Page 2 of 3 The Great Game moves
south By Zorawar Daulet Singh
embassy in Kabul. Russia's decision
to settle Afghanistan's Soviet-era debt issue,
possibly in lieu of the participation of Russian
companies in Afghan reconstruction, is
significant.
In March, Moscow through the
Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization
held extensive meetings with Kabul and offered
military-technical and civilian cooperation, and
according
to
Moscow the Afghan government has itself requested
that Russia renew deliveries of arms and
equipment, which were discontinued in 2005.
Iran looks east There is
perhaps an inverse linkage between the export of
Iranian gas to South Asia and the pace of physical
connectivity between Central and South Asia. And
given that Central Asian hydrocarbons are destined
to flow primarily northward (and a portion
eastward), Iranian hydrocarbons have become a
significant and natural choice for South Asian
markets.
Gazprom's recent reiteration of
seeking to participate in the Iran-Pakistan-India
(IPI) pipeline alters the entire dimension of the
project and frees it from the political baggage
associated with Western financial options. Two
recent developments are worth noting on the future
prospects of the IPI project.
First,
Gazprom expressed the possibility of extending the
pipeline into China, which implies a convergence
of interests among all regional actors. Second,
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov's recent
visit to Pakistan, the first by a Russian premier
in 38 years, is also instructive, especially since
his delegation included officials from Gazprom.
Iran's links with Central Asia too have
renewed recently. A defense agreement between Iran
and Tajikistan early this month, presumably with
Russian acquiescence, underscores future patterns
of collaboration between Central Asia and Iran,
both having substantial bilateral relations with
Russia. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon also called
for Iran's full membership in the SCO. Kyrgyzstan
too has expressed interest in intensifying
bilateral relations with Iran.
A
divided South Asia India's traditional
policy vis-a-vis Afghanistan was based on the
geostrategic logic of denying Pakistan its
"strategic depth" and thereby dividing the
military attention of Islamabad from exclusively
focusing on the Indo-Pakistani border. In the
nuclear dimension, such a policy based on a
conventional "pincer movement" loses much of its
viability.
India-Pakistan relations hold
the key to any inter-regional geo-economic
collaboration, including the IPI project. And
nothing short of an India-Pakistan entente would
enable transnational integration to occur, even
one that circumvents Afghanistan. While the
rapprochement between New Delhi and Islamabad is
proceeding apace, and there is immense
geostrategic logic for an entente today, we are
yet to witness the political stability and will on
both sides unequivocally to bury the hatchet.
India-Pakistan relations, then, assume a
significance beyond simply a bilateral dimension.
Indeed, arguably none of the major powers - the
US, Russia, China - would be averse to an enduring
India-Pakistan rapprochement, given the primacy of
geo-economic interests of all actors.
Similarly, for India to elevate its
peripheral influence in Central Asia toward a more
multifaceted engagement would be augmented by a
partnership with Pakistan. Indeed, Russia would
not be averse to South Asian nations taking a
proactive stance in Central Asian affairs, and
indeed may even encourage the filling of any
vacuum by its strategic partners.
The
Afghanistan poser Can US and North Atlantic
Treaty Organization forces succeed in stabilizing
Afghanistan? At what cost?
Without this
piece of real estate, any notions of linking
Central with South Asia are absurd. Importantly,
the complex US-Pakistan collaboration and
Pakistan's pivotal role in augmenting current
US-NATO operations provide it with sufficient
leverage that it is unlikely to be abandoned any
time soon by the United States, despite the recent
political flux in Pakistani politics.
Anatol Lieven of the New America
Foundation was perhaps a rare exception in Western
commentary when he recently argued against the
pattern of exclusively focusing on Afghanistan at
the expense of wider US regional interests. He
noted that "defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan
is indeed a secondary issue. Of far greater
long-term importance is the survival of Pakistan
as a state, and its development as a successful
modern society and economy."
Such
reasoning may well be instructive for future
patterns in US policy, since it is perhaps
unlikely that the US would pursue a tactical
annihilation of the Taliban if that came at the
strategic cost of radically destabilizing
Pakistan. This dilemma is nonetheless exacerbated
by increasing evidence of Pakistan's resurgent
leverage in Afghan affairs, primarily through the
elements of the so-called "moderate Taliban".
Until the US abandons, in the words of
Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at
the Center for International Policy, the
"unrealistic goal of rapid centralization in a
still-feudal society that has never been
centralized" will Afghanistan settle toward a
modicum of normalization. The Pashtun-based
Taliban are gradually being viewed by tribal
Afghans as a relatively stabilizing force, after
indiscriminate use of air power has further
alienated these groups.
"Success" for the
US in Afghanistan would then appear to stem
logically from reconciling the contradictions of
the surge in Pashtun nationalism as it is
manifested through the resurgence of the Taliban
with the overt US reliance on remnants of the
Northern Alliance. Reconciling these ethnic groups
with the US-friendly Northern Alliance through a
grand coalition in Kabul is perhaps the only
feasible path to stability in Afghanistan.
And China ... Thus the game for
all practical purposes has shifted south from its
erstwhile imperial theater into Afghanistan, and
perhaps into Pakistan. And it is China that is the
major competitor with the US for influence. To
discern Chinese interests in Pakistan in a
post-post-Cold War age and in the context of
accelerating Sino-Indian rapprochement requires an
evaluation of China's "southwest corridor to the
sea" strategy.
The decision by Beijing to
enhance the development of its western regions,
especially Xinjiang, is the starting point. But
there is a multidimensional rationale. China's
rapidly growing geo-economic links - energy,
trade, investment - with East Africa, West Asia,
and the Persian Gulf suggest a strategic need to
gain secure uninterrupted access to these regions.
The vulnerability of Chinese energy and
vital raw-materials imports in Indian Ocean sea
lanes is well recognized. Thus a land route to
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