Afghanistan – Kabul Conference and Beyond
July 22, 2010 by nannikapoor
Filed under geopolitics, war on terror
“We can’t be there for another five years, having been there for nine years already”, British Prime Minister David Cameron suddenly realised.
NATO’s Secretary-General Rasmussen has warned that the Taliban would return to Afghanistan and it would once again become a safe haven for terrorists if international forces withdrew too soon.
The Kabul conference of 70 nations wanted to speed up NATO withdrawal rather than any visionary settlement of the vexed issue of terror emanating from the region – a mandate which George Bush had taken upon himself. At the end of the summit Karzai and Kayani are the only two beneficiaries. One for having got a commitment to spend 50 percent of the foreign aid through his corrupt government and Kayani for brokering peace with Pakistan backed terror groups like the Haqanis or the Hekmatyars. Clinton did seem to pressurise Pakistan to reveal Osama’s whereabouts but to no avail.
President Obama, whose popularity is at a new low, transmitted through Clinton that the July deadline is only the start of a transition phase that would allow the Afghan government to take more and more responsibility. Whatever the spin, the mood in America is somber, even pessimistic about the war of necessity which has a diminishing traction though support for the GIs is solid. US Congress is divided — an amendment sponsored by Democrats in the House demanding a detailed withdrawal plan was defeated due to Republican support.
Almost no one believes that the war can be won. The refrain is about averting defeat. The argument goes that to fight the war, the US has chosen two unreliable partners: President Karzai and Pakistan. It is uselessly spending $100 billion annually and losing 1.7 soldiers a day with no light at the end the tunnel. Afghanistan has become America’s longest military campaign in which more than 1000 soldiers have been killed and 6000 wounded. The talk is about alternative extrication strategies. US is no strangers to such strategies, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq if you recall and the first Afghan War!
The strategy being executed under the new leadership of Gen David Petraeus — the most over-researched strategy in recent history — is simply not working. Surge or boots on the ground has to match the ideological profile of Afghanistan with Pakistan controlling the strings via Khyber Pakhtunwala, the Haqqanis and Hekmatyars. Besides unreliable local partners, it suffers from the clarity of vision, inadequacy of winning the battle of hearts and minds and insufficiency of political will. Nothing is more diverting for troops in combat than the deadlines for thinning out or alterations in the rules of engagement which are proposed by General Petraeus. Despite these deficiencies, American, British and other allied soldiers are fighting with “courageous restraint”, a term introduced by the dismissed Gen Stanley McChrystal for “protecting people”.
Further, making President Karzai deliver on better governance and Pakistan on acting against the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network is the work in progress but unlikely to succeed without dangerous portend s for the region. US premise that Taliban will hold their end of the bargain appear all too innocent as has been the case in the past. Ahmed Rashid has argued for US to negotiate with Taliban in an article in BBC.
It is impossible to tell how Afghanistan will shape up by December when President Obama will preside over the third review of the Af-Pak strategy. The civilian and military surge is continuing, the delayed operations to clear and hold Kandahar, the intellectual heartland of the Taliban, will have been attempted to commence negotiating with the defeated Taliban from a position of strength. Most Afghans believe the real Taliban will not negotiate when they know that the occupation forces are on the way out.
The best case scenario for the US is empowering the Afghan National Security Forces in undertaking independent operations against the Taliban coupled with a credible power-sharing agreement resulting from a national unity government. However, this needs committed programmes to get the ANA and ANP to believe they can do it militarily, which doesn’t appear likely in the near term. Karzai’s assertion that he would be able to achieve this by 2014 is a bait for the coalition troops to hang in till then.
Washington should target Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, Afghan Taliban leaders aiding them, Afghan Taliban encroachments across the proposed de facto partition lines, and terrorist sanctuaries along the Pakistan border. It should keep a long-term residual military force of 40,000 to 50,000 troops in Afghanistan for this purpose. Blackwill fondly hopes that Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and anti-Taliban Pashtuns will join this plan, along with NATO allies, Russia, India, Iran, perhaps China, and Central Asian nations.
