BEIJING - As was the case centuries - and millennia - ago, stability and instability in what is now Afghanistan extend far beyond its borders.

Many voices in India suggest the very existence of Pakistan has been called into question. Anti-Pakistani feeling is being voiced in India in the form of arguments that Islamabad's black hand has been clearly behind terrorism in Afghanistan and in Indian Kashmir. Others in India argue, however, that the issue is more complex, that perhaps some elements of the current situation could lead to a solution to wider conflicts in the region, ultimately benefiting India.

These analysts say that the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) was a blessing in disguise for newly independent India. If Pakistan hadn't been created the religious problem in India would be much larger and explosive. The Muslims in a unified India that included what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh would be some 500 million people out of a total population of around 1.3 billion. Rising Muslim and Hindu militancy would likely pit the two religious groups into war, and certainly there would be a huge string of mind-boggling problems.

Therefore in retrospect the partition gave stability to India by decreasing religious tension, and thus Pakistan is a blessing for India - arguably the very thing that has kept India united and relatively stable.

The Afghanistan situation, similarly, could lead to a new relationship between Pakistan and India, as the former in effect swaps a stronger role in Afghanistan for a political withdrawal from the issue of Kashmir, which so incenses India. While Pakistan is a bigger problem than Afghanistan, India is bigger than Pakistan, and the stability and development of India are in the interests of everybody.

New agreements such as this are possible now that the Cold War has ended and new balances can be reached ignoring ideological divides. The argument for the benefit of Pakistan's existence for India has in fact long existed, and was in essence at the heart of the early partition, although it was mostly used by the Muslims who wanted to protect their identity in a state of their own.

However, the Cold War built walls where there could have been simple frontiers. The grand geopolitical reshuffling that brought together the United States and China in the 1970s started with Pakistan, which offered its good offices of mediation and safe passage for US diplomats on their way to Beijing. Pakistan thus found relief from the combined pressure of the Soviets in neighboring Afghanistan and the Soviets' Indian allies, as China plus America could exercise pressure on India and the USSR. And in the late 1970s and early 1980s the new three-pronged force (the US, China and Pakistan) waged a proxy war in Afghanistan against the USSR.

That war ultimately proved an important factor in the collapse of the Soviet system. As well, the US playing the Chinese card, via Pakistan, greatly helped America to get out of the Vietnam mire, which was rocking the whole Western alliance. In a way, the Cold War can be seen to have been lost and won through the way each side handled its Central Asian cards. In America's struggles against the USSR, the role of China was essential, and the person who first designed it as US secretary of state, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is still a firm advocate of a strong relationship between the US and China.

To consider the present predicament we should first examine what happened between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. At first, the crucial issue was Southeast Asia, which was expanding its influence and had to be checked. At the time, the Chinese were supporting guerrilla groups in northern Thailand and northern Burma (now Myanmar), but in agreement with the Americans they stopped this, as both Beijing and Washington tried to reinforce Thailand versus pro-Soviet Vietnam, and Burma versus pro-Soviet India. This, and the brief Sino-Vietnamese border war, checked Soviet political expansion through Vietnam. The positive outcome in Southeast Asia in turn reinforced the Sino-US collaboration in Afghanistan.

Now collaboration between China and the US is again important, but the point is not the defeat of an enemy, but a political solution in which all neighbors are happier than before and the only victims are the extremists. Therefore, for the new solution in Afghanistan, Russia has to play a key role, for many reasons. Afghanistan once sapped the Russians' confidence, expelling them from large parts of Central Asia; now the rebuilding of Afghanistan, with Russian contribution, could boost Russia's national confidence. It could also help Moscow gain a new role in its former Central Asian republics, where it is part of a complex picture in which also China is part, as witnessed in the Shanghai Five initiative. Here the role of the US clearly is and will be essential as a facilitator of this new geopolitical influence.

In other words, as Afghanistan was a generation ago the beginning of the end of the Cold War, can Afghanistan now become the starting point to build new balances in the Indian subcontinent and former Soviet Asia? Now as then, the moves of the US and China will be crucial. Now as then, success will be determined by a close collaboration and the forfeiting of alleged ideological divides.

Yet now as then, this is only one leg of the problem. The other leg is in Southeast Asia, where new creative initiatives must start to bring about the development, politically as well as economically, of Myanmar, where the notorious Golden Triangle still casts its poisonous shadow over the world.

Part 1: The Grand Game in Afghanistan
Full text (http://www.atimes.com/c-asia/CL14Ag01.html) (2001-12-15 Asia Times)