For a creative `near-West' policy

Published : Sep 23, 2005 00:00 IST

India's good start in Afghanistan must be followed by efforts for deeper economic cooperation. New Delhi needs to integrate them into an independent, comprehensive, pro-active policy towards Central and West Asia, including Iran and Israel.

BY all accounts, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's brief visit to Afghanistan, the first by an Indian head of government in 29 years, was a resounding success. It marks the restoration and consolidation of traditional bonds between the two countries, which were greatly weakened during the past quarter century of upheaval in Afghanistan, and totally severed during the dark years of Taliban rule (1996-2001). New Delhi also appears to have restored the old balance in its contact and engagement with a range of different ethnic groups and political currents in Afghanistan. The balance was disrupted during the 1990s when India backed the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance as a counter to Pakistani-controlled hardline Pushtun factions of which the Taliban were the most malign expression.

It was only a coincidence that Manmohan Singh along with President Hamid Karzai laid the foundation stone for the Afghan parliament's new building, to be constructed by India's Central Public Works Department (CPWD). But as it happens, this highlights the contribution India has made to the economic and political reconstruction of Afghanistan as that country struggles to become a modern, relatively non-violent, "normal" democracy.

With its $500-million aid over four years, India has emerged as one of the top donors to Afghanistan. Indian assistance is not, unlike most Western aid, channelled through layer after layer of sub-contractors - many of them from the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and completely unacquainted with Afghan realities - who skim off substantial chunks of the original disbursement and ultimately deliver poor results. Many route the last links of the assistance chain through local or international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which have little experience of service delivery. By contrast, India's assistance is direct and often physically tangible: buses, sewing machines, high-nutrition biscuits, agricultural scientists, 500 scholarships, and so on.

According to several recent visitors to Afghanistan this writer spoke to, including United States and European Union-based scholars, an international development banker and a United Nations diplomat, goodwill for India is remarkably high and widespread in Afghanistan. This assessment is shared by Afghanistan expert Barnett R. Rubin of the Centre on International Cooperation, New York University, who advised senior U.N. official Lakhdar Brahimi during a critical phase and has been involved in Afghanistan's transition right from the Taliban period to the present, including facilitation of the Bonn process, Constitution-making and presidential elections. India is seen as playing a positive, non-interfering and friendly role in Afghanistan.

Thus, it is only appropriate that Manmohan Singh and Karzai proposed closer economic cooperation between the two countries both bilaterally and through a larger regional arrangement in which Afghanistan acts as a "land bridge" between the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia, as well as a conduit to Iran and the rest of West Asia.

The most exciting proposal in this regard is the one for constructing a network of highways and energy pipelines between Central Asian countries, Pakistan and India and beyond. The two leaders specifically "endorsed the need for greater consultation and cooperation in a future project of a Turkmenistan gas pipeline that would pass through Afghanistan and Pakistan". They also noted "India's support for Afghanistan's engagement with SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation]".

Yet, as Manmohan Singh himself noted, the execution of all such proposals critically depends on Pakistan's active cooperation. He repeatedly said: "The main issue is to persuade Pakistan", and "we have to induce Pakistan to fall in line... " Karzai too was candid: "Improvement of relations between India and Pakistan is such a necessity because it overtakes every other issue."

Pakistan has so far refused even the transit of aid materials from India to Afghanistan, including high-protein biscuits for schoolchildren. It has made transit rights conditional upon a resolution of the Kashmir issue. This is its precondition even for the movement of goods by truck across the Wagah border as part of bilateral trade. Even on the issue of associating Afghanistan with SAARC (for example, through an economic cooperation arrangement analogous to the security-related Association of South East Asian Nations Regional Forum), Pakistan is likely to stall.

