PAKISTAN BETWEEN CENTRAL AND SOUTH ASIA RSC
Abstract
The strategic gap between India and Pakistan compels Islamabad to pay attention to its north-ern dimension, namely Afghanistan and Central Asia. For this reason, in order to avoid being threatened from the North and the South at the same time, Pakistan has always tried to get a friendly government in Afghanistan. During the 1980s and the 1990s a series of events, such as the invasion of Afghanistan, the involvement of Pakistan in the conflict and then the emergence of War on Terror, have changed dramatically the regional situation. At the end of the 1990s there were two separate Regional Security Complexes, the Central and the South Asian ones, divided by Afghanistan, an insulator state. At present, we see how these two Regional Security Complexes have converged in a common point—Afghanistan—which is the hub of a new Regional Security Complex (South-Central Asian RSC) involving these two regions.
The current situation of this huge RSC is well illustrated by the following sentence: “For this purpose, an inquiry is suggested into the nature of the <Muslim identity> of the Central Asian states, the <Russian string> attached to them, <the American fears> about the Islamic identity, <Pakistan’s hopes> to cooperate with them and the <Indian> threat to this cooperation.”2
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I am grateful to Najam Abbas for his insightful comments and helpful editing this article.
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Ibidem.
Ibid., p. 53.
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Uzbekistan is the fourth largest cotton producer in the world and Pakistan is one of the largest cotton consumer in the world.
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See: R. Lal, op. cit., p. 31.
See: Ibid., p. 32.
See: G. Luthra, “India to Base Planes in Tajikistan: Engineers Working to Strengthen Runway,” Indian Asian News Service, 15 October, 2003.
See: B. Buzan, O. Weaver, op. cit., p. 53.
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