NO IGNORING INDIA’S STAKES IN KABUL

http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/no-ignoring-indias-stakes-in-kabul.html

Thursday, 08 October 2015 | Hiranmay Karlekar | 

New Delhi needs partners to help it counter the Pakistani influence in Afghanistan’s affairs. Iran and Russia should be tapped for the purpose

The Kunduz battle has once again focussed on the situation in Afghanistan and reminded India of its massive security and economic stakes there. A Pakistan-sponsored Taliban Government in Kabul would severely undermine both, as would a nominally-independent Taliban-dominated dispensation. His periodic verbal salvoes against Pakistan and the Taliban notwithstanding, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani remains keen on an Islamabad-brokered peace with the Taliban. To please Pakistan, he has sent officer cadets to train there, shared information with it and helped in ferreting out Pakistani terrorists who had taken refuge in Afghanistan, including six involved in the horrific attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014. He is reportedly willing even to undertake constitutional amendments enabling the Taliban to share power, besides empowering its clerics to dismantle the gains in gender justice and human rights made the post-9/11 liberation. He is also a party to excluding India from the present peace process.

His visit to New Delhi on April 30, which yielded little, was yet another indication that Pakistan will dominate any dispensation established in Kabul through the current negotiations, and will whittle down India’s presence in Afghanistan. A section in India, however, remains unconcerned and argues that we should leave Afghanistan alone and concentrate on our own development since we can do little about a process blessed by both the United States and China.

This is a preposterous suggestion. India’s stakes in Afghanistan, to which it has committed assistance amounting cumulatively to two billion dollars — a very large amount for this country— are considerable. It covers a wide terrain including large infrastructural —and small developmental — projects, capacity-building initiatives and humanitarian assistance. Besides, there is the question of Afghanistan’s untapped mineral deposits worth one trillion dollar. The biggest ones are of iron ore and copper while lithium, niobium, cobalt and gold finds are very considerable. A Kabul dispensation that is Pakistan’s proxy will shut the door on Indian firms keen on exploiting these and end or substantially reduce this country’s trade with Afghanistan.

Even if India is prepared to accept such a huge, humiliating setback there remains the question of its security. The section of the Taliban, which is now fighting the incumbent Government in Afghanistan, will become unemployed once Pakistan has achieved its goal. Trained for fighting and nothing else, they will have problems finding openings in civilian life where opportunities are hardly abundant in Pakistan. They will become a large, heavily armed force, turning the country’s near-anarchy situation into complete one, unless they are unleashed against another target, India.

Those dismissing the idea should note the sharp heightening of Pakistan’s aggression-level against this country since the beginning of 2014. This is a reflection of its increased self-confidence resulting, first, from the huge and sophisticated arsenal it has piled up against India by misusing American aid which Washington has done little to stop and, second, from the feeling of power it has gained by acting as the arbiter of Afghanistan’s destiny. This combination of compulsion and over-confidence will invariably propel it to escalate its proxy war to a point where a conventional war becomes inevitable.

Equally, there may be a civil war in Afghanistan as ethnic minorities and others who had constituted the pre-liberation Northern Alliance, resist a Taliban or a pro-Taliban takeover and ask New Delhi for financial, logistical and arms aid. Will India turn them down, knowing full well the consequences of having an adverse dispensation in Afghanistan?

Afghanistan and Pakistan’s geo-strategic positions, and the fact that a fight against the Taliban, and its brand of Islamist fundamentalism, will have to be transnational, requires that India has allies. Since it cannot expect America, which has made Pakistan the fulcrum of the Afghan peace talks, to join, it must have Russia and Iran as coalition partners. Explorations must begin immediately. Detailed plans will have to follow.