Fears the worst as US, NATO troops pull out and inclined to keep out of coming mess.
As Afghanistan prepares for a realignment of political and military forces over the next few months, including a significant withdrawal of US and NATO troops, it has asked India to for help in enhancing the training of its security forces. It also wants a step-up in Delhi’s economic and strategic engagement.
The request was made when Afghan national security advisor Rangin Dafdar Spanta came to Delhi a few weeks earlier, to his Indian counterpart, Shivshankar Menon. India’s response has been a long silence.
The endgame in Afghanistan will be a major item on the agenda when US President Barack Obama comes to Delhi in about a fortnight and discusses the matter with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The wide, perceptual gulf that separates both sides is an indication that the conversation is not going to be easy.
It is in this context that the Afghan request to India to ramp up its security training is significant. Afghan government sources based in Kabul told Business Standard they have left it to India to decide what kind of training the Indian government would like to do and what numbers India would like to train.
“It doesn’t matter if India doesn’t want to send troops on the ground in Afghanistan. They can also train our trainers in India itself,” the Afghan sources said.
They emphasized that as the country “which is much loved and has the best reputation”, India should “help us get back on our feet after the foreign troops begin to draw down in the middle of 2011”.
In fact, Obama is likely to touch down in Kabul for a few hours en route to Mumbai, a travel itinerary that could have become a dream scenario for great gamers. Pakistan has been deliberately left out by the US administration, fed up with the double games the country’s military intelligence service, the ISI, plays in Afghanistan, although it is constrained to continue transferring sackfuls of money to Islamabad.
In many ways, however, Obama’s refusal to go to Pakistan hardly matters anymore, especially after Washington’s promise to cough up an additional $2.2 billion to Pakistan over the next five years, in addition to $7.5 billion assistance it is already giving Islamabad.
Under the circumstances, the Afghanistan-Pakistan issue “will perhaps be the most important subject under discussion during Obama’s visit to Delhi, because the resolution of the Afghan crisis will have the maximum impact on India,” highly placed government sources who sought anonymity said.
Pessimistic Delhi
But Delhi remains extremely reluctant to increase its presence in Afghanistan, though believing the foreign troop withdrawal from Afghanistan — Canada will withdraw in 2011, Britain is committed to withdrawing by 2014 and the US is expected to cut significant numbers by the next summer — will have a “hugely detrimental impact” on the region.
“India doesn’t want the Americans to leave Afghanistan,” government sources admitted, pointing out that withdrawal would leave the field “wide open” for Pakistan’s ISI to move back into Kabul, using “assets” like the Pakistan Taliban as well as other Afghan militant groups like the Quetta Shura and the Sirajuddin Haqqani groups.
Delhi’s reluctance to commit increased resources to Afghanistan, especially in the security sector, is a function of these concerns, the government sources said. India will continue and complete the development projects on hand, but “wait and see” how the situation unfolds on the ground in Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of foreign troop withdrawal, the sources said, the Afghan insurgent groups will be increasingly involved in an internecine and ethnic civil war, “much like what happened in the decade of the 1990s, after the US abandoned Afghanistan as a consequence of Soviet withdrawal, and before the Taliban took over, only it is going to be much worse,” the sources said.
“We certainly don’t want to be involved in the bloody chaos that will be unleashed,” they said.
They admitted that soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US and as a follow-up to the Bonn accord the same year on Afghanistan, India had in fact trained nearly 1,000 Afghan policemen, or as many as “12 out of 17 courses”. That had had a huge impact on Afghan hearts and minds, but it was not continued because western nations like Norway wanted to show that they were contributing their bit to the international assistance force.
Another overwhelming Indian fear is that when the Americans leave, they will leave behind hugely sophisticated defence equipment and machinery, cheaper to do so than transport it back to the US, thereby reinvigorating the arsenal of the Pakistani-sponsored Afghan insurgent groups.
Pak grip on US policy
Delhi is, in fact, seriously worried about the US inability to neutralise its dependence on Pakistan by asking other regional allies — like India, Iran and Russia — for help. The recent US-Pakistan strategic dialogue came on the heels of Pakistan’s decision to shut the Torkham crossing at the Khyber pass after US drones went in hot pursuit of Afghan militants crossing into Pakistan and killed a few Pakistani frontier guards. Several US trucks were scorched and millions of dollars were lost.
“The Americans know what the Pakistanis are up to in Afghanistan, they shout themselves hoarse about the Pakistani double game, but they end up rewarding them instead,” the sources said, pointing to the additional $2.2 billion aid decision to Pakistan two days earlier.
The sources said they would try and impress upon Obama that Pakistan would only be encouraged by this US behaviour and that India would have to bear the brunt of the terrorism that continued to emanate from the Afghan-Pakistan badlands.
Even though the London conference on Afghanistan’s future in January spoke of the need to develop a “regional compact”, the sources said, the international community has made little effort in this direction. Iran’s special representative made a first appearance at the meeting of the international contact group on Afghanistan in Rome last week, but the US is clearly reluctant to engage with Iran on Afghanistan.
As for Russia, the major regional power with significant experience in Afghanistan, there has been little or no conversation between Washington and Moscow, perhaps because the US fears the Russians will demand a quid pro quo in enhancing leverage in other areas.
That leaves India, the sources said, the remaining regional power as well as the only democracy in Middle Asia, something the US should have been comfortable with. Instead, it is unable to extricate itself from the vice-like grip the Pakistani security establishment has placed on the US jugular, the sources added.
