Afghanistan: Blood on the
tracks By Kanchan Lakshman
Ramankutty Maniyappan, a 36-year-old from
the southern Indian state of Kerala and an
employee of the Indian Border Roads Organization
(BRO), was abducted November 19. His beheaded body
was found four days later on a road between
Zaranj, the capital of the Nimroz province, and an
area called Ghor Ghori. Following his abduction,
Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, had claimed
that the group had given the BRO an ultimatum to
leave Afghanistan within 48 hours, failing which
they would behead Maniyappan.
Maniyappan
was among an estimated 300 Indians working on the
strategic 218-kilometer road
in southwestern Afghanistan, which will link the
main Kandahar-Herat highway to the Iran border.
The US$84 million project, funded and executed by
India, will provide Afghanistan a shorter route to
the sea via the Iranian port of Chabahar than is
currently available through Pakistan.
Iran, India and Afghanistan had signed a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) in January 2003,
to improve Afghanistan's access to the coast.
Under this agreement, Iran is building a new
transit route to connect Milak in the southeast of
the country to Zaranj in Afghanistan, and has
already completed an important bridge over the
Helmand River.
On its part, India is
building a new road connecting Zaranj to Delaram,
which is on the main Herat-Kandahar road. These
projects will shorten the transit distance between
Chabahar and Delaram by more than 600 kilometers.
According to the MoU, Afghan goods will have
duty-free access to the Iranian port and will have
to pay not more than what is applied to Iranian
traders for using its territory for transit
purposes.
India is to enjoy similar
benefits as Afghanistan at Chabahar port and for
transit. Furthermore, India and Iran have also
agreed to build a railroad from Chabahar to the
Iranian central railway station, thus creating a
link to the Karachi-Tehran railway line, which
goes further westwards. While Afghanistan gains
access to realize its trade potential, India will
be able to prevail over hurdles posed by Pakistan
in refusing to allow the transit of Indian goods
en route to Afghanistan.
The project,
consequently, has direct ramifications for three
countries, and impacts on Pakistan by default.
Afghanistan, the host country that is still a long
way away from recovery, continues as a playground
for competing foreign policy agendas and a "new
great game" is evidently being played out on its
soil.
Apart from the BRO-executed project,
some 2,000 Indians are involved in a diverse array
of reconstruction projects, prominently including
the building of a 220 KV double circuit
transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri in eastern
Afghanistan to Kabul ($111 million); a sub-station
at Kabul; the reconstruction of the Salma dam
power project in Herat province ($80 million)
being executed by the Water and Power Consultancy
Services (India) Ltd.
India is also
assisting in the reconstruction of the Habibia
school, which boasts alumni such as Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and former king, Zahir
Shah. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh inaugurated
the school during his visit to Kabul in August.
India has pledged $550 million to the
reconstruction of Afghanistan in sectors that
include basic infrastructure, health, education,
agriculture, industry, telecommunication,
information and broadcasting.
The
Maniyappan incident is not the first of its kind
involving the abduction of an Indian in
Afghanistan by the Taliban. In 2003, two Indians,
Murali and Varada Rao, working for a private
construction company, were abducted in Zabul
province and subsequently released after 19 days
in captivity.
The Taliban detests India's
proximity with the Karzai regime and leaders of
the erstwhile Northern Alliance. On November 19,
the day Maniyappan was abducted, India had
announced that it was awarding the prestigious
Indira Gandhi Peace Prize for 2005 to Karzai, a
gesture intended to convey India's commitment to
Afghanistan. Indian firms involved in the
reconstruction effort, including the Power Grid
Corporation of India Ltd, C&C Constructions
and WAPCOS, have, despite the Maniyappan murder,
ruled out any scaling down of activity in
Afghanistan.
These projects, however, do
not affect Pakistani ambitions to the degree that
the building of the Zaranj-Delaram road would.
Although India's External Affairs Ministry, in a
statement from New Delhi, stated that "The Taliban
and its backers bear the responsibility for the
consequences of this outrageous act", an unnamed
Afghan government official was more unqualified in
his confirmation of the Pakistani role in the
killing of the BRO worker: "It was not to
Pakistan's liking that India was helping to
construct this road [the Zaranj-Delaram highway].
Obviously, they would try to disrupt the project."
Subsequently, on November 27, India's National
Security Adviser, M K Narayanan also asserted that
Pakistan had a role in Maniyappan's killing, and
had conspired with the Taliban to engineer this
"ill-motivated act".
Afghanistan,
increasingly the "forgotten frontier" of the "war
on terror", has witnessed a substantial increase
in violence during 2005, claiming at least 1,500
lives, including 84 American troops, the highest
toll since 2001. Last year, the death toll was
about 850.
Aid workers are an obvious
target in Afghanistan. According to the
Afghanistan non-governmental organization (NGO)
Safety Organization, 30 people involved in aid
projects have died in 2005, as compared to 24 the
previous year. Worse, three suicide attacks in
November indicated a shift towards "Iraq-style
tactics" by the Taliban.
Close to nine
such attacks have taken place nationwide since
September 28, when a uniformed man on a motorcycle
detonated a bomb outside an Afghan Army Training
Center, killing nine persons. Taliban spokesman
Qari Yousuf Ahmadi confirmed such a shift in
strategy: "It is true that we have started a
series of suicide attacks mainly against foreign
troops who have invaded Afghanistan." Expressing
surprise at the turn of events, a senior UN
official said, "We never imagined we would still
be talking about a Taliban insurgency four years
on."
