‘Great Games’ was used to describe the fierce fight by rival powers for spheres of influence in the unforgiving swathes of South-Central Asia (modern day Afghanistan), at the crossroads of civilisations. Each foreign power had remained paranoid about the advent of the other, even though history is witness to the fact that no foreign power could ever hold on to these lands and its fearsome tribes for long.

Native Afghans remained unruly and violent bystanders, as each foreign power jostled with the other ~ shifting their own alliances, whenever a better deal was on offer. But eventually each power realised the cold reality of the sobriquet ‘Graveyard of Empires’. Images immortalised on canvas and film of colonial soldiers limping and retreating home miserably, be it the British, Russian, American or even Pakistani, are true. Yet the haunting imagery of the famous painting ‘Remnants of the Army’, showing the sole survivor of British General Elphin stone’s battered Army riding a bedraggled horse back to Jalalabad, is usually forgotten in the quest to control the landlocked country. Regional powers like Pakistan have fancied their chances of aspiring for ‘Strategic Depth’ in Afghanistan, suggesting a pliant state, or strictly in a militaristic sense to use Afghan territory as a strategic rallying point to retreat and regroup for a counter attack. But suffice to say, despite many Pakistani efforts, investments, and creation of ostensibly pro-Pakistan forces like the Taliban, it too faces the inevitable consequences of other foreign powers that earlier tried to control the narrative.

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The man responsible for seeding the concept of ‘Strategic Depth’ was the dour, conservative and ultra-ambitious Chief of Pakistani Army who succeeded General Zia-ul-Haq i.e., Gen Mirza Aslam Beg. Under Beg’s tutelage and patronisation, yet another unhinged Pakistani Director General of Inter-Services-Intelligence i.e., Lt Gen Hamid Gul (infamous as the ‘father of Taliban’), would interfere in the........

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