Diplomatically India has been wise enough to stay away from the Khyber Pass ambush using its infrastructure diplomacy to good effect
@prashanthamine
Mumbai: Almost every other foreign policy expert, defense expert or a so-called expert on Afghanistan got it so spectacularly wrong that the Taliban would not be able to run over the country and capture power in Kabul so swiftly. Now attempts are being made to whitewash the failures of America and paint the Taliban holier than thou. In international politics nothing remains sacrosanct and there can be strange bedfellows at times.
The sudden withdrawal of its troops by the United States of America (USA) is now being presented as a crafty, deliberate ploy by the US President Joe Biden to not only thwart any Russian attempts to meddle in Afghanistan or Central Asia, but to lure the double-crossing Pakistan and China to fall into a sinkhole.
Then there are some who are painting the Taliban as a holier than thou and much humane than before. Reports and videos of alleged atrocities against Afghan women were countered with arguments that the Taliban was now allowing women to work, but while adhering to their strict religious codes.
Pew Research even went on to do a survey on how Afghan people were in favour of a strict religious Taliban code. If that was to be true then how can one is to explain the mad scramble of Afghan men at the Kabul airport to flee the country?
Although there are many layers and under-currents to any such international development, well that may only be revealed as the dust settles down, one immediate thing is clear internationally the Americans have lost face. Its allies have been left red-faced and an eager China and Pakistan grinning from ear to ear.
For most in India, developments in Afghanistan still conjure up those nightmarish images of the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines IC 814 flight to Kandahar and the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the Pakistan based terror out-fit Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Admittedly, even the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee led government in 1999 was clueless, hackneyed in its response and inept in handling the crisis. The government could not prevent the aircraft from landing in Kandahar.
That situation 22 years ago has undergone a sea change at least in India. There is a government that has an absolute majority of its own and is neither shackled by compulsions of coalition politics. Pakistan is well aware of the implications of costly misadventures against India and India’s response in the form of Uri surgical strike on September 29, 2016 and the February 26, 2019 Balakot airstrikes on terror launchpads deep inside its own territory.
Whatever the deal inked by former US president Donald Trump and now by President Joe Biden on troops pull-out from Afghanistan, on the face of it the deal was to get the US forces and citizens out of the country without any damage. The Taliban adhered to the deal and did not cause any harm to the fleeing American and allied troops.
If the deal is to install pro-US Taliban leader Mulla Abdul Gani Baradar as the next president of Afghanistan, one must remember that his puppet predecessor Ashraf Ghani was forced to flee the country. His negotiators Abdulla Abdulla and ex-president Hamid Karzai are reported to have switched sides to the Taliban, an unwilling Ghani was forced to seek asylum in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
History is replete with instances of US installing puppet regimes be it in Iran, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and Dominican Republic to name a few. Most of these regime changes, coups have invariably failed to prop-up the regime for too long. Iran and Afghanistan being the two most notable examples of the US failures. If the US wants a stalemate to continue in Afghanistan, then it would not have wasted two decades fighting a war on terror and then backing out hastily, leaving everything in a mess.
Some policy experts argue that this was a deliberate ploy to entice China into a trap called Afghanistan. China has, however, praised the Taliban regime for being more open eyed than before. It might want to rush in to fill the void left behind by the Russian’s first (Soviet invasion of Afghanistan – (December 24, 1979 – February 15, 1989) and now by the US which has been there since 2001.
There is a sense of urgency in China’s response to Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. Although the China-Afghanistan border is just 76 Kilometres it sits at beginning at the tripoint of both countries with the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) (Gilgit-Baltistan), following the watershed along the Mustagh Range, and ending at the tripoint with Tajikistan.
Another cause for anxiety for the Chinese is its oppression of its ethnic Uyghur Muslim minority community in its Xinjiang region. It is the last thing that Chinese premier Xi Jinping would want is to draw the attention of the Taliban towards its Uyghurs problem. Some policy experts want us to believe that another aim of the US is to draw the Chinese away from Taiwan.
Compared to the Russians, Indians and Pakistanis the region has been a rather unfamiliar territory historically speaking for the Chinese. Although the Chinese are now using their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to further its strategic interests. Both China and America would not want Afghanistan to yet again become the hot-bed for global terrorism.
But one thing is clear, notwithstanding the diplomatic games being played in Afghanistan, nobody is now interested in Afghan dry fruits or drugs. According to recent Geological surveys and Pentagon reports, the region is rich in deposits of Iron, Copper, rare metals like Niobium and other minerals whose deposits could be worth at least $1 trillion. The Taliban will not be that naïve to let go this goldmine.
One worry that still haunts and bothers especially policy experts is the large cache of arms, weapon systems and military hardware left behind by the fleeing US forces. That includes Black Hawk helicopters, Humvees amongst other smart weapons.