Islamabad rightly fears this mad adventure. A Taliban-dominated Pashtun Afghanistan and Pakistani Pashtun areas under Pakistani Taliban influence will inevitably push towards unity in an independent Pashtunistan, triggering Baloch, Sindhi and Balti aspirations. Far from gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan, Pakistan could be virtually dismembered! This could exacerbate Islamic radicalization of the country, and raises legitimate fears about the security of its nuclear arsenal.Pakistan would also have felt alarmed at Mr Robert Blackwill’s suggestion of a ‘low cost solution’ to the Afghan imbroglio by de facto partitioning the country between Pashtun and non-Pashtun areas. The former US envoy to India, now senior fellow, RAND Corporation, said US should concentrate forces in non-Pashtun areas and use heavy air power, including drones, and special forces, to strike at Taliban in Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
While the scenario India dreads is the return of the Taliban in whatever combination of anti-India networks that Pakistan is able to engineer. A nuanced shift has taken place in New Delhi’s Afghanistan policy. It has reconciled with the idea of reintegration of Taliban foot soldiers but rejected reconciliation with its leadership as dangerous. The need of the hour is preventing with the help of regional players a precipitate departure of the US and NATO forces by scuttling Pakistan’s design of foisting the Taliban on Kabul. This is a tall order considering Pakistan’s regional stakes and Karzai’s inability to govern. No one including the Americans seem to be concerned of the Indian perspective, partly because of a fractured Indian response to all that is Afghanistan today, politically and diplomatically. This, when this post has not as yet argued the role of China.
Hillary Clinton’s statements at the Kabul conference did not help in finding any meaningful solution to the Afghan problem. If anything, it displayed a dire need of Obama to manage his domestic constituency by starting a “new phase” of engagement after the July 2011 deadline. This spells doom for India and other countries in the region barring Pakistan which is hedging very strongly for a Taliban and Pashtun based solution. This though will have to face the ire of the northern part belonging to the Taziks, Uzbeks and the Hazaras. Add to this Pakistan army’s nuclear proliferation record which would complicate the heady cocktail for a century of terror reign in the region mismanaged by a “strategic depth” orientation. Factoring Iran and a Pashtunistan would spell disaster for Pakistan as stated earlier and that is the contingency Pakistan wants to avoid desperately. A US pull out without stability in Afghanistan would thus not only be dangerous for Pakistan but the entire region and the world at large.
This has the portends of turning the region and the world into a Jihadi inferno which just might make Vietnam appear innocent and 9/11 child’s play.
A very fine analysis but it lacks Indian response to the equations that have emerged in Kabul. For one it appears clear that India will have to engage Rawalpindi to remain relevant in the region in the short term. Secondly, India can not take its foot off the pedal in engaging Pashtuns in Afghanistan..sooner than later, before NATO runs out of patience and lets Kayani do his bidding. It is a huge challenge for Indian diplomacy.
Nannikapoor, my beloved fellow Punjabi, is unlikely to publish this, but I should be candid. I have written nothing untrue or anything untruthfully deduced in what follows.
“India cannot take its foot off the pedal in engaging Pashtuns in Afghanistan..sooner than later, before NATO runs out of patience and lets Kayani do his bidding. It is a huge challenge for Indian diplomacy.”
It is now beneath commonplace knowledge that it was largely Pushtoons who militarily chewed up USSR after a decade long and full blooded military struggle. And that despite huge USSR regional advantages and ease of its military movement into and out of Afghanistan. After having subdued the might of USSR, the Pushtoons have been masticating the super power USA and its NATO militaries for the past nine years! And all this when Pushtoons have been poverty stricken in everything including even in weaponry. And they have been just as badly off in respect of regional support, which is pathetically furtive if there is any. Despite all this, compulsions of dire military logic have been imposed by Pustoons on NATO, and now the great might of NATO has realized that to quit than to be defeated is better. It is NATO and not Pushtoons who have sued for peace under false pretences that Afghans should manage their own security, …..Bah!!!
In their haste to avoid Vietnam like defeat they have trampled underfoot the visibly shrill Indian objection to their withdrawal, callously ignoring the billion dollar Indian stakes in Afghanistan and (to add insult to injury) actively co-operating with General Kayani in keeping India out of the important regional conferences such as in Istanbul and more importantly that in London last January. The conference in Kabul recently was more a show, like UN General Assembly and its Secretary General, attended by seventy half asleep Toms, Dicks and Harrys. There, India also ran with seventy other horses.
In the backdrop of such momentous events the expression, “India cannot take its foot off the pedal in engaging Pashtuns in Afghanistan” should sound pathetically delusional!!
