Page 1 of 2 Beijing broods over its arc of anxiety
By Peter Lee
Beijing will find little cause for joy in United States President Barack
Obama's decision to dispatch 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, as
outlined in a major policy speech on Tuesday.
Geopolitical logic (and China's interests) would dictate that the West
disengage from Afghanistan and the Pashtun brief be placed in the eager if not
particularly capable hands of Pakistan.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) would see to it that more
tractable assets, such as the Haqqanis and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, would battle
the unruly Taliban to a bloody stalemate in Afghanistan's Pashtun regions,
decouple the Pakistan Taliban from their Afghan patrons, and restore a
semblance of stability to Pakistan's west
Meanwhile, as they have always done, the Afghan Tajiks, Hazaris
and Uzbeks would turn to outside aid from some combination of Russia, China,
Iran and the United States to contain the Pashtuns and forestall the spread of
fundamentalist and al-Qaeda extremist contagion.
China has tried to shape the US debate over Afghanistan, repeatedly making the
case for letting nature and anti-Western Pashtun militancy take their course
and moving beyond counter-insurgency to reconciliation. As M K Bhadrakumar
commented on a think piece by a Chinese defense policy authority, Li Qinggong:
The
China Daily article makes several important points. First, it bluntly calls on
Washington to forthwith bring the US military operations in Afghanistan to an
end. There are no caveats here while making this demand, no alibis. (China
maps an end to the Afghan war Asia Times Online, October 2, 2009.)
Clearly, China has lost the debate, perhaps not on the merits of its arguments
and despite the heaven-sent justification for the Obama administration to
depart Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai's rigging of the presidential
election and the subsequent absence of a legitimate, capable and honest
government supposedly essential to successful counter-insurgency.
In addition to qualms over abandoning Afghanistan's people to the savage
mercies of Taliban theocrats and creating a haven for anti-US extremists, the
Obama administration probably calculates that adding a messy collapse in
Afghanistan on top of 10%-plus unemployment in the US and the hangover of a
brutal recession would spell disaster for the Democrats in the 2010 US
congressional elections.
Instead, the United States is hunkering down in Afghanistan and relying on
China's rival, India - the only nation, it can be safely said, that views
continuation of the Afghan adventure with any enthusiasm - to help keep the lid
on things in Afghanistan.
The Times of India reported with evident satisfaction on Obama's explanatory
phone call to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prior to the Afghanistan "surge"
speech at West Point:
During his recent visit to Washington DC, Singh
had made a strong case for the US to remain in Afghanistan for the time being.
He insisted that the "forces of extremism" had to be defeated in Afghanistan,
and the US-India joint statement reflected the concerns about the sanctuaries
and havens of terrorists that had to be destroyed.
In fact, before setting out to Washington, Singh had told Newsweek, "I
sincerely hope the US and the global community will stay involved in
Afghanistan ..."
The Obama-Singh conversation had another important component for India: India's
own presence and activity in Afghanistan. The Indian takeaway here is that the
Pakistan "line" which, in some ways was reflected in the report prepared by the
top US commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, that Indian
activities in Afghanistan could be counter-productive, was comprehensively
discarded. Obama reportedly told the PM that Indian activities were not only
appreciated but they should continue.
The United States
foreign policy commentariat is eager to see India step into the vacuum left by
Western abhorrence of Afghanistan's desolate economic and security landscape.
In a November 23, 2009 Forbes Magazine op-ed revealingly entitled "We Need
India's Help in Afghanistan", Marshall Bouton and Alyssa Ayres touted India's
enthusiasm for doing the low-bid dirty work, if not actually sending troops.
India has demonstrated unique and effective capabilities that will make a big
difference in Afghanistan. With its historic ties and cultural affinity to the
country, India has already provided impressive civilian assistance. It is the
fifth-largest bilateral donor to Afghanistan. India's US$1.2 billion
contribution to date has supported projects in power, medicine, agriculture and
education. Afghanistan's new parliament meets in a building constructed by
India. Indian engineers built a port-access road in violent southern
Afghanistan, and India has trained Afghan civil servants, demonstrating an
Indian comparative advantage on the ground.