It may be recalled that the US during its historic daring airstrike to take out Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Abbottabad in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region of Pakistan on May 2, 2011, it had destroyed with a missile strike one of the helicopters involved in the mission after it developed a technical snag.
It is rather perplexing to note as to why would the US leave behind such huge amounts of sophisticated weaponry which can land in the hands of the Pakistani’s and the Chinese. One thing that the analysts point out is that in 1989 the retreating Soviet forces had left behind large quantities of its famed dreaded assault weapon AK-47 which later landed in the hands of terror outfits worldwide.
The danger is there that the weaponry left behind by the US could land in the hands of terror outfits in Pakistan and then on to in the hands of the Chinese who many believe would want to reverse engineer them and make clones out of them. Another argument has been that President Joe Biden has been rather benign to the Chinese ever since he assumed power in January earlier this year, raising more alarms.
Another theory put forth by policy experts is that the US wanted to checkmate a deceptive, double-crossing Pakistan by installing its own man Mulla Abdul Gani Baradar as Taliban’s next president of Afghanistan.
Manipulating the now faction-ridden Taliban and getting it to govern Afghanistan the way it wants to, will not be that easy for the Pakistanis to do so now. Already reports are that the Afghan army that fled after the fall of Kabul has now regrouped under the leadership of Ahmed Masood the warlord of Panjshir valley, the northern territories which the Taliban could not control even in 1999.
Ahmed Masood is a favourite of Russia and not an American friend. Amaraulla Saleh was made a compromise Vice President by Ashraf Ghani to keep Panjshir valley warlord amused. Now that Ghani is no longer there. It will be difficult for Saleh to muscle his way through in a deal which he was not part of earlier.
Both Mulla Yakub (Mulla Omar’s son) and Mulla Baradar are both wary of Pakistan trying to effect changes in the hierarchy of the Haqqani network by elevating Sirajuddin Haqqani in the Taliban Shura (decision making body). This could further widen the divide within the various Taliban factions.
Russia is in no position to meddle in Afghanistan, the high-cost invasion that eventually led to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. As for China which has already had several stand-offs with countries like Australia, Japan, India, Vietnam, Russia and Philippines can ill afford to engage in an uncertain armed conflict with the Taliban.
Pakistan too now cannot hope to draw the Taliban into its armed cross-border terror misadventures with India. The Taliban has already made it clear that it has nothing to do with the Kashmir issue, terming it as the internal matter of India. Moreover, it has stated that India’s help in building infrastructure is welcome, but not its military deployment in Afghanistan.
The Taliban is well aware that India is not going to send its military to Afghanistan. And if the US manages to find new military bases in the Central Asian former Soviet Republics, it will significantly nullify any advantage that Pakistan has currently.
According to London based Pakistani human rights activist Arif Aajakia there are many factions within the Taliban, few do toe the Pakistan line. After their takeover they have freed several of their detainees like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Maulana Faqeer Muhammad who was in Bagram prison in Afghanistan. He was wanted in Pakistan for terror activities. Taliban has experienced the Pakistan establishment as most of their men had been jailed in Guantanamo Bay and that there is no love lost between the Taliban and the Punjabi dominated Pakistani army establishment, argues Aajakia.
Pakistan has its fault-lines in Gilgit-Baltistan, Balochistan and Sindh. According to Arif Aajakia the fire that is the Taliban which was started by Pakistan is bound to start inside its own backyard which it wants to use as its so-called strategic depth against India. After the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019, the situation in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has been relatively calm.
According to Suman Bery, Global Fellow, Asia Program at the Wilson Centre argues that the US-China political engagement over Afghanistan, India would have an interest if any such cooperation between US and China helps in reining the Pakistani ISI and its deflection of jihadi militants towards India.
Besides Aajakia, strategic affairs expert Nitin A Gokhale believes that Taliban has suffered reverses in Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces. Most of its 30,000-cadre strength comes from provinces like Kandahar, Ghazni, Kabul, Oruzgan and Helmand. The Haqqani network does have a lean fighting machine of about 6,000 cadres thanks to the Pakistani ISI.
What many critics and foreign policy experts argue that there has been a generational change in Afghanistan. The post-2001, post-Taliban regime, young educated generation of Afghani’s do not subscribe to the Taliban theocratic ideology. Moreover, for a generation which has lived under semblance of freedom for the last two decades will not want to live under chains that denies them their basic human rights and freedoms
It remains to be seen if the resistance to the new Taliban regime building up in the lawless hinterlands in the north, in the Panjshir valley spreads to other parts of Afghanistan. Diplomatically India has been wise enough to continue with its Non-Aligned, non-military neutral stance in respect of Afghanistan and to stay away from the Khyber Pass ambush using its infrastructure diplomacy to good effect.
