337 Carlos Setas Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the peace process with the afhgan taliban who would go onto be relevant Islamists and known Mujahideen such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Yunus Khalis, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmed Shah Massoud. These first Afghan insurgents received training and supplies from the Pakistani Frontier Corps.9 In turn, the new communist power that emerged in Afghanistan in 1978 kindled calls for an independent Pashtunistan with a view to garnering the support of nationalist Pashtuns and winning over the conservative tribes along the Pakistani border who were reluctant to back the new regime. Among other things, the Afghan intelligence services backed acts of terrorism in the NWFP as well as the small nationalist Pashtun movement in the region. In the eighties, the presence of the Soviet army in Afghanistan meant that relations with Pakistan took a different turn. The Afghan government became a satellite state of the USSR, whilst Pakistan aligned itself with the Afghan Mujahideen and the US. Over the course of the eighties, Pakistan was deeply involved in Afghanistan’s internal affairs. During the fight against the Soviets, Pakistan provided supplies and a safe haven for Afghan fighters, channelled US aid through the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI, one of the Pakistani military intelligence agencies). The involvement of Pakistan in the Afghan conflict was conditioned by various factors: the traditional animosity between both countries; a real fear of communist control in Afghanistan, which, in practice, would place Pakistan at the border of the Soviet Union; the conservatism of the regime of General Zia ul-Haq who was to promote the idea of war against Afghanistan as a religious struggle throughout the 1980s, thereby fostering resurgence and consolidation of a jihadist ideology; and, last but not least, the new strategic concepts of the Pakistani army which were developed in the 1970s and 1980s and which were based on “strategic depth”. The concept of “strategic depth” was to mark the foreign policy of Pakistan in regard to Afghanistan until the present day. Nonetheless, its origin or justification does not lie in Afghanistan, but instead in Pakistan’s obsession with its Indian neighbour. Following the loss of the eastern wing of the country, now present-day Bangladesh, after a bloody civil war in 197110, the Pakistani army was forced to rethink its position with respect to its giant of a neighbour. Reduced to the western wing, Pakistani generals considered their country to be a narrow strip of land along the plains of the Indus 9 PETERS, Grettchen, “Haqqani network financing: the evolution of an industry”, Combating Terrorism Center, Harmony Program, July 2012, p. 14. The Pakistani Frontier Corps is a paramilitary force made up mainly of Pashtuns. Its sphere of activity comprises the territories bordering Afghanistan and it is composed of some 80,000 troops under the command of the army. 10 Towards the end of the conflict, the direct intervention of the Indian army conclusively tipped the balance in favour of the secessionists.
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