When Pakistan’s military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq conceived the doctrine of strategic depth in Afghanistan in the 1970s, it was presented as a master vision that would finally secure Pakistan’s western frontier and gain a psychological advantage against India. But four decades later, that vision has collapsed under its own contradictions. What was once imagined as a growing geopolitical expansion of Pakistan in Central Asia and a shield against India has become a wound that is mortally festering at Pakistan’s core. Afghanistan, instead of being Pakistan’s envisioned strategic depth, has turned into its strategic death.

The Roots of an Illusion

Pakistan’s obsession with Afghanistan began not with Zia, but much earlier. The roots lay in the early 1950s and 1960s when Afghanistan persistently questioned Pakistan’s territorial integrity. Kabul from early on started laying claims over the Pakistani-controlled North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and parts of Balochistan, arguing that Pakistan’s Pashtun belt, overwhelmingly aligned ethnically with Afghanistan, should have the right to opt for independence or merge with Afghanistan. The disputes escalated into diplomatic ruptures, leading to the severance of diplomatic relations twice, in 1955 and then again in 1962.

Haunted by these claims, Pakistan’s military establishment began to view Afghanistan less as a neighbour and more as a potential threat. Thus, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan’s military establishment—then under military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq—saw an opportunity to reshape the region in its favour. General Zia, buoyed by U.S. and Saudi funds, saw the Afghan jihad not merely as a religious war but also as a significant geopolitical project. His goal was to install a pliable, pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul that would forever neutralize Afghanistan’s irredentist claims.

The concept of strategic depth soon took shape. Zia’s military strategists argued that Pakistan’s elongated geography—narrow in the east, with little hinterland to fall back upon—had left it vulnerable to India. A friendly Afghanistan, they reasoned, would give the Pakistani army the strategic space to regroup in case of a prolonged Indian invasion. Even more ambitiously, Pakistan envisioned Afghanistan as a base from which to train and arm insurgents under its doctrine of bleeding........

© News18