The agreement Afghanistan signed with India which placed its defence training in the hands of India, will prove destabilizing for the region. This agreement was signed during Afghan President Hamid Karzais vist to India, with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday. This is not because Pakistan would not like this development, but because this is part of the grand plans of encirclement that India is putting into practice against China. More important, this agreement was signed between one country, India, which the USA has recently befriended, and another, Afghanistan, which the USA directly occupies. This agreement is thus the first example of how the USA would like to bend the region to its wishes, and shows not just how the USA wants to reward India, but also how it wishes Afghanistan ultimately to approach it, through India. The USA intends India to be its regional counterweight in the region to China, which it sees as a rival. It is because of this that it wants India to have a role in Afghanistan, even though it has no intrinsic interest there. The agreement that has been made will not just create an interest, but place it in the Indian hands that are most likely to promote American interests, its defence establishment. Pakistan is interested in the deal not just because Afghanistan is a neighbour, but because its large Pakhtun population creates a commonality with Pakistan, which has its own Pakhtuns in large numbers. However, the Indian training of Afghan defence forces and police is a reminder that the current Afghan regime, the one which the USA set up, is primarily the inheritor of the Northern Alliance, the Tajik body whose leadership spent its exile during the anti-Soviet jihad mostly in India. Since that leadership transferred virtually wholesale onto the Afghan security forces as its leadership, the agreement makes it easier for them to follow their inclination towards India. It also provides India an artificial role in Afghanistan, something it only needs if it plans to throw its weight around, and in the process destabilise not just South Asia but also Central Asia. Pakistan should take this agreement as one more sign of the change that has taken place, and should point out to the USA that if it continued to patronize India, it would be backing a power that posed an existential threat to Pakistan, as India wished to undo the partition. Pakistan must use this agreement as one more reason to end its own unequal alliance with the USA, which is not just backing India, but permitting Afghanistan to pursue policies unfriendly to Pakistan.