The former military ruler, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf, has said in an interview that in the absence of normal relations between India and Pakistan, both the countries could enter into a proxy war in Afghanistan after the western troops’ withdrawal. Musharraf has accused India of spreading anti-Pakistan sentiments in Afghanistan. He further said that India is training the Baloch rebels in southern Afghanistan, an oft-repeated mantra that still awaits proof. The former army chief has warned that in case of India supporting a partisan ethnic policy in Afghanistan, Pakistan will support the Pashtuns. Musharraf has praised the new Afghan government for its desire to patch up differences with Pakistan to make a new beginning. Supporting his decision to ally with Washington in the war on terror after 9/11, he said that the US has been unable to find a political solution to the Afghan problem because of its failure to form an inclusive government, which alienated the Pashtuns and favoured the Tajiks and others. Any repeat of this arrangement Musharraf believes will bring India and Pakistan to a proxy confrontation on Afghan soil. Musharraf is sceptical of Afghanistan’s ability to resist the rebel forces and fill the vacuum left by the US-led NATO forces’ withdrawal. As far as Afghanistan’s future is concerned, nothing can be said with finality at this point. But how Musharraf has come to the conclusion that the Tajiks will be dominating the future Afghan government is not clear. If he is referring to the post-9/11 scenario when the US rejected Musharraf’s advice to include moderate Taliban in the Karzai government, this shows that the General is still stuck in his way of looking at Afghanistan from a Pakistani defined perspective. Why would a force that the US had come to eliminate have been included in the new arrangement after 9/11? If it was a question of Pashtun representation, Karzai and his supporters were Pashtuns. Insisting that only the Taliban represent the Pashtuns, since there are many Pashtuns who are not Taliban, is a spurious argument. Musharraf has no locus standi to criticise the US or the Afghan government for the political uncertainty in Afghanistan. It was Musharraf’s policy to provide safe havens to the Afghan Taliban in Pakistan in spite of joining hands with the US to eliminate them. It was under his reign that the Taliban regrouped to erode the US military efforts in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s constant intervention in Afghanistan’s political affairs, unlike India’s ‘soft power’ projection, has in fact adversely affected Pakistan-Afghanistan relations. It is about time that Pakistan helps Afghanistan bridge its ethnic differences rather than opening them up for more divisions by persisting in its policy of supporting the Taliban. *