The US, which has conferred
"frontline state" eminence on Islamabad, has a
strange take on the Pakistani strategy. The Report
on the Status of the 9/11 Commission
Recommendations, published by the 9/11 Public
Discourse Project, unequivocally stated:
... challenges facing the country
[Afghanistan] are still formidable: Taliban and
other extremist forces stepped up attacks
against the Karzai government in spring and
summer of 2005, and attacks continue; new
fighters are being drawn from Pakistan. More
than sixty US military personnel have died in
combat in 2005 and the insurgency is not going
away. Karzai has not extended his authority
throughout the entire country.
[President General Pervez] Musharraf
does not appear to have lived up to his promises
to regulate the madrassas [seminaries]
properly or close down all those that are known
to have links to extremist groups. Taliban
forces still pass freely across the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border and operate in
Pakistani tribal areas. Terrorists from Pakistan
carry out operations in Kashmir ...
At
the other end, there are reports that Americans
are attempting, assisted, not surprisingly, by
Pakistan, to accommodate the Taliban leadership of
Mullah Omar within the power structure in
Afghanistan. Islamabad, on its part, is interested
in ensuring the Taliban's representation in the
future governance of Afghanistan in order to
reframe its quest for "strategic depth".
Afghanistan has consistently expressed
concern over Islamabad's continuing attempts to
interfere in and regain control over events in the
country. The head of Afghanistan's reconciliation
commission, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, told reporters
in Kabul on November 12:
We have not seen any direct military
interference except from our Pakistani brothers
... I don't know why they have not stopped their
inhumane interference in Afghanistan so far ...
Pakistan or its ISI [Inter-Services
Intelligence] have given them [militants] plans
to implement in Afghanistan, have provided them
with weapons and facilities and warned them if
they do not do it [execute terrorist operations
in Afghanistan] they will be handed over to
Americans as al-Qaeda activists.
Back
in Pakistan, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, a stalwart of
the Islamist movement and one of the most
prominent patrons of the Taliban, confirmed in an
interview to Adnkronos International on November
24 that it was "a fact that the Taliban are Afghan
nationals and they are still studying in Pakistani
madrassas".
And for the seminaries
that spawn the Taliban it is "business as usual".
Musharraf's campaign to get madrassas
registered by December has, by all accounts,
fizzled out due to a "lack of cooperation" from
the apex bodies of religious schools. The
Wafaq-ul-Madaris, Pakistan's main confederacy of
seminaries, which runs approximately 8,200
institutions, has refused to follow the Madaris
Registration Ordinance 2005, along with two other
bodies - the Tanzeemat-e-Madaris Deeniya and the
Tanzeem-ul-Madaris Ahle Sunnat - saying the
process was intended to curb the "independence and
sovereignty" of the madrassas.
There have been a series of high-profile
arrests and incidents that indicate that the
Taliban continue to maintain a vibrant presence in
Pakistani territory, especially in the provinces
of Balochistan and the North-West Frontier
Province (NWFP). Pakistani authorities have
fitfully and selectively acted against some
Taliban elements from time to time, though there
are continuous reports of very substantial freedom
of movement and activity granted to the main body
of the force and its leadership.
Mullah
Abdul Mannan Hanafi and Mullah Mohammad Akbar,
former Taliban provincial governors and military
commanders, for instance, were shot dead by
"unidentified assailants" in Peshawar on November
8. Incidentally, Hanafi was the "military
commander" in Bamiyan when the Taliban demolished
the two Buddha statues there.
After the
Taliban defeat, Hanafi was arrested in Balochistan
by Pakistani authorities and detained for a few
months, but was eventually set free due to "lack
of evidence" of his involvement in terrorist
activity. Earlier, Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, Pakistan's
interior minister, informed the media on October
4, in Quetta, capital of Balochistan, that they
had arrested Abdul Latif Hakimi, Taliban's chief
spokesperson, and five others, from the province.
Hakimi was in regular contact with the
media, speaking by satellite telephone from
undisclosed locations and often made claims of
inflicting huge casualties on US and Afghan
troops. In June, when an MH-47 helicopter was shot
down in the Kunar province bordering Pakistan,
killing all 16 US troops on board, Hakimi claimed
the incident even before US or Afghan officials
acknowledged it. While some of his claims have
been fanciful, there was no doubt that Hakimi was
aware of several Taliban operations, and was based
in Pakistan - more often than not, in Balochistan.
Although this has been adequately
documented in global reporting, it merits
repetition here that the Taliban have regrouped
rather well, although it may still be incapable of
launching an Iraq-type insurgency. This is
particularly the case in the Afghan countryside,
particularly in provinces dominated by the
Pashtuns along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The Pakistani and Taliban stratagem is favored
further by the unfortunate fact that the Karzai
regime has little control over southern and
eastern Afghanistan. Sources indicate that the
Taliban, al-Qaeda and Hizb-e-Islami operatives,
functioning from sanctuaries in and around
Balochistan, have amplified their activities since
March.
Islamabad has evidently allowed the
Taliban to regroup within its territory and to
launch attacks across the border. Despite
selective arrests, there is no indication that
Pakistan is about to cut the Taliban's lifeline on
its soil. The essential objective is to prevent
the Karzai regime from stabilizing without a
pre-dominant Pakistani role.
In many ways,
this is an existential strategy as far as Pakistan
is concerned: a strong and stable regime in Kabul
would immediately put the Durand Line into
question, and further destabilize north
Balochistan and the NWFP. Pakistan, consequently,
will continue its efforts to recover "strategic
depth" in Afghanistan, using the Taliban as a
proxy, but will do so within limits that do not
invite US ire and reprisals. Maintaining a
threshold level of violence and subversion is
integral to this strategy in Afghanistan.
Kanchan Lakshman, Research
Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management;
Assistant Editor, Faultlines: Writings on Conflict
& Resolution.