The reek of desperation permeates this op-ed as it acknowledges the
unwillingness of Western governments, cost-ineffective "Beltway contractors",
and international non-governmental agencies to handle the economic development
projects on the "build" side of the counter-insurgency equation.
However, India is not quite ready to act as America's proxy nation-builder in
Afghanistan.
As an illustration, a sentence in Bouton and Ayres' encomium - "Afghanistan's
new parliament meets in a building constructed by India" - rewards a careful
parsing.
Prime Minister Dr Singh laid the foundation for the Afghan parliament building
in 2005. However, to date the Indian government has been unable to find a
contractor willing to brave the dangers of operating in Kabul to build it. In
2007, the Indian government sought to entice the interest of Indian business by
increasing the budget from the original $25 million to $46 million. As of May,
10 contractors had purchased bid documents but nobody had actually tendered for
the job. If and when the contract is let, the construction timeline calls for
30 months.
If Bouton and Ayres are referring to this potentially noble edifice (whose
initial design caused an outcry inside Afghanistan because it referenced
proto-Indian motifs of the ancient Ghandara period while ignoring Afghanistan's
dominant Muslim traditions), it will be many years before the Afghan parliament
can enjoy this symbol of Indian generosity and geopolitical determination.
According to James Risen of the New York Times, the Afghan parliament currently
meets in a building owned by the Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce ... which is
run by Hamid Karzai's brother. It is not clear that India erected this
relatively modest structure.
India's caginess about its commitment to Afghanistan undoubtedly reflects
concern that the Western adventure might come to an abrupt end. It also
reflects the fact that India's key foreign policy objectives vis-a-vis Pakistan
and China do not require success in Afghanistan - they merely demand that the
current dismal status quo be perpetuated for as long as possible.
Pakistan is paranoid about India's reach into the Karzai regime (Karzai himself
studied in India), the opening of Indian consulates in remote Afghan cities,
India's financing of roadbuilding projects meant to reduce Afghan reliance on
the Pakistan-controlled Khyber Pass route for trade and military resupply, and
alleged black ops shenanigans by India's Research and Analysis Wing spooks.
However, active mischief by India inside Afghanistan is not needed to
destabilize Pakistan. Merely prolonging the Western military effort in
Afghanistan sustains the disastrously unfavorable configuration of forces
destabilizing Pakistan, and is a geopolitical victory for India.
As the United States persists in its efforts to forestall a Taliban triumph in
Afghanistan, Pakistan is forced into Washington's orbit as an indispensable
asset in the West's Afghan strategy, charged with depriving militants of their
havens in Pakistan's western borderlands.
Despite the determined efforts of Pakistan's military to work the military,
political and economic levers to keep a lid on things on the Afghan border,
bending to Washington's will in opposing the Pashtun insurgency in Afghanistan
is preventing Pakistan's security establishment from meeting with the Pashtuns
on a matter of deep, shared interest - the desperate desire to expel the Karzai
regime from Kabul - while exploiting the potential for splits between the
Pashtun factions to its advantage.
Some of these factions, such as the Hekmatyar and Haqqani organizations, have
close ties with Pakistani army and intelligence that go back to the anti-Soviet
jihad in the 1980s and predate the very existence of the Taliban. In fact, the
established jihadi factions actually fought the Taliban in the 1990s before
Pakistan, in a monumental miscalculation, decided to back the Taliban in the
contest to control Kabul.
Pashtun factions that would otherwise engage in lethal intramural bickering and
turn to Pakistan for support against the Taliban and each other are ignoring
the needs and importunities of their patrons in Islamabad in order to join the
Taliban's effort to terminate an unwelcome pro-US, pro-Indian non-Pashtun
regime.
Pakistan's military is expected to confront these groups wholesale in the name
of the US anti-terrorism crusade, instead of engaging them piecemeal.
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