Sultan Geelani
Sultan
I agree with you on most counts..but the key is that a Vietnam or the first afghan war like pullout by NATO will burn the region some more for many a years. The power struggle in Afghanistan will affect and destroy the very vitals of Pakistan as of some other countries in the region too. But Pakistan which wants a stake in Afghanistan’s future by supporting the Taliban will be worst hit. A burning Pashtunistan and a belligerent TTP with rise of Balochi and Sindhi extremism is what will hurt it the most. The army will be happy as it will yield greater power in such scenario but what about the common Pakistani….for him there will be more deprivation and agony.
Time we accepted a wider world view…Indian stakes in Afghanistan flow from an idea of a peaceful neighborhood…something we all need to see through for our own good.
Nannikapoor
At the risk of being unduly longwinded I have to make some very called for observations on what you have written above. “The power struggle in Afghanistan will affect and destroy the very vitals of Pakistan as of some other countries in the region too,” absolutely true, dear Nanni! But can Pakistan and India do anything to stop it? Impossible!! Let me say why.
[Before saying anything I would like to record that I regard myself as a Sufi – though not of the junky variety – and as such I respect and honor the Vedantist (as distinct from the Brahamanic) Hindus. I also hold the Bhakti mystics of India in high esteem. And I love zinda dil Punjabis on either side of the border, though I was born in Amroha, UP, India]
PAKISTAN
Let us look at Pakistan first. The country was created because of the leadership given by the great Muhammad Ali Jinnah, where Iqbal’s ideology of higher Sufism, his philosophy of Self (khudi) was to enlighten the Islamic Society of the new found state. Instead the politics of landed interests (later joined by other corrupt interests) fragmented the political order and thus effected divisive politics of ethnicity. East Pakistan went the way of all flesh, and now other ethnicities are asserting their destructive politicking. Pak Army, too burdened with Sandhurst and Aldershot military culture and training, has not been a success in saving the country from physical breakup and ideological confusion. A position has now been reached that the country has gone bankrupt. The economy survives only because of IMF’s grace and favor, for what it is worth. There is no law and no order. In Karachi alone we have had targeted killings of nearly seven hundred people in the last few middle months of 2010. Not one killer has been caught and prosecuted. There is a near total breakdown of Administration. There are violent demonstration in cities all over the country for one utterly intolerable reason after another. Professional people like doctors, lawyers, auditors and the rest are on the loose to do what they like, against the ordinary folk. Financial scams are huge and many. Our president is a proven criminal in a Swiss court, the distinguished Cowasjee has written this in the premier English Daily, ‘Dawn.’ Our parliament has criminals of sugar racketeering, a section of MPs and ministers have astonishingly large write offs of bank loans, etc. etc. etc. The very pillars of the state; the Judiciary, Parliament and the Executive are at harrowing logger heads with each other. Sky rocketing prices and general economic disorder are doing their bit and have reduced the masses to unremitting misery. What Nannikapoor calls Pakistani vitals already stand thoroughly shredded. And a Bhutto brat is being made politically ready to indulge politicking with other rising dynastic brats, to lead Pakistan’s democracy.
QUITE CLEARLY, THEREFORE, PAKISTAN IS A FAILING STATE, IF INDEED IT HAS NOT ALREADY FAILED!
Pakistan Taliban (TTP) have made deep inroads. They have killed several hundred Pushtoon maliks who have traditionally helped maintain government’s authority in FATA. Lahore and other major cities of Punjab (the vitals of Pakistan) have suffered repeated and devastating bomb blasts…and not the most optimistic official has yet said they stand checked. Sind had a security busting experience of widespread violence when Benazir was shot dead, and over three million Pushtoons in Karachi could take over the town if things deteriorated further. FATA and NWFP are dominated by Taliban by night, daytime gives some respite to the forces of state. Baluchistan too is plagued with strife and disorder. No army has ever existed on this earth to overcome external threats in such conditions in its rear.
INDIA
Let us now take strategic stock of India and whether it can withstand the likely political and military stresses that are now high on the Indian horizon. The much trumpeted Indian economic growth figures and India’s democratic order are –it can be demonstrated – astonishingly irrelevant to the real security threats the country now faces. The current top security threat is the Maoist insurgency, ask the Indian PM and his security experts. The economic growth if not shared (the lukshmi worshiping rich Indian is more notorious than the Jew in not sharing) results in social chaos and insurgency. The unwholesome and unabated rise in millioniare numbers and little if any reduction in poverty has fueled Maoism and rural insurgencies, long enough for them to become deeply entrenched in rural society. A fearsome by product of India’s economic performance. There is no real evidence of India having the slightest success in preventing expansion of Maoists. While the fruit of Indian democracy is a coalition of some two dozen parties in Delhi. Their track record indicates, unmistakably, a proliferation of regional netas whose daily indulgence in tactical politicking represents a diversity of sub-regional interests that unite and disunite WITHOUT A SHRED OF COMMITMENT TO ANY FORMULATION OF NATIONAL OBJECTIVES. What has happened of course is that criminalization of politics has become chronic and incurable, as has happened in Pakistan. India has suffered proliferating scams as a result. The scams are huge and many; one could mention the Bofors, the HDW Submarine, the Telecom (such Ram), Army- Coffins Scandal, MIG fighter jets, Jessica Lal, etc., etc, just to name a few among scores. The Indian body economic is far from the desired strategic stability and the body politic stands on even worse ground.
