India in Afghanistan — I

The writer is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and author of Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (The Lyons Press, August 2003) christine.fair@tribune.com.pk

India’s profile in Afghanistan has been a looming concern for New Delhi, Washington, Brussels and, of course, Islamabad with all wondering what the optimal role for India in Afghanistan’s reconstruction is, in light of the security competition between India and Pakistan. Some want to expand India’s presence in Afghanistan through Indian training of Afghan civilian and military personnel, development projects and economic ties. Others caution against such involvement. Others yet see Indian and Pakistani competition in Afghanistan as a new “Great Game” and argue that Afghanistan can be pacified through a regional solution that settles the Kashmir dispute.
India’s interests in Afghanistan are not only Pakistan-specific but also tied to India’s desire to be seen as an extra-regional power moving toward great power status. While India’s presence in Afghanistan has Pakistan-specific utility, India’s interests in Afghanistan can be seen as merely one element within India’s desire to be able to project its interests well beyond South Asia.
India has three principal aims in Afghanistan. First, it faced security threats from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s which provided training opportunities and safe havens for several Pakistani groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which operate in India. India insists that Afghanistan should not again become a terrorist safe haven.
Second, India wants to retain Afghanistan as a friendly state from which it can monitor Pakistan and, where possible, cultivate assets to influence activities in Pakistan. Naturally, Pakistan seeks to deny India such opportunities.
Third, developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan have a negative effect on India’s domestic social fabric. Hindu nationalists and their militant counterparts live in a violent symbiosis with Islamist militant groups operating in and around India. Islamist terrorism in the region provides grist for the mill of Hindu nationalism and its violent offshoots.
Contrary to some Pakistani views, India’s ties to Afghanistan are not new. In 1950, Afghanistan and India signed a “Friendship Treaty.” Prior to the Soviet invasion in 1979, New Delhi formalised agreements with various pro-Soviet regimes in Kabul. During the anti-Soviet jihad, India expanded its development activities in Afghanistan.
After the Taliban consolidated their hold on Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, India struggled to maintain its presence. It aimed to undermine the Taliban by supporting the Northern Alliance in tandem with other regional actors.
Working with Iran, Russia and Tajikistan, India provided important resources to the Northern Alliance, the only meaningful challenge to the Taliban in Afghanistan. According to journalist Rahul Bedi, India also ran a 25-bed hospital at Farkhor (Ayni), Tajikistan, for more than a year and supplied the Northern Alliance with high altitude warfare equipment worth around $8 million. India also based several ‘defence advisers’ in Tajikistan to advise the Northern Alliance in their operations against the Taliban.
Since 2001, India has relied upon development projects and other forms of humanitarian assistance. To facilitate these projects and to collect intelligence (as all embassies do), India now has consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif, in addition to its embassy in Kabul. There are also a number of smaller-scale activities throughout Afghanistan. According to the US, British, and Afghan officials that I interviewed over the last several years, India’s activities are not isolated to the north, where it has had traditional ties, but also include efforts in the southern provinces and in the northeast, abutting the Pakistani border.
This is a condensed version of an article that was first appeared on Foreign Policy’s Af-Pak Channel on October 26, 2010
Published in The Express Tribune, October 31^st, 2010.

Revisiting Pakistan’s ‘Strategic Depth’

Syed Nadir El Edroos 1 month ago

We need to engage with both Afghanistan and India to leverage our geographic position to develop strategic depth with positive connotations.

Two words that hold our country hostage is our policy of maintaining ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan. Apart from referring to a poorly titled adult film, the policy envisages to protect Pakistan’s eastern borders from unwanted Indian influence.
However, the consequences of continuing with this policy and differentiating between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ Taliban, has led to accusations of Pakistan playing a ‘double-game’ in Afghanistan. For many the accusation has become quite stale and repetitive. It seems to have become an open secret, with many accepting it as a reality, a part of the status-quo for dealing with the troubles in the region.
Whether the policy has been successful is debatable. The military’s and the ISI’s continued links with the Haqqani network ensures that they are a sought after broker for any back channel attempt to woo the Taliban.
The strategy aims to maintain Pakistani influence in/over Afghanistan, and to thwart alleged Indian designs. However, the policy has at the same time made Pakistan quite unpopular with large segments of the Afghan establishment. Interfering in Afghanistan’s affairs, while demanding an end to foreign influence in Pakistan is met with much ridicule in foreign capitals; it reeks of hypocrisy.
The policy is also questionable, as it breeds violence, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As the violence continues, Pakistan is sure to be in the news, accused for fostering, abating or at the very least tolerating continued bloodshed to maintain its interests.
The result is the ‘image deficit’ that haunts Pakistan. The dismal public response to the floods in Pakistan for example was attributed to this effect. It has also been more difficult for our economic managers to garner favourable trade concessions and development grants. Winning over wider public support remains a problem, as Pakistan remains associated with fostering rather than curtailing violence in Afghanistan. Politicians in the west are portrayed as weak by the right-wing media, such as Fox News in the US, for taking initiatives to support Pakistan.
Look at any article posted on any western news outlet. The comments question the calls for sympathy for Pakistan as we are branded as supporters of terrorism, who inflict material and physical damage on their interests.
An alternative strategy
There needs to be an alternative to our current strategy. The alternative need not be between defending Pakistan from India or bowing before it and allowing it a free hand in Afghanistan. We need to engage with both Afghanistan and India to leverage our geographic position to develop strategic depth with positive connotations.
The US, Afghanistan and India have been pressing Pakistan to allow the transit of Indian goods over Pakistan through to Afghanistan and vice versa for years. I say, let the goods pass, hell put them on the trains. That will help to give our faltering railways a financial shot in the arm. Extend the Iran-Pakistan pipeline into India, let the gas flow. Transit fees galore! Rather than questioning Indian development aid to Afghanistan we should support it. Geographically it’s more of an advantage for us, as any increase in economic activity in Afghanistan will immediately suck in Pakistani exports.
What would the advantages be? Imagine the headlines. Pakistan would look like the peace builder, shunning international criticism and situating itself as committed to the development of an Afghan state. We would also be seen on the diplomatic offensive vis-à-vis India. With Pakistan offering so many incentives, India will have to respond in the affirmative. After all India is cultivating its image as a regional and global superpower, the ball will firmly be in India’s court. It cannot be seen rebuffing genuine gestures from its old foe.
Importantly, a policy that leverages our geographic position economically rather than militarily negates any association with violence.  We would be treated as victims rather than the guilty.
If India is indeed developing consulates across Afghanistan housing RAW agents that ferment trouble in Pakistan, improved economic ties will help shed a spotlight on the functioning of these consulates. As Pakistan becomes vital for transporting Indian-Afghanistan exports and imports to each other, minimising any threat to these links will become a primary concern for Indian traders. This will build added pressure on those who dare concoct nefarious designs to fuel militancy in Balochistan for example.
India can switch on and off the belligerent rhetoric as India’s economy has little or no interests in Pakistan. However, a Pakistan which is vital for Indian trade, supply of resources etc will have no choice but to tone down any sabre rattling that seems to be a cyclical part of Pakistan-India relations.
So where does Pakistan’s security come in?
In any period of belligerent hostility Pakistan will have the ability to cut of energy and trade links. Containers can be seized, Indian traders in Pakistan arrested, and diplomatically we can garner support by portraying ourselves of peace. We have gone the extra mile to foster our relations with India and support a viable Afghanistan. India would be seen as the aggressor. How is that for maintaining strategic depth?
Our present policy allows for India’s security establishment to deal with her interests in Afghanistan ignoring any media or public scrutiny. A policy that places economic links at its foundations will open up Indian policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan and the actions of its security agencies to wider scrutiny. The competition between competing interests will insure that whatever policy is actually implemented is a watered down compromise that is not a real threat to Pakistan.
We have to find alternatives to the status-quo. With the nation reeling under flooding, terrorism and economic stagnation we are more dependent on foreign assistance than at any point in our history. They are not many variables that we can control for. We can’t control how the foreign press paints us, how we are perceived abroad etc. However, what little we can do to help alter these perceptions, we must. And this does not have to lead to subjugation to Indian influence that many right wing commentators would suggest.
If we are to continue with our obsession with thwarting Indian designs, can we please do it in a manner that doesn’t hold us all hostage to violence and paint us as terrorist?
Shaping global opinion is a long term effort which must start sooner than later. Our challenges for the future, access to water, natural disasters caused by climate change and development depends in a large part to interaction and support of our neighbours and the international community. Politics and security needs are always a concern, but we must get society at large, the world over on our sign. We are not the cause but the victims. Strategic depth? Sure, but by other means.

A dangerous narrative

Rafia Zakaria
(21 hours ago) Today

By Rafia Zakaria

THE evening after the conclusion of the Pakistan-US strategic dialogue, soon after the Pakistani delegation had said its goodbyes and boarded the flight home, President Obama`s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke gave an interview to a major American news channel.

