The key to Afghanistan lies in Islamabad, not in Kabul, which means that US President Barack Obama’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, is more important now than the military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus. It is in Pakistan’s capital that a regional solution will have to be negotiated, and the conditions for success are by no means hopeless, though it involves the far more complicated – and rarely mentioned – issue of Indian-Pakistani relations.