338 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 2 / 2013 River that could be severed into two by a deep-hitting attack carried out by the Indian armoured forces. They believed that in such a scenario, Afghanistan could form an area of retreat and regrouping for Pakistani forces from where to launch their counter-attack. Irrespective of the strategic merit of such a premise, it would require a friendly Afghan government that would allow its territory to be violated if a new war between India and Pakistan were to flare up. At the very least, the Pakistani military sought an Afghan border that would not prove to be a cause for concern if the country did enter into conflict with India.11 Over the course of the eighties and nineties, this purely military way of understanding “strategic depth” would give way to a more civilian concept. At the end of the eighties, the Pakistani army, concerned about the widening economic gap between the country and India and the potential impact on military capacity, discovered a form of uncon-ventional struggle to reduce this disadvantage. The success of the jihad pursued by the Afghan Mujahideen against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, together with a timely popular uprising against the Indian government in the Kashmir Valley in 1987, led the Pakistani military to contemplate using the same methods against India. The plan, which would be implemented from 1988-89, was the infiltration of Mujahideen of Kashmiri origin into Indian Kashmir. These were veterans the Afghan jihad who in turn would provide support to the local insurgent groups who were beginning to emerge at the time. The aim was to make the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir ungovernable, as well as luring as many of the Indian forces to the region as possible, tying them to a struggle against local insurgency and thereby reducing their availability in case of conflict. In order to be able to deny Pakistani involvement in the insurgency with a certain degree of credibility, a large proportion of the jihadist training camps were set up in Afghanistan. This would require the Afghan government to be collaborative, and as would initially be the case, incapable. The prerequisite of a friendly regime in power in Kabul, as envisaged in the idea of “strategic depth”, led to a broadening of objectives during the eighties to encompass control or eradication of Pashtun nationalism in the North-West Frontier Province. A circumstance that when combined with the Islamisation policies implemented by General Zia ul-Haq, and boosted by an increase in the Pashtun’s share of power within state institutions, was wholly accomplished. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the appearance of the Central Asian Republics added a new objective to the concept of “strategic depth”: a friendly regime in Afghanistan would open up the door for Pakistan to the energy products and markets of Central Asia whilst also being a hurdle for India. 11 KRONSTADT, K. Alan, KATZMAN, Kennet, “Islamist militancy in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region and U.S. policy”, Congressional Research Service, CRS Report for Congress RL34763, November 2008, p. 8.
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