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Indian military shadow over Central
Asia
By Ramtanu Maitra
After
months of dodging the issue, New Delhi has acknowledged
setting up an air base in Farkhor in Tajikistan, close
to the Afghan border. The base actually became
operational in May following the Pakistani ban on Indian
overflights. This is the first Indian air base abroad
and a genuine military step forward for India.
India had operated a military hospital in
Farkhor for years. In fact, when two suspected al-Qaeda
Arabs holding Belgian passports assassinated Afghan
Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Masoud in
northern Afghanistan on September 9 last year, the body
was taken to this hospital. Over the years, many
Northern Alliance leaders fighting for the ouster of the
Taliban regime from Afghanistan have been treated in
Indian-run Farkhor hospital, and New Delhi supplied
Northern Alliance troops with arms to fight the Taliban.
India has set up the Farkhor base for a number
of reasons. The immediate concern is the ban on Indian
overflights by Pakistan. Without overflight permission,
Indian relief planes to Kabul have to take a much longer
route, through Iran, using smaller planes. With a
fully-fledged air base in Farkhor, India can now use
large transport planes to carry relief items for
Afghanistan.
The first priority for India at
this point is to firmly plant its feet in Afghanistan.
For years, India, along with Russia, backed the Northern
Alliance opposition group against the Pakistan-backed
Taliban. There is no doubt that India will continue to
support the Northern Alliance leaders although, for
historical reasons, it also has wide-ranging links with
the Pashtuns, who resolutely oppose the Northern
Alliance leadership, many of whom now hold high positions
in the administration of Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Indian
links to the Pashtuns have been maintained through the
Khalq, the Pashtun faction of the Afghan Communist
Party, following the Saur Revolution of 1978 and during
the decade of the 1980s when the Soviet-backed Afghan
communists managed to stay in power.
In fact,
following the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996,
the deposed Afghan communist leader and former
president, Mohammad Najibullah, made attempts to escape
to India. He did not succeed and was killed by the
Taliban militia, but his family did manage to get away
and they are all in India. Also, Hamid Karzai spent a
part of his student days at an Indian university.
The Northern Alliance gambit
India
began to support the Northern Alliance wholeheartedly in
the mid-1990s once it became evident to New Delhi that
Islamabad, using its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
and the religious leaders of bordering Baluchistan and
North West Frontier Province (NWFP), was working on a
plan to organize the Pashtuns around orthodox Islam.
Islamabad wanted to set up an Islamic grouping - which
became the Taliban - resembling both the Wahhabis and
the Deobandis (groups of orthodox Muslims from Saudi
Arabia and the sub-continent, respectively) under its
control. That group would be pro-Islam and anti-India,
and preferably anti-United States, Islamabad planned.
Pakistan's objective, as perceived by New Delhi, was to
have Afghanistan wholly under its sphere of influence
and to make that country the gateway to Central Asia for
Pakistan.
However, for financial reasons,
the Taliban could not remain wholly anti-US. Soon
Taliban leaders were in the United States being entertained
by Unocal, the California-based oil giant. At the
time, Unocal, with support from Turkmenistan and Pakistan,
was planning to build an oil pipeline that would
pass through Afghanistan and bring Turkmen oil to
Pakistan. Taliban leaders had agreed to this concept,
which would bring substantial revenues to Kabul on a
regular basis. But the pipeline concept fell through as
the Taliban became more and more identified with the
anti-US al-Qaeda terrorists under Osama bin Laden.
The Taliban's
staunch anti-India position prompted India to back the Northern
Alliance to the hilt, with the objective of bringing it
to power in Kabul. But success was hard to come by.
By 1999 the Pakistan-supported Taliban had gained
control of almost 95 percent of Afghanistan, and
the Northern Alliance managed to barely survive under the
very clever and charismatic military leader, Masoud, a
Tajik. The opportunity to get the Northern Alliance into
Kabul finally appeared in 2001, following September 11,
when President George W Bush decided to move
into Afghanistan militarily. The Taliban was routed and the
Northern Alliance, along with the US, took virtual control of
Kabul.
This provided India with a golden opportunity
to establish itself firmly in Afghanistan. Setting up
the base in Farkhor indicates that New Delhi has
quickly grasped the opportunity before the scene and the main
characters change again in Afghanistan.
Besides
the military angle, India also seeks to be a major
player in the much-talked-about reconstruction of
Afghanistan. According to developed nations, some
US$20-30 billion will be spent in the next decade.
Unless the political situation in Afghanistan prevents
putting in place such a long-term plan, India expects to
get a good slice of these contracts.
Speaking at
a conference in February, the Federation of Indian
Export Organizations pointed out that Afghanistan badly
needed roads, housing, civic facilities, transport,
hospitals, schools, colleges, technical and medical
institutions, power stations, telecommunications,
medicines, machinery and goods for everyday life. The
chairman of the organization asked the then-Indian
ambassador to Afghanistan, S K Lambah, to spell out in
concrete terms "where and how India's vast and diverse
community of exporters of goods, projects and services
should begin in the task of rebuilding that great
nation".
India has extended immediate assistance
of $100 million, resumed the India-Afghanistan air link
and signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen
aviation links further. Masoud Khalili, the ambassador
of Afghanistan in India, stressed that India's role in
rebuilding and reconstruction of war-ravaged Afghanistan
would be crucial.
The trade
angle
Besides the large reconstruction contracts
which Indian companies are eyeing, New Delhi is looking
to speed up trade between India and Afghanistan. At the
Federation of Indian Export Organizations conference,
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) deputy
resident representative Dennis Lazarus informed the
meeting that the UNDP had formed a development group to
formulate the reconstruction strategy for Afghanistan.
