By now, the recurring failure in the Pakistan-U.S. alliance should be obvious: The Pakistani military views it primarily as a means of reducing the threat from India, and the United States does not. But perhaps the United States should. The reason the Pakistani military continued to back jihadist groups, jointly set up with the CIA in the 1980s, after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan was that it believed the same tactics could be used in Kashmir against India. And the reason the Pakistani military remains obsessed with shaping events in Afghanistan is because that country is the site of a power struggle between Pakistan and India — what commentators in Pakistan go so far as to call a “proxy war.” Fighting terrorists or fighting the Taliban — or indeed, fighting in Afghanistan at all — addresses symptoms rather than the disease in South Asia: the horrific, wasteful, tragic and dangerous six-decade confrontation between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Full article.