As Afghanistan prepares for life beyond 2014 its capital
Kabul is seeing a steady stream of visitors from far and near, all seeking to
reassure and to be reassured themselves that peace and stability will return to
the landlocked country torn apart by conflict for the last 33 years. Australian
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on July 27; his
country has about 1,500 troops there but the bulk will be pulled out by the end
of this year. Security and Foreign Affairs Adviser Sartaj Aziz of Pakistan and
British premier David Cameron were there, too, as was the US’s Af-Pak envoy
James Dobbins. An Indian delegation comprising officials from the ministries of
external affairs and defence travelled to Kabul in the second week of July to follow
up on Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s visit to New Delhi in the month of May
with a wish list of items he would like the Indian government to share with the
Afghan national army and allied security forces as the US completes pulling out
its troops by the end of next year.
What should have been a moment of quiet satisfaction,
reflective of the enormous goodwill India enjoys among the Afghan people and
government alike for funding development projects worth billions of dollars,
has turned into an embarrassment of sorts as President Karzai’s wish list has
exposed the limits to what India can, and is willing to, do to shore up a
post-2014 Afghanistan. It was quick to waitlist Karzai’s inventory of lethal
materiel rpt materiel on the ground that there are many moving parts to the
Afghan conundrum, namely Pakistan’s attitude towards Afghanistan and India, the
Taliban’s own game plan, the moves for a possible reconciliation with the
Taliban (as evidenced by the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar) and the extent
of Pakistan’s role in it, the ethnic configuration of Afghanistan in the
immediate future and last but not the least the eventual successor to Mr Karzai
following the elections.
Notwithstanding New Delhi’s contention that while it is
there for the long haul it would not want to “become part of the problem”,
Kabul maintains that the Afghan national security forces must be equipped with
the necessary capabilities – including capacity for logistics and equipment
maintenance as well as adequate ground and air firepower – to execute
independent operations against conventional and unconventional enemies. India
and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement in October 2011, which
dwelled on security, trade, capacity-building and people-to-people contacts.
Specifically, India agreed "to assist, as mutually determined, in the
training, equipping and capacity building programmes for Afghan National
Security Forces". Therefore, Kabul’s desire to source hardware with Indian
assistance should be viewed in that context. But if the Afghans were
disappointed by New Delhi’s circumspection, they did not show it. As Afghan
ambassador to India Shaida Abdali put it, “In the post 2014 period, we look
forward to working with India .... At the same time, we renew our call on the
international community to stay the course in Afghanistan.”
So could Afghanistan descend into chaos after 2014? While
jury is still out on that, serving and former Afghan officials are of the
considered view that the road to peace in Kabul goes through Islamabad. An
Afghan diplomatic source insists that the Taliban leadership continues to
receive protection from the Pakistani military and intelligence establishments.
Afghan army chief General Sher Mohammad Karimi believes that Pakistan could end
the Afghan war "in weeks" because “the Taliban are under their
control". A former Afghan intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, in turn,
says that some of the Western powers are in such a hurry to cut and run from
Afghanistan that they are eager to differentiate between the threats posed by
the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda and to downplay the dangers posed by a return of
the Taliban (similar to how the chaos after the erstwhile USSR’s withdrawal
from Afghanistan gave rise to the Taliban.) Ironically, this view is in
contrast to New Delhi’s which has of late adopted a nuanced position on the
issue of reconciliation with the Taliban; at a recent Asean meeting in Brunei
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said India supported Kabul’s efforts
to establish a dialogue with all armed opposition groups, “including the
Taliban”. For now, Abdali is confident that his country will not go the Iraq
way from where the US troops withdrew in December 2011 but which continues to
be riven by civil strife, or, resemble the days of the Taliban rule between
1996 and 2001. “Let me assure you against the 2014 myth of Afghanistan falling
apart after the withdrawal of NATO forces from our country,” says Abdali. Watch
this space!
