The Afghan question

Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrives in India at a crucial moment in the fate of Afghanistan and South Asia, because not only is it a member of Saarc but the window through which instability and invasions have poured into the Indian subcontinent since Alexander’s visit over two millennia ago.

That United States erred in diverting its resources prematurely to Iraq in 2003, mistaking the Taliban’s disappearance as defeat, is universally acknowledged. The Bonn process, which led to Constitution-making and the election of President Karzai in 2004 appears now as mere fledgling steps to national consolidation.
By 2006 it was becoming clear that with the US entrenched in Iraq, the Taliban had begun regrouping in Afghanistan, operating more boldly and reoccupying space in southern and eastern Afghanistan. Realising Pakistan’s criticality to stabilising Afghanistan, the then US President, George W. Bush, summoned Mr Karzai and former Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, in September 2006, to Washington. In his biography Mr Bush confesses that finding their recrimination unmanageable he regretted calling them at all. However, the US pressure continued and Mr Musharraf was in Kabul in 2007, again to see if the two neighbours could cooperate. Pakistan’s duplicity was always suspected and was first unleashed against India through their surrogates, the Haqqani network, when the Indian embassy in Kabul was attacked by a suicide bomber in July 2008.
The final chapter in this sordid saga has been the twin attacks last month, first on US troops and then their embassy in Kabul. The US response was swift and tough. Retiring Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and a traditional Pakistani supporter, Adm. Mike Mullen, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that the nexus led back through the Haqqani group to the Pakistan Army. The deduction was apparent, that Pakistan would not tolerate being by-passed in the staging of the endgame in Afghanistan. The assassination, first of President Karzai’s brother in Kandahar, and then of his designated envoy, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, for reconciliation talks with the Taliban, underscored the same brutal intent.
As regards India, Pakistani concern is even more extreme as they fear that any Indian influence in Kabul is the starting point of their eventual encirclement. India in turn frets over Pakistani proxies dragging Afghanistan back to the dark days of the Taliban in the period 1996-2001, with puritanical regression to Salafist injunctions and terrorist sanctuaries. India had abandoned its pre-2001 alliance with Iran and Russia and slid into the US corner hoping that the US would compel Pakistan to make a permanent strategic shift away from jihadi national security doctrines. In any case India was comfortable with India-educated Hamid Karzai.
Sherard Cowper-Coles, British ambassador to Afghanistan in the crucial period post-2008, in his recent book Cables From Kabul, records that “while Karzai was viscerally anti-Pakistan, he was profoundly pro-India.”
So far Mr Karzai has had to play a balanced role, possibly under US advice that any pro-India tilt would exacerbate the Pakistani animosity. That is why India has kept studiously away from training the security forces of Afghanistan, or directly dabbling in other forms of security assistance. Mr Karzai commences his India visit having announced that following the Rabbani assassination, talks with the Taliban are off for the time being. Secondly, not only Adm. Mike Mullen, but even the Afghan government spokesmen are naming Pakistan directly as complicit in the dastardly act. Mr Karzai is lamenting that perhaps no dialogue is possible without Pakistan. Thus, while many of the shadows of the past have lifted and a more open engagement between India and Afghanistan is possible, on a wider range of subjects, what has to be discussed is the role of Pakistan. For a stable Afghanistan to emerge, no neighbour can have it entirely its own way. A balance of regional interests is the sine qua non of a happy outcome.
The region confronts many possible alternative futures. Critical to them is the role of the US till or beyond 2014, the announced date of full withdrawal. A 2008 Rand report concludes that based on a study of 90 insurgencies since 1945, a positive outcome depends on three elements: capability of indigenous security forces; local governance; and finally elimination of external support to insurgents or sanctuaries. India has focused on the second. Being mindful of Pakistani sensitivities it has largely stayed clear of the first, though it has tremendous capacity for training large batches of soldiers at its existing facilities. The last remains the sticking point and the subject of Pakistan-US dissonance.
Ironically, while Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Kabul in May last, a bare two weeks after the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr Karzai arrives immediately after the destabilising assassinations and attacks in Afghanistan. Both sets of events compelled a re-think on existing orthodoxies concerning the role of Pakistan. The political map that has to culminate in the forthcoming Bonn Conference and began with the London Conference in January 2010 has been under-cut by reality. Instead of visible reconciliation, there is the elimination of the very instruments of engagement. The global financial malaise has deepened, forcing International Security Assistance Force members to count pennies. The responsibility of emerging economies and neighbours increases, bringing the focus on the role of India, China, Russia and Iran, besides the spoiler tendencies of Pakistan.
Iran nurses Indian hurts, Russia may prefer the US to bleed in silent revenge for their own 1979-89 purgation and China may simply, but foolishly, wait for Pakistan to re-arrange the matrix for their mutual benefit.
Dr Singh had announced in Kabul the increasing of bilateral assistance by $500 million from the existing $1.5 billion already in the pipeline. Vital, however, would be the taming of Pakistani ambitions and the application of US military might to bring the political process back on track. Otherwise, the warning posed by ambassador Cowper-Coles in his book, that “development spending could underpin such a process but could not deliver it” would apply. Mr Karzai comes to Delhi to discover if India is ready to play a new role as US vacates space. If India has to become a pole in the emerging global security order, it must first begin demonstrating in its neighbourhood an ability and desire to shape regional security, with or without others.

The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry