The agreements at Moscow included a "visionary" step to study the possibility of an overland gas pipeline between the countries. China too is interested in exploiting Afghanistan's natural resources. The undercurrent of Dr. Singh's talks at Moscow and Beijing would have dwelt on restoring peace and ensuring a stable government in Afghanistan.
To recall, one of the major reasons behind why the Western world abandoned Afghanistan in 1990s was, that it had no economic worth at that time. But, it is not so today. Afghanistan is so strategically located, that it provides a virtual bridge between Central and South Asia, and further, with the rest of the world. Not only will the Afghans reap the economic dividends from peace, but everyone in the region will, Pakistan, India, China, Central Asia, Russia and Iran.
The latest survey predicts Afghanistan's mineral resources at USD one trillion. Not only this, Afghanistan is the gateway to the oil, gas and mineral rich Central Asian republics, and its extraction and flow, has to be through Afghanistan and Pakistan, for which peace and stability in the landlocked nation is a prerequisite.
Considering the rising demand of its fast growing economy, China has already started laying pipelines to the region. Its interest in Afghanistan's mineral resources is evident from its investment of USD 3.5 billion in the Mes Aynak copper field south of Kabul.
Launched in 2008, this biggest ever foreign investment project in Afghanistan's history is likely to go into production in the coming months. China is also exploring for gas and oil in the Amu River Basin area in Northern Afghanistan bordering Tajikistan.
Any comeback staged by Taliban is bound to raise the hackles of the Chinese, as it will vitiate the working environment, and also provide succor to the separatist ethnic movement of Uighurs in its western Xinjiang Province.
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Another big project coming Afghanistan's way is by a consortium of Indian companies. The consortium has succeeded in winning the 10 billion dollar bid to develop the Hajigak iron ore mines in the Bamyan Province. India has already provided Afghanistan USD 2 billion worth in aid over the past decade. The Hamid Karzai-led government had signed the India-Afghanistan Strategic Partnership Agreement in October 2011. Though India does not want to be sucked into any Afghan military situation, it is providing training support and some light military equipment to the Afghan forces.
Both India and China have an eye on Afghanistan's mineral wealth. They cannot afford to have a disturbed Afghanistan. For India to have this wealth extracted and relayed from landlocked Afghanistan to India, it needs Pakistan's cooperation, and hopes the SAFTA under the SAARC would come in handy to facilitate easy transit.
As an alternative, India will have to use the route through Iran, for which, it is developing the Iranian port at Chabahar, and has also laid a road linking it with Afghanistan by constructing the Zaranj-Delaram Highway in western Afghanistan.
Ever since the creation of Pakistan, Kabul has been India friendly. Afghanistan has never recognised the Durand Line as the border between the two countries. Pushtuns in the NWFP, led by the pro-Congress and pro-India Frontier Gandhi Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, had been struggling for an independent Pushtunistan. Ghaffar Khan had been in Pakistani jails, or and exile in Afghanistan, and finally died in Jalalabad, where he is buried.
Pakistan always suffered from the 'strategic depth syndrome' against its traditional eastern enemy, India. The Taliban provided Pakistan the rare relief from its perceived fear of being surrounded by an enemy from both of its long borders, the eastern and the western. The length of its eastern border, disproportionately larger than its geographic depth continuously haunted it. Pakistan has been finding it hard to locate its strategic assets like nuclear installations out of India's striking reach.
What was Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s, is no longer so in 2013. There is no vacuum through which Pakistan can simply push the Taliban in. Islamabad does not have that liberty. In-fact, it has the handicap of being a suspect in the eyes of the international community, having sheltered Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda remnants and the Taliban leadership, besides providing safe haven to the Taliban.
All this adds up to odds strongly stacked against any easy comeback for the Taliban.
Though NATO has announced the withdrawal of its troops next year, yet a Security Agreement is being negotiated between the United States and Afghanistan to station some 10,000 plus troops in Afghanistan to continue training and supporting the Afghan National Security Forces which has already gained the strength of 3,50,000.
Any comeback of fundamentalist and extremist forces in Afghanistan will have consequences for China and Central Asian states, and through them, for Russia. All these countries have Muslim population and a number of active militant separatist outfits. They dread any anarchy in Afghanistan which is bound to provide them a fillip.
The continued presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan will be a big deterrence to any misadventure by Pakistan-supported extremist forces like Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Observers in Kabul hope that international developments, discovery of economic resources in Afghanistan as well as in the Central Asian region, and the western as well as Chinese interests, will assist in the emergence of a more stable Afghanistan.
The views expressed are of the author, G.S. Randhawa, who was the former All India Radio Correspondent in Kabul.
