Stardate 20010927.0739 (On Screen): Never let it be said that the diplomatic situation in the Afghanistan region is straightforward. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend", right? Well, not necessarily. The Taliban is actually to a great extent a creation of Pakistan, who fostered it and supported it in the Afghani civil war, as a result of which the various members of the coalition known as the "Northern Alliance" are bitterly opposed not just to the Taliban, but also to Pakistan. The US is trying to cement an alliance with Pakistan because of its geographic importance, but it's clear that the Northern Alliance could be of great use to us. Not only are they a force to be reckoned with and a potential replacement for the Taliban, but they have substantial intelligence resources in the rest of Afghanistan which could be useful (if, that is, we trust them to tell us the truth). On the other hand, it's not clear that if the Taliban were to fall that the "Northern Alliance" coalition would remain together. For the moment they ally for self defense reasons, but if the Taliban fall they might begin to fight amongst themselves -- and regardless of who triumphs, there will be deepseated hostility to Pakistan. So Islamabad is not too thrilled about the US doing anything to bring the Northern Alliance back into power.
This is not insoluble, but it is a difficult problem. It seems to present us with a dilemma: how do we defeat the Taliban (if indeed we decide to attempt that) without in turn handing a victory to the Taliban's opponents who also hate our ally Pakistan? One possibility would be to use the former king of Afghanistan to unite all the forces and to create a new government in Afghanistan, which possibly might not be antagonistic to Pakistan and thus might be palatable to Islamabad. Another possibility is to take advantage of the fact that the countries which seem to be on our side in this are not too closely allied -- in particular, Russia. The Russians have been feeding material support to the Northern Alliance for years, and apparently intends to increase their support now. They've hinted that they'd like us to help, but doing that would anger the Pakistanis. However, some of our people might have an informal chat with some of the Russians and say "Hey, about them Northern Alliance guys; we can't help you support them or even publicly applaud you doing so, but just between the two of us here in private, we think it's a fine thing and we hope you'll do more of it, and by the way, next time you talk to them could you ask them about these five locations in Afghanistan and tell us what they say?" (discuss)
Update 20010928: Pakistan has made its attitude about the Northern Alliance public. I sure hope the ex-King of Afghanistan doesn't die in the next year or so; we're going to need him.
