tilt toward India, and a lack of appreciation for the significant Pakistani sacrifices in the war on terror.
Strictly speaking, although my mandate as the NATO commander was limited to inside Afghanistan, it was clear to me that Pakistan would have a role in any lasting solution. At a minimum, ISAF needed access to Pakistani lines of communication for the flow of logistics to our forces. Optimally, for our counterinsurgency campaign inside Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban could not enjoy support and sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan.
Ideally, our joint ISAF and Pakistani efforts would convince Afghan Taliban leaders that their sanctuaries in Pakistan were no longer secure, and thus their insurgency could not succeed. Effective Pakistani Army operations in the FATA, along with increased levels of coordination with ISAF forces, were necessary in order to produce this kind of rethink inside Mullah Omar’s organization. But the FATA was a region where the Pakistani military had traditionally struggled.