The Hindu : India's Afghan stakes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003

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India's Afghan stakes

By M.K. Bhadrakumar

India's neglect of its historical partners in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, is inexcusable. Resetting policy parameters is not going to be easy.

THE PRIME Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, during his recent summit meeting with the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, put in perspective the gravity of the developments in Afghanistan. He was quoted as saying, "Events in Afghanistan cause anxiety, there exists the threat of the Taliban's return" in one form or the other.

The Declaration on Global Challenges and Threats to World Security and Stability signed by the two statesmen in Moscow on November 12 called for giving up "double standards" in the war against terrorism and for adopting a "consistent and uncompromising" approach. It stressed the imperative of promoting confidence among members of the "anti-terrorist coalition" by giving due consideration to the interests of each one of them. It reiterated, "Afghanistan should emerge as a peaceful, strong, prosperous, united and independent nation that would be free from external interference and living in harmony with its neighbours".

Tajikistan was Mr. Vajpayee's next destination after the Russia visit. This carried much political symbolism. Tajikistan used to be a frontline state in the resistance to the Taliban. The Joint Declaration issued on November 14 in Dushanbe following talks between Mr. Vajpayee and the Tajik President, Emomali Rakhmonov, called for an Afghanistan free from outside interference, and expressed concern at the challenges to security being mounted by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda elements "with support from outside."

India has been in the forefront of the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. India was the first country to offer military bases for the Anglo-American forces to launch the war. India made this unilateral offer on the basis of its confidence that it had shared interests with Washington over Taliban regime's overthrow — confidence that presumably accrued through South Block's intense interaction with the United States at the ministerial level and within the forum of Indo-U.S. Working Group, during the two-year period from end-1999.

When the Afghan war was "won" with unexpected ease in October 2001, BJP government leaders jubilantly bracketed the Taliban's spectacular "defeat" with the on-going Diwali festivities.

Following up, in December, at the Bonn conference, India played a useful role for the Americans in cajoling Northern Alliance groups to accept a certain calculus of power in Kabul for the post-Taliban era, which, left to themselves, these groups were wary of. India followed up by undertaking an unprecedented commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars for Afghanistan's reconstruction. India expanded its diplomatic presence to a historic level by opening consulates in southern, southeastern, western and northern regions of Afghanistan. All this signalled India's resolve to be a serious protagonist. India felt it had a "win-win" situation.

However, sometime around June last year, following changes at the helm of the foreign policy establishment in South Block, India began to sense that complex emergent geopolitical realities engendered by Afghan war demanded new thinking. Meanwhile, layers of ambiguity about the war also began to peel off.

Actually, the political objective of Afghan war was never in doubt except for those willing to suspend disbelief. On October 16, 2001, even before Taliban's "defeat" was complete, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, had underlined in Islamabad at a joint press conference with the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, that although the Taliban regime headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar must be eliminated, there would be room in Afghanistan's future government for "moderate" Taliban leaders since the term "Taliban" did not just mean "Afghan regime." Mr. Powell agreed with Gen. Musharraf's contention that Northern Alliance should not replace the Taliban regime. He said, "It (Taliban) also defines a group of individuals, a group of people. If you got rid of the regime, there would still be people who might find the teachings, feelings, and beliefs of that movement still very important. And to the extent that they are willing to participate in the development of a new Afghan assembly with everybody being represented, we would have to listen to them."

Clearly, as the Prussian military philosopher, Carl von Clausewitz, would have put it, Afghan war was not as "absolute" as the BJP-led Government imagined nor was the "law of the extreme," namely, a savage destruction of Taliban, ever in the Pentagon's consideration; war was meant to be a "passing evil", a temporary loss of power for Taliban in Kabul which would be repaired by political combinations, bargaining and coalition formation.

Details have emerged that months ago, with American acquiescence and Pakistani mediation, a dialogue between Hamid Karzai, Chairman of Afghan Transitional Authority, and "moderate" Taliban leaders had begun. Clearer contours of Mr. Karzai's (and American) willingness to engage the Taliban are appearing. Select Taliban leaders will be shortly inducted into Mr. Karzai's cabinet. Pakistan has commended Mr. Karzai's statesmanship in embarking on a path of "national reconciliation". Pakistan feels vindicated that Mr. Karzai and Americans are simultaneously moving in the direction of "downsizing" Northern Alliance, which was Islamabad's bête noire.

Taliban's rise, like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Afghan war, poses policy challenges for South Block. Our original sin lies in our ambivalence towards geopolitical factors which had inspired the Taliban's conception; our consequent inability to comprehend the Taliban's true alchemy; our inexcusable neglect of our historical partners, the Pashtuns, in Afghanistan; our regrettable predilection to view Afghanistan exclusively from the picturesque Panjshir valley; and, of course, the excessive zeal shown by the BJP-led Government, in the first half of its incumbency at least, to harmonise policies on any given front with Washington's thinking.

Resetting the Afghan policy parameters is not going to be easy for India. There has been a paradigm shift. The American unilateralist intervention in the Afghan question that would have been unthinkable till September 11, 2001, is today a veritable reality. The United Nations has mandated it. It carries the NATO's imprimatur and escutcheons of legitimacy under international law. Mr. Karzai enjoys American backing. Thus, if U.S. and Pakistan have jointly finessed "moderate" Taliban elements and are about to reintroduce them into mainstream Afghan politics, and if that is also what suits Mr. Karzai, what can anybody do about it?

For Washington, a success story out of Afghanistan is a priority. Forces on the ground may yet frustrate such an easy outcome, but it is unrealistic to imagine that any regional power would actively encourage these forces and risk annoying the Americans. In any case, the Northern Alliance's disarray is so advanced that "anti-Taliban resistance" cannot be resurrected. Old dividing lines between Afghan factions (or regional powers) are also disappearing.

India needs an overhaul of policy. Touch-ups are inadequate. International opinion is differentiating Taliban from "neo-Taliban". India cannot remain rooted to a dogmatic definition of the Taliban as Islam's uncompromising face. The Taliban was a cauldron in which many entrails brewed. It even contained remnants of Khalqi army officers of the communist regime who were trained in Dehra Dun. Admittedly, for fresh thinking to be possible, we need to come to terms with our handling of the hijack incident of 2000 in Kandahar.

Thirdly, we must "reengage" the Pashtuns equally with other ethnic groups. Our links with the Pashtuns run down to Rampur, Bhopal and Mysore — some would say, they hark back to the creation of the Vedas.

In geopolitics, honest cost-benefit analysis becomes necessary. If the Afghan problem were to be reduced to a timeserving war of attrition with Pakistani intelligence, we would be wastefully emulating Pakistan's grotesque discredited policies.

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