by DANIEL DOMBEY and MATTHEW GREEN
Washington has given up its hopes of turning Afghanistan into the Switzerland of Central Asia – now it wants to make the country into the region’s Belgium.
As the US steps up its diplomatic push following the decision last week from Barack Obama, president, to draw down the 33,000-strong troop surge, Washington officials say defusing Indian-Pakistan rivalries within Afghanistan remains a main challenge.
In particular, Pakistan, which has long cultivated ties with Afghanistan to offset India’s strategic advantages, can play a near-decisive role in hindering or facilitating talks with the Taliban. In little-noticed comments, Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, recently suggested that to address the problem the US could look to the past, namely to the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna, which established Belgium as a neutral buffer state and ushered in a century of relative stability.
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