Dilip Hiro
At first sight it seems a straight diplomatic triangulation between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. But a closer look reveals five major players at work: Afghanis-tan ruled by President Hamid Karzai, Pakistan, the US, India, and the Taliban led by Mullah Muhammad Omar. A major move by any one of them impacts all others. The signing of the strategic partnership agreement by Afghanistan and India last week was one such.
India stands at one end of the spectrum with the Taliban at the other. They are resolved to exclude each other from any political set-up that emerges for the hapless nation of Afghans. Each of them is thus committed to achieving a scenario that is unrealistic.
For India to see the Taliban precluded from power-sharing in the post-Nato Afghanistan is tantamount to excluding Hindi speakers from government in New Delhi. Pashtuns, forming 42% to 46% of Afghanistan's population, support the Tali-ban by a wide margin. The 13 Pashtun-majority provinces, out of 34, account for 55% of the country's 30 million people.
Equally, given India's prime position in South Asia, it is unrealistic of the Taliban to aspire to keep it out of Afghanistan's complex equation.
In between these extremes stands the US administration of President Barack Obama. It is committed to leaving Afgha-nistan with a government that is better equipped to provide security to its citizens, and is, preferably, less corrupt and inept than that of Karzai.
Pakistan is resolved to have a pliant regime in Kabul after the departure of the US-led Nato troops by December 2014. It can achieve this by ensuring that the Taliban is the leading partner in any transitional coalition government that would form the core of a political settlement at some point. Since 1994, Islamabad has invested heavily in fostering and nurturing the Taliban. Its distancing from it in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 turned out to be a blip. Such a strategic alliance cannot be dissolved or even eroded, no matter what the blandishments or threats from Washington.
Karzai's feeble government falls between the positions of Pakistan and the US. It can survive only with the active support of the White House while its leader reiterates that Afghanistan and Pakistan are twins. In reality these so-called twins are blatantly incompatible. While the president of one calls India a friend, the other twin cannot change the anti-India genes in its DNA.
This became clear last week during Karzai's second visit to New Delhi this year. He signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. This comprehensive document had been in the making since May.
To India's 10-year-long engagement in Afghanistan at the cost of $2 billion - involving reconstruction, building roads and health clinics, and awarding scholarships to Afghan students - was added its commitment to train and equip the security forces of Afghanistan. This was a qualitative jump in Kabul-New Delhi relations. And it came at a time when Islamabad's relations with Washington and Kabul were at a low ebb following the killing of Osama bin Laden in May and the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Tajik head of the High Peace Council, last month.
For Pakistani generals brought up on the doctrine of India as the number one enemy, the latest Kabul-New Delhi concord is a step towards their worst-case scenario materialising: a simultaneous attack on Pakistan in the east and the west by the Indo-Afghan alliance.
By contrast, for reasons of its own, the groundbreaking extension of the Kabul-New Delhi relations to defence seems to have received an approving nod from the White House. It is quietly pleased to see India step forward to fill the critical gaps that would arise in the wake of the pullback of the US-led Nato troops from Afghanistan in about three years.
This development has also given Obama a chance to show Islamabad that he can squeeze Pakistan through tactics which, though indirect, can be quite effective. Policymakers in India, the rising military and economic regional power with far wider ambitions, feel almost duty-bound to have a larger and deeper footprint in Afghanistan. By so doing, they have given Karzai a card to play when bargaining with his wayward but strategically indispensable neighbour, Pakistan.
Yet, there is a downside to the adoption of this strategy, particularly for India.
Manmohan Singh tried to dull the hard edge of the Indo-Afghan strategic partnership with emollient words: "Our cooperation with Afghanistan is an open book. We have civilisational linksIndia will stand by the people of Afghanistan as they prepare to assume responsibility for their governance and security after the withdrawal of international forces in 2014."
The key phrase here is "people of Afghanistan". And the key question is: Who are the representatives of these people divided broadly into pro-Taliban-Pakistan Pashtuns, pro-India Tajiks, and pro-Iran Hazaras? By volunteering to step into the shoes of the departing Nato forces, India has turned itself into a prime target for the Taliban and the ISI. It has also taken up the challenge - inadvertently or otherwise - of preventing the post-2014 Afgha-nistan from descending into another civil war. The latter task is likely to prove too onerous to perform satisfactorily.
In sum, what appears as India's attempt to outmanoeuvre Pakistan in Afghanistan in a triangular relationship has the potential of turning into an albatross.
The writer is an analyst specialising in West, Central and South Asian geopolitics.
Courtesy : Times of India
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