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3 Deep flaws in Afghan peace
drive By M K Bhadrakumar
back into Afghanistan. But Russia
would like the US (and the West) to make use of
"Moscow's experience in Afghanistan" (to quote
Primakov).
China and India watching
Compared with the complex Russian
position, which also involves NATO's global role,
China appears to have taken a focused, limited but
clear-cut stance. Recently, the People's Daily ran
a commentary titled "Taliban phenomenon a grave
concern" by Fu
Xiaoqing of the China
Institute of Contemporary Relations. It underlined
that the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan is a
matter of grave concern to the region.
"Afghanistan [is] at the risk of becoming another
Iraq," it warned.
Interestingly, the
commentary acknowledged that "no other political
force not backed by the US can match" the Taliban,
and that the Taliban challenge has to be
resolutely met through a combination of military
means with progress in political and economic
reconstruction.
Broadly, India's stance
should be close to the Chinese and Russian
positions. However, what increasingly
distinguishes the Indian stance on various
regional issues is New Delhi's anxiety to
harmonize its position with US regional policies.
Unfortunately, Indian spokesmen seem to take their
cue from Washington while pronouncing on Pakistani
developments. If Washington says the worst is over
for Musharraf, so be it; George W Bush should know
best, after all, since he is the "friendliest" US
president that 60-year-old independent India ever
got acquainted with.
India has nonetheless
traditionally taken a clear-cut stance of
irreconcilable opposition to the Taliban. The
Indian leadership has repeatedly described
"moderate Taliban" as an oxymoron. Indian
statements used to describe the Taliban as forces
of darkness and obscurantism. This was so as
recently as the Group of Eight summit in Germany
in July.
The main problem is, within the
first circle of the Indian strategic community,
there is a propensity to take a cynical view of
the Pakistani crisis in terms of India's limited
gains in the short term. The fact is, Musharraf
has been a good thing to happen. He virtually
changed the text of the India-Pakistan dialogue
for the first time in a long while after Ayub Khan
ruled Pakistan in the 1950s. It almost seemed a
real possibility that there could be a settlement
over disputed Kashmir without a formal
India-Pakistan accord.
Besides, Pakistan
is passing through its crisis at a time when India
too is sliding toward internal political
convulsions. The minority government in Delhi
seems to have prioritized that it must somehow
stay in power until next April at a minimum and
the end 2008 if possible, and then seek a renewed
mandate.
The controversy over the India-US
nuclear deal has made Indian more argumentative
than ever. Unfortunately, the government's
brinkmanship in pushing the deal through in the
face of majority opposition in Parliament has made
the country a divided house.
In such a
situation of political fluidity within India, it
is only natural if Delhi feels comfortable with
Musharraf in power in Islamabad. But having said
that, and despite the self-restraints Delhi is
putting on its foreign-policy orientations to
bring them in line with the so-called "strategic
partnership" with Washington, deep down,
thoughtful people in New Delhi harbor a sense of
disquiet about the current US-Pakistani drive to
engage the Taliban for political accommodation.
Equally, there will be a certain degree of
nervousness as to how, once Islamabad regains its
influence in Kabul, India could retain the
political space that it managed to create for
itself in Afghanistan in the past five to six
years.
Ultimately, hardcore Indian
security experts are rooted in the belief that the
Taliban are entirely the creation of Pakistani
intelligence and the US would be naive to play
into the hands of Islamabad by accommodating the
Taliban. They are inclined to anticipate in terms
of their basic professional instincts that sooner
or later, Pakistan will resume its robust attempts
to establish the Taliban in a position of
dominance in the power structure in Kabul.
They are aware that the possibility is very
remote, almost non-existent, that another
anti-Taliban resistance alliance could be put
together in Afghanistan if the Taliban try to
seize power in the downstream. The regional
policies and priorities of the principal
protagonists of the erstwhile Northern Alliance -
Russia, Iran and India - are no longer the same as
they used to be in the late 1990s. There is
growing disharmony among the three powers on
issues of regional security, and, alas, there is
no attempt to arrest the slide either.
The
bases are heavily loaded against making peace with
the Taliban. Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid drew a
frightening picture in an article in the London
Telegraph on Monday. He wrote that Pakistan is a
failing state hovering over the abyss, and "there
are too many loose ends to tie up ... There is the
crumbling morale in the army ... Soldiers in the
badlands controlled by the Taliban and al-Qaeda
are deserting or are refusing to open fire ... So
the Pakistani state is one by one shedding its
legal-constitutional, Islamic, democratic and
national legitimacy."
Clearly, the
continued disintegration of the Pakistani state
widens al-Qaeda's support base among the Taliban.
If US-Iran tensions escalate, the war in Iraq and
the war in Afghanistan become intertwined. That
means the Afghan war may take a new form rather
than lead to peace.
All things point
against Washington making a political deal with
the Taliban at this juncture. But Washington seems
keen to press ahead. The viceroys from Washington
who descended on the Pakistani capital this week
seem to carry the brief that an Afghan settlement
must be somehow made to happen. The power and
glory of US might demand it.
M K
Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the
Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years,
with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan
(1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
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