With empty chairs for both Pakistan and the Taliban, two major stakeholders in
Afghanistan's future stability, the much-anticipated Bonn II conference in
Germany might as well be called Bonn 0.
For sure the two-day conference that began on Monday and wrapped day one with a
communique promising sustained international support for the war-ravaged,
ethnically fragmented country that has been under foreign troop occupation for
the past 10 years, was impressive in terms of the number of delegates (over
1,000) from some 110 nations and international organizations.
But, if the conference's agenda was to make a serious dent in
terms of political reconciliation, the linchpin of security in Afghanistan led
by a corruption-plagued government and challenged by a dogged insurgency, then
there is no doubt that this conference has already been a failure. Henceforth,
it should not be remembered as Bonn II in reference to the 2001 Bonn summit
that laid the foundation for the present governmental structure in Afghanistan.
To achieve the status of a worthy follow-up conference, this week's conference
under the banner of "From Transition to Transformation" required a minimum
breakthrough on the thorny question of political inclusion of the Taliban, who
boycotted the conference, along with Pakistan, which is still angry over the
recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) attack on its military
outposts at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were
killed.
Not even a belated apology by United States President Barack Obama to
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari over the weekend sufficed to change
Islamabad's mind, which is full of misgivings about India's increasingly
high-profile presence in Afghanistan.
In his speech at the conference, India's Foreign Minister S M Krishna stated
that India had already committed US$2 billion in aid to Afghanistan and would
strive to make even bigger assistance in the future, calling for a "Marshal
Plan-like" international program for Afghanistan. This is in light of a recent
World Bank warning of Afghan economic collapse if outside assistance dries up
in parallel with the gradual drawdown of foreign troops tied to the final
pullout date of 2014.
This may be wishful thinking, however, since even USAID, the US development
agency involved in Afghanistan, has seen its budget slashed in half since last
year, and the crisis of the eurozone puts a premium on the scope of funds that
the European Union is able to earmark for Afghanistan.
Nor is India's greater role in economic build-up of Afghanistan necessarily in
tandem with Kabul's security deficit, given the intense Pakistani suspicion of
New Delhi's intentions.
Concerning the latter, a Pakistani observer has written:
It is now an
open secret that Afghan-Indian authorities have started work on 12 small and
medium-size hydro-power projects on the Kabul River on India’s behest, without
inking any treaty over water rights with Pakistan. This could lead to a water
scarcity .... in the vast area of cultivated land in the surroundings of the
Kabul River, including Nowshera. Other regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province
[in Pakistan] along with the river could turn barren ... India is busy building
dams on all rivers flowing into Pakistan from occupied Kashmir to regain
control of the water of the western rivers in violation of the Indus Water
Treaty.
In other words, the closer the Hamid Karzai government
gets to India, Pakistan's arch-rival, the greater the possibility of
Afghanistan's future mortgaged to the furnace of the India-Pakistan cold war,
with the likely prospect of Islamabad continuing to rely on the Taliban and
other insurgents to sow instability in Afghanistan.
Yet, seemingly blind to this issue, the US continues to alienate Pakistan while
in effect giving a green light to India to deepen its multifarious presence in
Afghanistan.
The naive Western assumption that economic and security steps to help
Afghanistan are complementary is untenable and ignores that, from Pakistan's
stand point, unchecked Indian influence in Afghanistan creates national
security costs for Pakistan that could be avoided only by doing what it can to
counter its rival's "sphere of influence".
The conference's declaration of international support for Afghanistan after
2014 may have sounded upbeat, but it can hardly beat the growing cynicism that
a short-term security syndrome is on the rise.
Thus the utopian faith behind the recent pre-summit statement of the Council of
the European Union (November 14) that paints a rosy picture: "After 2014, a
fully sovereign Afghanistan will exercise complete responsibility for its own
security." The more likely scenario, raised by Karzai in his opening speech on
Monday, is Afghanistan's lapse back to the pre-2001 era if Western resolve to
keep the status quo weakens. That is putting too much faith in a much-weakened
West.
From transition to transfiguration, that is a more apt description of where
fragile Afghanistan is heading, with intense regional rivalries, exhausted
foreign donors, internal corruption and feuds and a sustained insurgency
plaguing the country with violence and fear.
A creative regional approach is still missing in the various international
summitry on Afghanistan, despite Pakistan's and Iran's common call for greater
role for the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in Afghanistan's economic
development, partly because the US and NATO are wary of undue Iranian
involvement directly or through such multilateral regional frameworks.
With respect to Iran, which chose to send a high-level delegation headed by
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, the Bonn conference provides an opportunity
for Tehran to weigh in on the conference's agenda, with Salehi giving priority
in his speech to the need for a complete foreign troop withdrawal from
Afghanistan by 2014, warning the US to forego any desire to build long-term
military bases, something that is definitely on the US military's agenda.
So far, the US has balked at giving a straight answer, for example to Pakistan
at the recent Afghan meeting in Istanbul on the issue of the US's intentions to
maintain bases in Afghanistan after 2014. Yet all information from the US
military suggests that plans are already underway to maintain some combination
of soldiers/trainers in US bases after 2014.
The utility of such bases would not be limited to Afghanistan and they could
act as forward bases vis-a-vis Iran as well as China, in other words have a
broader geostrategic significance that transcends Afghanistan.
With respect to Iran, which claimed it had downed a precious US drone the day
before the Bonn summit began, the news gave Iran's presence at the conference a
much-needed extra profile, reflected in the host Germany's expression of
gratitude for Salehi's presence, which came about despite some reservations in
Tehran.
The mere presence of both Salehi and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
under one roof is deemed significant by some Iran experts who believe that US
and Iran have more in common on Afghanistan than the US has with Pakistan,
India or for that matter any regional country.
This may be stretching it a bit, yet it is a foregone conclusion that Iran in
the past decade has benefited from the tranquility of its porous borders with
Afghanistan, much as it has been rattled by the burgeoning narcotics traffic.
Perhaps Tehran and Washington could see beyond their present welter of disputes
and realize the importance of opening a new dialogue on regional security
issues.
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