Saturday, March 26, 2005

"Troubled Triangle" ?

Daily Times - AFP Report, MArch 26, 2005
US presence might increase in ‘troubled-triangle’, says expert

WASHINGTON: Drugs, terrorism and nuclear threats are making Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran a “troubled triangle” that could deepen US presence in the region, US Army War College representative Larry Goodson told a conference on Thursday.

Goodson said the countries strategic interests in each other, including Iran leaning toward Russia, China and India to create a strategic counterweight to the United States, compounded the problem. He said that drug trafficking in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, was tied to warlords, terrorists and drug mafias within the country.

“The drug trade is fuelling Pakistan’s heroin market and increasing addiction among young people, as well as social ills in Iran,” Goodson told the conference organised by the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington.

But while a long-term American commitment could help Afghanistan wean itself from drug dependency and boost reconstruction and restore democracy to Pakistan, it might fuel greater anti-American sentiment, he warned.

“The US faces a conundrum, in that we have to stay to achieve the strategic interests of stabilising these troubled regions but our presence there is going to attract some militants who want to challenge their conception of the US project for the world,” said Goodson.

Vali Nasr, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said Pakistan and Iran were becoming “uneasy” neighbours because of their nuclear capabilities.

“Iran’s nuclear programme and Pakistan’s proliferation of nuclear technology is an explosive issue and for both countries it is about regime survival,” said the expert on political Islam and Shia doctrine.

“The Pakistani regime can fall from power if AQ Khan’s network involved the military,” Nasr said, adding, “More recently Pakistan has been accusing Iran of unnecessarily cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the AQ Khan issue.”

Pakistan’s leaders blame Iran for inciting an insurgency in Balochistan, “which has become an important problem for the Musharraf government.” “Iran is using ethnic tensions to prevent Musharraf from consolidating power and prevent him from consolidating relations with Washington,” Nasr said.

If the United States wants to extend its influence from Islamabad through Kabul and further north, he said: “It will require a sustained American presence, long term, in the region.”

“The big question is what fashion and how long will the United States be engaged in this high level way in Pakistan and Afghanistan and a very different way and negative way towards Iraq,” Goodson said.

Ayesha Siddiqa, an ex-Pakistani government director of naval research and now a scholar, said, “Strategically, it will be positive for Pakistan to support a hostile policy towards Iran” although both countries were worried by President George W Bush’s “pre-emption” doctrine. afp

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