THE reasons for Pakistan's reluctance to cooperate are not hard to understand. They are of two kinds. The first variety is related to overblown images and fanciful perceptions about Pakistan's historical and political relationship with Afghanistan; and the second to substantive considerations of security and self-interest. In the first category fall such things as the assumption that Pakistan has a uniquely privileged role, and even some kind of veto status, in Afghanistan because of the Pushtun-ethnic link between the two countries; and the idea that Afghanistan, as Pakistan's next-door "friendly neighbour" (or subordinate?), can give it the "strategic depth" it lacks vis-a-vis India.

Both premises are specious. True, there are more Pushtuns in Pakistan than in Afghanistan: after all, the North West Frontier Province was what the British carved out of Afghanistan during their half-successful campaign for imperial expansion. But the Pushtuns are by no means homogenous. They are divided into tribes, and increasingly differentiated internally by exposure to the forces of modernity, including contemporary politics.

That apart, Pushtuns form only about two-fifths of Afghanistan's population. Even more important, the terrible experience of the Taliban regime - which they regard as the worst form of tufangsalari, or the rule of the gun - has scarred large numbers of Pushtuns and made them hostile to Pakistan. Pakistan is widely seen as having interfered in Afghanistan's affairs. In fact, in the current political discourse, antipathy towards Pakistan is seen as an essential component of Afghan nationalism.

The "strategic depth" idea, held dear by many in the Pakistani security community, is downright silly. Apart from regarding Afghanistan as a mere adjunct of Pakistan, it presumes that Pakistani troops could retreat safely into a "secure refuge" in Afghanistan - an idea that makes no sense given the reach of modern armies and weaponry. This notion served an egregious political purpose: to invent an excuse for, and legitimise, the creation of the Taliban and its infiltration into Afghanistan, leading to its eventual takeover. But that is all there is to it.

That said, Pakistan does have concerns that arise from its rivalry with India in Afghanistan right since the Soviet intervention in 1979. In the confrontation between the Soviet Union and Islamic hardline Mujahideen, India opposed the latter, but it took a less-than-forthright, ambivalent position on the Soviet intervention. Pakistan became the U.S.' "frontline" ally in this Cold War confrontation. It was the main conduit for arms transfers to and the principal recruiter, trainer and handler of diverse Mujahideen groups, like those led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Yunus Khalis.

India-Pakistan rivalry got intensified after the fall of Najibullah and the ensuing chaos that paved the way for the Taliban. During the entire period of Taliban rule, India was nearly excluded from Afghanistan. With Iran, India solidly backed the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. After September 11, 2001, Pakistan was confronted by the U.S. with a "for-us-or-against-us" choice and joined the "war on terrorism". But its effort in detecting and disarming the Taliban was half-hearted.

Islamabad is still not quite reconciled to the Karzai regime and Pakistan's marginalisation in Afghanistan since 2002. Some of its agencies are believed to be backing the neo-Taliban, who continue to launch terrorist attacks on the government and on aid workers. Today, however, President Musharraf is under growing pressure to end completely all support to hardline Islamicist elements in Afghanistan. He has had to undertake, or cooperate with, armed operations against them in South Waziristan and other border areas.

Pakistan feels threatened by the India-Iran alliance and India's plans to help build a road link between Chabahar port in Iran and Delaram in Afghanistan to be used as a trade route, bypassing Pakistan altogether. Many in Pakistan regard this as a strategy of "surrounding" or "encircling" Pakistan and keeping it out of Afghanistan and Central Asia altogether, and resent it. There is, besides, the view held by many policy-makers and -shapers that India being the status quo power has no real intention of beginning serious talks on Kashmir; it must be pressed to do so through the Afghanistan "lever", or trade, or whatever.

THE time has come for India and Pakistan to bury the hatchet in Afghanistan and jointly help that country come out of its precarious situation. Afghanistan today is unbelievably insecure and unstable. There has been little progress in disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of militias. Warlords control large swathes of the country, exploiting the illicit opium economy as a tax-base. The Taliban continue to attack with impunity. Afghanistan's reconstruction is seriously underfunded. It receives among the lowest amounts of aid per capita in recent post-conflict reconstruction cases - for instance, only about a third of the figure for Palestine or East Timor, and less than one-tenth for Kosovo.

