The India factor
AMERICA has been outsourcing software development to India for years, but now it seems to want to outsource diplomacy as well.
Fed up with Hamid Karzai’s intransigence, the US is hoping that India can convince him to sign a post-2014 security agreement that will leave thousands of American troops in Afghanistan. Karzai has put the agreement on hold until the US stops shedding, in his opinion, needless Afghan blood, and enables him to strike peace with the Taliban.
India has found fast friends in Karzai and his inner circle of Northern Alliance members. Pakistan continues to wager its bets on the Taliban. But as Vladimir Putin says, no one knows what will happen in Afghanistan after 2014.
What explains Karzai’s fascination for India? Is it because he went to college in India? Maybe so, but many leaders study abroad without developing fierce attachments. Is it because of the squabble over the Durand Line with Pakistan? Still, he is a Sunni Muslim who leads a staunchly Islamic country. It should be easier for him to bond with his Muslim counterparts in Pakistan than with non-Muslims in India. Or, is it because he feels let down by both the US and Pakistan, and feels that the only way to safeguard himself is by reaching out to India?
Quite possibly it is a combination of all. Karzai was good friends with George W. Bush, who had a certain affability about him that is missing in the aloof Obama. Bush encouraged India to invest in Afghanistan. Obama’s ascent changed equations.
Karzai’s weekly video conference calls with the US president were stopped. His re-election in 2009 was called into question, which stung him. Obama, initially, veered sharply towards Pakistan’s take on Afghanistan.
Drones, Raymond Davis, Bin Laden, Salala, the Haqqani network, all put such a strain on US-Pakistani ties that Obama turned turtle. He had previously refrained India from training the Afghan military, but now over 1,000 Afghan troops have been to Indian military academies.
Pakistan believes that India’s consulates in Afghanistan foment trouble against it. India and Afghanistan on the other hand charge Pakistan with sheltering terrorists. Pakistan has long been thought of as treating Afghanistan as its backyard. It, instead, is now gripped with the paranoia of being encircled by Kabul and Delhi.
Karzai and Delhi both believe that Pakistan has a stranglehold on the Taliban. But even when the Taliban reigned supreme in the 1990s, after having received immeasurable support from Pakistan, the Talibs never reconciled to the Durand Line.
Now who controls who is all up in the air. Pakistan is ravaged by its own Taliban, and the question is if Islamabad could influence the Afghan Taliban, would it not make them stop the TTP? Does the TTP even pay heed to the Afghan Taliban? Does anyone in South Asia listen to anyone else?
The Americans are terrified of another 9/11, and even in retreat, want to manage the situation. But did no one tell them that tired invaders cannot afford to be choosers? Napoleon and Hitler both left Moscow in tatters, the British and the Russians quit Afghanistan similarly, none had glorious stories to tell, only tales of woe.
One moment Washington’s against Pakistan, then it turns to Islamabad and rants against Karzai, then it lurches towards India. Its efforts to strike a deal with the Taliban independent of Karzai have come unstuck. Too much blood has been spilled between the Americans and the Talibs for rancour to dissipate easily. Karzai senses the mood. If he has to go down, fighting he will go.
So the outreach to India for arms, money and men. An India that is wary of who will take charge of Afghanistan. Will all its projects, training and arms fall into the wrong hands, only to be used against it? This is Russian roulette at its best.
There is a relatively simple solution. If the Russians and the British did not get down to playing the Great Game in Afghanistan, so must not the Indians and the Pakistanis. The two have become desensitised to brinkmanship. If strategic nukes and missiles are not enough, then battlefield nukes with shorter fuses are primed for action.
All along meaningless words of peace are mouthed. India has concerns about Afghanistan. So does Pakistan. They must sit down and accommodate each other. America is bereft of the power to make them see reason. It can only prod and cajole.
Afghanistan is not a localised conflict like Kashmir, Siachen or Sir Creek. It is not a playground for Pakistan and India to play out their fantasies. It is, in fact, a time bomb that could shortly explode in their faces and everyone else’s unless they stop fuelling the fire.
The writer is a freelance journalist.