Paying for the long neglect

By K. V. Krishnaswamy

AS THE United States and India begin a historic joint effort to counter terrorism, it must be futile to expect the American side to acknowledge Washington's responsibility for the rise of this terrible monster in the South Asian region. Blinded by its obsessive goal of defeating the communist empire led by the Soviet Union, the ideological foe, the U.S. chose policy lines that meant it was ready to sacrifice its long-term interests for short-term gains. The support it sought and secured from Islamic forces in the region did succeed in the limited objective of driving out the Soviet military in occupation of Afghanistan. In fact, that signal victory heralded the collapse of the Soviet Union. Before the celebrations could end, however, the U.S found itself facing its gravest challenge in a region of great strategic importance. The Nineties when the U.S. emerged as the sole superpower turned out to be the decade when it failed to prevent the hijacking of a strategic land in Asia.

The ``liberation'' of Afghanistan in 1989 and its violent aftermath mark a turning point in the history of South and Central Asia. The victory of a disparate conglomeration of avowed Islamic forces was the direct result of an American geostrategic master plan, implemented with the active assistance of Saudi Arabia, its prime West Asian ally, and Pakistan, a Cold War partner. The gains could not be consolidated by moderate secular forces because ranged against them were the same powerful triumvirate,led apparently reluctantly this time by the U.S.

Has the master strategy backfired? The rapid rise of the Taliban after its sweeping gains in the bloody civil war that followed the departure of the Soviet forces is threatening to undo the American plan. The ragtag army of Islamic mercenaries which has gained near-total control over the country and enveloped it in its dark shroud has begun to sound ominous warnings. Instead of a friendly regime in Kabul, the U.S. finds that it has helped raise a Frankenstein, with the Taliban, true to colour, suspected to be harbouring elements which have vowed the destruction of America and Americans.

The short-sightedness of the grand American strategy is glaringly evident from other manifestations in the region, the most disastrous being the existentialist crisis being faced by Pakistan. No country in the region, neither India nor China, will escape the fallout: the murderous rise of militancy in Kashmir, brought into sharp focus by the Christmas-eve hijacking, is the starkest reminder to this country that hostile forces are on the ascendant in the region. America, too, has felt the reverberations.

Woken up rudely, Washington now seeks friends and allies to help stem the fundamentalist tide in the region. Hence the common cause with India in the fight against terrorism.

India is only slowly realising the impact of the Taliban's malignant presence on its border. The hijacking on New Year's eve is but a part of this fundamentalist programme as evidenced by the diabolic part played by the Taliban during the tense days at Kandahar. However, whatever the scars left by the hijack trauma, there is one fallout beneficial in the long term: a people notorious for their lack of strategic awareness have been taught the imperative of reckoning with forces in the country's neighbourhood they had tended to ignore for decades. Except for brief periods in the past five decades, Afghanistan had remained a remote region, the dramatic events in that country culminating in the arrival on the scene of the dark horse by the name Taliban meaning little to most Indians, till that fateful hijacking jolted them out of their slumber. Like the Kargil confrontation in some ways, the hijacking has helped focus national attention on a part of the world that has stayed off the public gaze, confined to the dark realms of policy planners.

No more can this country keep its head in the sand and pretend that the happenings around, save perhaps in Pakistan, matter little to it. The ignorance and the neglect have no historical rationale. But for the interregnum of the last half a century, Kabul, Kandahar, Khyber Pass and the Afghan invader have for centuries cast their shadow on this country. The rulers had ignored the stirrings in the northwest region only at their own peril.

The benign neglect perhaps began with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan following a coup that toppled a long line of dynastic rule. With a pro-Soviet, India-friendly regime installed in Kabul, relations began to expand. At the height of the Cold War, India's undeniable but certainly justifiable tilt towards the Soviet bloc resulted in close involvement at various levels with the Moscow-appointed Najibullah Government. In the ideological rigidity of that era, if a nation was not with one bloc it was deemed to be in the other, an unmitigated enemy. Automatically, axiomatically India's proximity to Kabul pitted it against powerful forces.

A convergence of interests saw the U.S. lead the other camp and under its umbrella came a bewildering array of Islamic groups that had nothing in common except intense enmity towards the Soviet Union. The Islamist volunteers were armed, funded and trained by the United States and its regional allies. At one time during that bitter war there were about 25,000 Afghan Arab volunteers from Arab and Muslim countries leading the fight against the Soviet forces. According to some estimates, America and Saudi Arabia ploughed $ 500 million a year between 1986 and 1989 into the fight against the Soviet forces. About 65,000 tonnes of weapons were delivered to the various anti-Soviet groups while U.S.-supplied Stinger missiles downed about 300 aircraft.

By the time the collapsing Soviet empire decided that the cost of occupation was becoming unbearable, the Cold War had wound down. Victory against one of the two superpowers, instead of leading to a stable government in Kabul, ignited an internecine battle. The demons were out with the emergence of different factions based on ethnic, religious and sectarian interests eager to fill the vacuum: the Pushtoon majority in the south, mostly belonging to the Sunni sect like neighbouring Pakistan, the Shia minority in the northwest closely aligned to the Iranians across the border, and the Uzbek and Tajik population predominant in the northern region of the country.

The factions splintered the Afghan mosaic, held together at the turn of the century by clan chieftains and later by pro-Soviet secular forces. The civil war saw the emergence of the Taliban, Sunni volunteers eager and anxious to save their ``oppressed'' coreligionists. Fighting with them was a young Saudi engineer and son of a tycoon. His name was Osama bin Laden. As an idealistic young man he was outraged by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and using his wealth recruited volunteers to fight in the occupied country. He also took part in the fighting, becoming something of a legend. His disillusionment with the U.S. began during the 1991 Gulf War against Mr. Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The presence of American soldiers on Saudi soil enraged him and he launched a vicious campaign against Washington. An embarrassed Saudi regime expelled him and revoked his citizenship in 1994.

It was about this time that the Taliban was emerging from the madrassas on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Even as it gained control of territory with spectacular victories over the other factions in the civil war, there was a ready refugee for Osama - after all he had funded the Taliban. The Taliban repaid him by sheltering him from the U.S which seeks his extradition with a $ 5 million reward on his head for alleged involvement in the bombings of American embassies in eastern Africa in August 1998. America's Public Enemy No. 1 is also a hero in much of the Muslim world where he is seen as standing up to the West.

Hero or villain, ally or enemy, Osama bin Laden has come to epitomise the troubles of the times. There is no reason why India should accept the scaremongering view of this man or that he is the fount of global Islamic terror. But, as we reserve judgment on him, there can be no two opinions that the Taliban is a destabilising influence in a region of vital interest to this country.

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