The armies of India and Pakistan are ‘congenitally’ unfit to face a protracted struggle against ideologically tough and increasingly battle hardened insurgents within the country.
CONCLUSION
India and Pakistan have been in downward spiral of political and administrative decadence and disorder since the Brits left; Pakistan is ahead but India is not far behind. A Maoist take over of Nepal is dead certain; they have the power to take Nepal by the storm but do not do so as the resultant destruction will have to be repaired by them. So they wait in the certainty of their success. The Nepal’s border contiguity with India and their nexus with Indian Maoists all the way to Indian seaboard poses a dire threat to India’s social and political order.
Pakistan army cannot fight TTP for long under conditions of political chaos and social disorder. Pakistan just cannot fight where NATO had to give up. Negotiations with TTP may conceivably be under some low key internal to army discussions. The bottom line appears to me to be a Pak army TTP accommodation with each other. The TTP may well be fated to come on top. That would annihilate the little local ethnicities of Baluchis, Sindhis, mohajirs as TTP are constituted of ferociously battle hardened Islamic Jehadism oriented Uzbeks, Tajiks, Uigarhs AND of course Pushtoons and Punjabis. The Pushtoonistan propagandists are being slaughtered by TTP with a vengeance in FATA and NWFP. They will not be heard for long, if political rebellion against them in Hazara and TTP hostility is anything to go by.
The whole South Asian region is set for devastating trouble and turmoil, and good old Manmohan Singh and our bland Yousuf Raza Gilani are not made to lead the region out of trouble.
Sultan Geelani
@ Sultan
Appreciate your candid acceptance of Pakistan tethering on the brink of failure. Their military has driven them to this point..but no one can stand up to them. They command the terrorists and the nukes.
As a result Pakistan is stuck. It is stuck in a dilemma. It wants to dominate the world by using, sponsoring, encouraging, nursing terror. But at the same time it does not want to be called a terrorist nation. It wants to terrorize, but does not want to be known as such. So if it succeeds in its terrorist endeavors (as it is definitely is), then it is unhappy. If it fails in its terrorist enterprise, it is still unhappy. Therein lies the dilemma.
Terror is Pakistan’s ticket to international name & fame. But terror is what it is making it infamous. There is no easy answer to this dilemma. This is a death knell for TSP (Terrorist State of Pakistan, a term that most people refer to this nation.)
Sincerely hope that good sense prevails on Kayani to save Pakistan from himself.
Nannikapoor
My “candid acceptance of Pakistan teetering on the brink,” is based on Pakistan’s position of vast strategic strength in the subjective dimension, co-related with equally powerful objective foundations. While the TTP, Mulla Omer and Pak Army struggle is under resolution on the Asian landmass, the rock hard fact should hit everyone in the eye, my dear Nanni, that just one speech by Gen. Kayani in NATO headquarters in Brussels so unnerved the NATO command that the entire NATO leadership (USA included, of course) readily and fulsomely agreed to sacrifice vital Indian interests in Afghanistan, (to favour Gen. Kayani) with careless abandon of Indian interests. Karzai then came dancing into Islamabad sheepishly asserting that Afghanistan and Pakistan were conjoined twins! What a terrible outrage for India, the purported regional super power in South Asia, not to be allowed to EVEN ATTEND conferences geographically and strategically vital for
it !?
If Indians relied on their great Vedantist heritage of disciplining the mind and abandoned hegemonic Brahamanism, India will not suffer a repeat performance of the Ghaznavis, Ghoris and Abdalis. As a Sufi I do hate to mention these truths; I have done so only by relying on the wisdom of the great Indian sage Bhartheri, who said;
Phool kee patti se kut sakta hai heeray kaa jigger
Mard-e-nadaan per kalaam e narm-o-naazuk bey asar
Sultan Geelani