The objectives of this group, he said, included reviving
trade in the region, and also building up an Afghan
interim fund for rehabilitation over the next six
months. He also informed the meeting that an expert
group would be visiting India to guide Indian business
houses on registration, and the supply of goods to
Afghanistan through UN agencies.
The
difficulties in speeding up India-Afghanistan trade
cannot be overstressed. The single largest problem is
the unsavory environment for such trade created by
hostile India-Pakistan relations. India-Afghanistan
trade cannot take off unless Pakistan allows a land link
between the two countries through Pakistan. During his
recent visit to the sub-continent, US Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage suggested "patience and a
determination to move ahead" by both India and Pakistan
to overcome their animosities. One way to do that,
Armitage pointed out, was to open up the land route.
Needless to say, Washington is keen to see Kabul's trade
figures go up. It would not only generate substantial
income for the Kabul government and help the United
States to stabilize Afghanistan, but it would improve
India-Pakistan relations as well, Armitage argued.
A similar request also came from two top Afghan
ministers, Abdullah Abdullah and Younus Qanooni, who
visited Pakistan recently. But even before the Afghan
delegation arrived, the chairman of Pakistan's Export
Promotion Bureau, Tariq Ikram, ruled out the possibility
of opening such a trade route in the short term. Ikram's
declaration was tantamount to a refusal to allow
regional trade to grow, thus depriving cash-starved
Pakistan of trade revenues.
It is widely known
that former Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif, who was
removed by a military coup in October 1999, was building
a four-lane highway that would have linked Afghanistan
to India through Pakistan. One estimate shows that about
70 percent of the highway had already been built. Sharif
believed that by opening up trade between India and
Central Asia through Pakistan, Islamabad would benefit
financially. But now anti-India hardliners within
Pakistan, who are ready to cut off their nose to spite
the Indians, will hear none of it. Another consideration
arguably working the hardliners' minds is the
possibility of bringing back the Taliban, or a variation
of the Taliban, in the future, to make Afghanistan an
anti-India ally of Pakistan.
The broader
picture
Afghanistan's shared border with
Central Asia lies between the two largest Asian powers,
Russia and China. While China is not particularly eager to
see India in the region, Russia remains an accommodating
friend.
The area has increasingly figured in
India's strategic thinking as a potential headache. As
New Delhi found out, Afghanistan under the Taliban
regime became a flag-bearer for Pakistan on the Kashmir
issue. With very little effort and cash expenditure
(aided, in fact, primarily by the devastation of Afghan
society by the Americans and the Soviets), Islamabad
turned the Pashtuns into an orthodox Wahhabi-Deobandi
combo, resembling the most fanatic Islamic groups of
Arabia.
India fully recognizes the
danger presented by the growth of such orthodox Islam in
its vicinity. It is widely acknowledged that India has
not succeeded in stabilizing its vast Muslim
population. Given the Kashmir angle, and the Islamic
community's opposition in general to the Indian viewpoint
on Kashmir, India does not want such orthodox Islam
to spread its roots in Central Asia. That India is
highly sensitive to Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan
became evident in India's undying support for the Northern
Alliance.
New Delhi has also recognized that
today the Central Asian region has become an area of
immense importance to Europe, the US, China and Iran.
The US is trying to undermine Russian and Iranian gains
and has set up military bases in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, while China has committed
billions of dollars for the development of the Central
Asian oil fields to help fulfill its future energy
demands.
Europe, on the other hand, wants to
extend its influence by means of North Atlantic Treaty
Organization expansion eastward and through the
"Partnership for Peace" program. All this is likely to
bring high-stakes power politics into Central Asia. As
India has no capability to insulate the Central Asian
nations from these powerful nations' power politics, it
has decided to wield what influence it can by becoming a
part of it.
The massive opium
growing and drug trafficking that takes place in the region
is also a major consideration. Pakistan has been
badly affected by these antisocial and
highly dangerous activities. Tajikistan has also been affected. India, if
it does not take adequate measures and sets up
checks and balances, may face a similar threat in the coming
years.
All these considerations shape India's
initiatives in the area. Unable to start a land route
through Pakistan, New Delhi has established a sea-land
route via Iran and Russia. There are already existing
rail and road lines in Turkmenistan and Iran.
Three-party agreements on the international transit of
goods between Turkmenistan, India and Iran were signed
on February 22, 1997, in Tehran. With completion of
these railroads, the prospect of moving goods from
Indian ports to Bandar Abbas in Iran and then on to the
Central Asian region by road and rail opened up.
India and Russia are developing a new transit
route through Iran. New Delhi, Moscow and Teheran signed
an agreement in St Petersburg on September 12, 2000, to
send Indian cargo to Russia through a "north-south"
corridor. According to the arrangement, Indian goods
will be sent from Mumbai or Okha to the Iranian hub of
Bandar Abbas via the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian
Gulf. From there, containers will be reloaded on trucks
or railway wagons and dispatched to the Iranian port of
Anzali on the Caspian Sea. After transshipment at
Anzali, goods will be loaded on ships and taken to the
Russian port of Astrakhan. In the past Astrakhan had
been the springboard for expanding Czarist Russia's
influence toward Central Asia. The land route from
Astrakhan to the Russian mainland is straightforward, as
containers from here can be sent either to Moscow or to
St Petersburg.
This new corridor is in effect
now, but Indian trade with the Central Asian nations as
well as Central Europe has not yet picked up
significantly. The common refrain is that the route is
costly and tedious. Another transit route, which has
been widely discussed, depends on an agreement with
China for the use of its road to Kyrgyzstan though
Xinjiang province. India could use this road by
constructing a link road in Ladakh joining the
Tibet-Xinjiang road. Ladakh is already linked by road
with the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights
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