Pakistan is presented as a pivotal but vulnerable state in the political geography of the Afghanistan conflict: first as a partner in the 1980s recruitment and arming of Islamist fighters, and later as a country whose cooperation with the United States could intensify humanitarian pressure, internal instability, and regional danger. Chomsky’s account places Pakistan between U.S. military ambitions, the Afghan crisis, and its own fraught relations with neighboring states.

Role in the Afghan War of the 1980s

Chomsky locates the CIA’s significant role in the 1980s, when U.S. intelligence services joined those of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Britain to recruit, train, and arm the most extreme Islamist fighters available for a holy war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan thus figures not merely as a neighboring state but as one of the partners through which that mobilization was organized.

After the war ended, fighters described as “Afghans”—many of whom, including Osama bin Laden, were not Afghan—turned their attention to places such as Chechnya and Bosnia. Chomsky says they received at least tacit U.S. support in those settings and notes that many Islamic volunteers in Bosnia were granted citizenship in recognition of their military service. The account traces a continuing militant network beyond the Afghan war rather than treating that war as its endpoint.

Cooperation and Humanitarian Consequences

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the Bush administration sought Pakistan’s cooperation. Chomsky cites reports that Washington asked Pakistan to stop fuel supplies and halt truck convoys carrying much of the food and other goods reaching Afghan civilians. Pakistan later said it would not reverse its decision to close its 2,300-kilometer border with Afghanistan, explaining that it wanted to prevent Osama bin Laden’s men from hiding among the large flow of refugees.

The border closure and the threat of U.S. military strikes formed part of a worsening humanitarian picture. International aid organizations evacuated the area, paralyzing assistance programs; refugees crossing into Pakistan described fear and despair as the threat of an offensive turned prolonged hardship into a potential catastrophe. One aid volunteer, speaking after evacuation, described the country as having been sustained by an intravenous drip that had just been pulled away. In Chomsky’s presentation, Pakistan’s cooperation was therefore tied not only to military planning but also to the interruption of essential civilian support.

Strategic Vulnerabilities and Regional Tensions

Chomsky describes Pakistan as the Taliban’s foremost supporter and as home to a strong Islamist movement. He warns that its reaction could be violent if the country openly became a base for U.S. operations in Afghanistan. The danger was magnified by Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, making domestic instability a potential regional and international crisis rather than a purely internal matter.

Pakistan’s military, despite being eager to obtain U.S. military assistance already promised, remained wary because of the countries’ turbulent past relations. It also feared a potentially hostile Afghanistan aligning with India, Pakistan’s eastern rival. Those concerns were sharpened by the Northern Alliance’s leadership: Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other Afghan minorities whom Pakistan regarded as hostile and who were supported by India, Iran, Russia, and, by then, the United States. The country’s strategic choices were thus constrained by competing security fears and by the shifting alignments around Afghanistan.

Beyond the Border: Energy and U.S. Power

Pakistan’s position sits within a larger contest over military access and regional resources. Chomsky identifies the Persian Gulf—especially Saudi Arabia—as the location of the world’s principal energy reserves, while noting substantial resources in Central Asia. Afghanistan, in this analysis, is a relatively minor piece of a broader strategic map; proposed pipelines through it had long been discussed as a means of helping the United States manage access to Central Asian resources.

Chomsky argues that the establishment of major U.S. military bases in Central Asia after the Afghanistan war expanded Washington’s ability to project force and to pursue control over regional resources. The new bases complemented a network directed toward the Gulf that stretched from the Pacific to the Azores; before the war, Diego Garcia had been its most secure position. He interprets the Afghanistan bombing campaign as also serving a demonstration of U.S. military capacity, connecting it to the earlier NATO bombing of Serbia, which U.S. and British leaders had defended in terms of alliance credibility. Pakistan’s exposure to these developments reflects its place in a regional order shaped by military deployment, energy interests, and U.S. leverage.