Afghanistan: A Firewall is Better than Partition
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Harinder Singh
Archive data: Person was Research Fellow at IDSA from April 2009 to January 2011 Joined IDSA April 2009 Expertise Counter-terrorism, Operational Readiness and Sustainability Issues Education MSc in Defence Studies… Continue reading Afghanistan: A Firewall is Better than Partition read more -
Sushant Sareen
Sushant Sareen is Consultant, Pakistan Project, at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. read more
With the West increasingly looking at disengagement from Afghanistan, it is time regional stakeholders think about the long term ramifications of such a withdrawal. This issue brief advocates that in the event of such a situation arising in the future, it would be prudent to firewall the AfPak region from all sides with only a minimal foreign military presence inside Afghanistan. Such an approach would not only free the United States from aimlessly paying for Pakistan’s follies and haemorrhaging its own economy and military, but also drive its rival China to act more responsibly in the global fight against terrorism. India has been fairly successful in firewalling the radical blowback emanating from Pakistan in the past and need not be overly worried about the impending US withdrawal.