The country's human development situation is appalling. Average life-expectancy at birth is 43 years. One out of four Afghan children dies before age 5. There is only one doctor for every 50,000 people. Only 11 out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces have essential obstetric services. Only 23 per cent of the population has access to safe water and only 12 per cent to adequate sanitation. Despite impressive growth in the legal economy (29 and 16 per cent in 2002-03 and 2003-04), Afghanistan remains one of the five poorest countries in the world. It is also among the most corrupt.

Amidst this grim situation of state failure, Pakistan retains the ability to create mayhem. A wave of violence is likely to break out after the parliamentary elections of September 18, which could support such a role for an embittered Pakistan. The best way of preventing Pakistan from aggravating the situation would be to engage and involve it in a three-way cooperative venture by accommodating it - not isolating/excluding it.

This calls for not just a speeding up of the India-Pakistan dialogue, but its extension to include cooperation with and in Afghanistan through joint reconstruction projects. This is perhaps the only way of convincing Islamabad that India-Pakistan's engagement in Afghanistan need not be a zero-sum game. It can benefit all three states. India should seriously propose joint projects in construction, agriculture, industry and skill development.

SUCH an approach must form part of a larger Indian policy towards Southwest, Central and West Asia, or what might be called our "near-West". This should be based on an independent, comprehensive, proactive perspective that finesses an overwhelming U.S. role in the region. Two examples should suffice to outline what a broad based, multi-faceted policy might look like: India's relations with Iran and Israel.

Iran is a litmus test for India. It is a country with which India has had good friendly relations, but to which the U.S. is hostile for parochial reasons. India, as well as Pakistan, has a good deal to gain from a gas pipeline from Iran, for which negotiations have reached an advanced stage. They should both determinedly resist U.S. pressure on the pipeline. But India has to be concerned about non-proliferation too. It must assert Iran's right to peaceful nuclear activities, but only subject to the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) supervision. India and Pakistan should argue that involving Iran in regional energy cooperation would be the best way of integrating it into the entire West Asia-South Asia region as a responsible state.

Pakistan is about to establish closer relations with Israel - not so much to counter and trump India, as in response to U.S. pressure to demonstrate its commitment to "moderation". Building close relations with today's regime in Israel, with its viciously anti-Palestinian dispensation and its plans of consolidating its occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, is no "moderation". Rather, it amounts to acquiescence in the occupation.

It would be extraordinarily foolish to read Israel's withdrawal from Gaza as a major policy shift signifying the beginning of the end of occupation. In fact, it is a way of changing the demographic balance in Israel-Palestine in favour of the Jewish population. It is part of a larger plan to build yet more settlements in the occupied territories. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is on record as saying that the withdrawal is a way of ending "the Palestinian dream of a separate state" forever. For Pakistan, the withdrawal is only an excuse for executing Washington's will.

However, India's pro-American pro-Israeli lobby has seized on Pakistan's overture to Israel, especially after the September 1 meeting in Istanbul between the Pakistani and Israeli Foreign Ministers, to demand that New Delhi must deepen its relations with Israel by reciprocating Ariel Sharon's visit here in 2003. This is a patently misguided prescription, which will throw India deeper into the U.S.-Israeli axis, which has played a dangerously destabilising role in the whole of West Asia, refuelling Arab resentment.

Under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), India pursued an unbalanced pro-Israeli policy. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) promised to correct it. It must be made to live up to its promise. It is bad enough that India has emerged as Israel's biggest arms buyer, with sales totalling Rs.12,000 crores. This too needs to be reconsidered. At any rate, an arms purchase relationship must not be elevated to foreign policy.

If India is to emerge as a major player in global politics, which advances certain universal values and principles, and contributes to a better, more balanced and peaceful world order, it must fashion a truly broad-horizon, complex and many-layered policy for its own neighbourhood, especially the part close to its Western frontiers. Afghanistan is a good place to begin.

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