India and Pakistan urged to help US stabilize Afghanistan

A noted American columnist has urged India and Pakistan to cooperate with each other and help the United States stabilize the "tinderbox of Afghanistan."
"India won't be secure unless Pakistan is, and vice versa. And neither country can be comfortable so long as Afghanistan remains a battleground," columnist David Ignatius wrote in the Washington Post on Sunday as he welcomed New Delhi's offer of talks with Islamabad.
"Each nation fears (often with good reason) that the other's intelligence service is using Afghanistan as a staging ground," he said in his regular column: A new thaw between India and Pakistan.
"This Indo-Pak version of the 'Great Game' is poisonous, and the two need to begin sharing intelligence about common threats, rather than fighting spy wars," Ignatius wrote.
"The Indo-Pak problem is partly one of political asymmetry. India has a strong democracy, in which the military is powerful but subordinate to political leadership. Pakistan is the opposite: The military is the most robust segment of the Pakistani elite. Military command changes there are gossiped about almost as if they were elections".
Noting that Admiral Mike Mullen likes to say: The key to Kabul lies in Islamabad, meaning that success in Afghanistan will be impossible without Pakistan's help, Ignatius said: "But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is said to have an additional rubric: Given the political complications in that part of the world, the key to Islamabad lies in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
"So it was welcome news indeed Thursday when a Pakistani government spokesman announced that India had proposed high-level talks with Pakistan -- opening the way for a dialogue the region desperately needs.
"How might India play the constructive role that Mullen and other top U.S. officials would like to see? The answer is easy to describe, but agonizingly difficult to put in practice: India could reassure Pakistan that as it works with the United States to contain the Taliban insurgency on its western frontier, the Indian military would ease pressure on the eastern border.