During the interview, Holbrooke was asked whether Pakistan had given the US “a commitment that they would go after sanctuaries on their own territory”. He replied: “We urge them to do more. And they are gradually doing more, not as much perhaps as we would want.” While he went on to recognise that Pakistan was doing more than it had in previous years, the tone and content of the statement largely defined the public construction of both Pakistan`s role and the point of the dialogue in the American media.
The construction of Pakistan as a complicated country with shifty interests and many secret agendas has thus continued even after the strategic dialogue, which was sold as a much-touted trust-building measure. On television again on Sunday Holbrooke deflected a question about why Pakistan always seemed to have excuses when asked to take on the insurgent groups on its own territory by saying that he was “not there to defend Pakistan or the Pakistani Army”.
The tone and tenor of all these statements, and the recurrent characterisation of the US as a patient, cajoling ally heaping billions of dollars in civilian and military aid on a shadowy Pakistan, is notable for several reasons. It provides an indication of how the image of Pakistan continues to be created before the American public.
During his campaign, and continuing through these first years, the Obama administration has adeptly begun to deflect the failures of Afghanistan on not itself but on Pakistan. To substantiate this claim, administration officials including Holbrooke have become adept at counting down the number of terrorist groups currently operating with impunity in that country. Nearly every debate focusing on Afghanistan ends with a discussion of how American forces in the region are routinely and continually undermined by their attackers` ability to run off across the border into Pakistan.
In this latest instance, Holbrooke did mention that thousands of Pakistanis have been killed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, but this integrally important fact was presented, as always, as a convenient aside — the preface to allegations that reiterate the fact that the Pakistani agenda remains at best murky and at worst downright antithetical to American interests.
There are other advantages to the construction of Pakistan as a shady villain. The Obama administration is well aware of the fact that inevitably, some nefarious plot to conduct a terrorist attack in the US will eventually be successful. Given that terrorists routinely strike soft targets and aim to cause civilian casualties, it is a virtual impossibility to prevent such an eventuality.
If Pakistan has already been defined as a murky place, consisting largely of terrorist hideouts and a population that continues to hate the United States regardless of its benevolence, there is unlikely to be much political opposition to an aerial bombing campaign that in the words of President Obama would “disrupt, dismantle and eventually defeat” Al Qaeda in Pakistan. While the American public is largely war weary, a new terror attack could well provide the impetus to conduct an operation that would use massive American airpower to take care of the Pakistan problem.
Strategic relationships are constructed largely by the party that controls the narrative. In the case of Pakistan and the US, it is undoubted that the latter is involved in just as many shadowy negotiations and multiple games as Pakistan. Even as the Obama administration impressed upon Pakistan the necessity of an operation in North Waziristan, Nato airplanes were reportedly transporting various members of the Afghan Taliban for discussion with the Karzai administration. Similarly, an important issue that officials of the Obama administration brought to the table during the talks was the granting of visas to several hundred CIA operatives that the US wants to send to Pakistan to carry out covert operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
This then is the central contradiction that remains invisible to the American public. While the US engages in talks and deals with the same Taliban that Pakistan is accused of canoodling with, and the CIA carries out security operations and extra-judicial killings with impunity, the facts are never allowed to impact the narrative of the Af-Pak war.
Pakistan`s loss in these negotiations is thus not the failure to procure a civilian-nuclear energy deal similar to the one provided to India, nor the inability to get some reassurance from the United States to mediate in the Kashmir issue. Pakistan`s trouncing is comprised of its complete failure to provide its side of the story to any degree of prominence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan narrative.
The challenge before Pakistan`s civilian and military leadership vis-à-vis its relationship with the US thus does not pivot on the commitments of aid or the energy projects it can negotiate before it loses its strategic bargaining chips. Instead, it should focus on gaining some control over the narrative of the Af-Pak conflict and positioning Pakistan on the world stage as a victim rather than a perpetrator of terrorism. n
During a week when much of Pakistan`s civilian and military leadership was in Washington, not a single American media outlet focused on the over 300 suicide bombings that have taken place in Pakistan this year, nor the thousands of innocent Pakistanis that have been killed at the hands of terrorist groups. The world`s blindness to Pakistan`s pain leaves the country vulnerable to invasion and attack in the unfortunate event of another terrorist attack on American soil.
The writer is a US-based attorney teaching constitutional history and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Democracy & development

Democracy & development

Iran`s legitimate concerns

Iran`s legitimate concerns

Can we change our ‘hate-India’ mindset?

ayesha.siddiqa@tribune.com.pk

I must confess that the title of Air-Vice Marshal Shahzad Chaudhry’s piece “Can we change our ‘hate-India’ mindset?” was deceptive as it was more about Bangladesh than India. It also raised expectations, that perhaps the retired air marshal had re-thought the basic framework which drives hatred for India in this country. Instead, I came across a rambling piece regarding the use of a Bangladesh model, which is very popular amongst the Pakistani pro-establishment circle, to bring about internal changes in the country.
The article inferred that development in the country, as in the case of Bangladesh, would help get rid of our anti-India policy. To say the least, this sounds like an absolutely incorrect reading of the past, present and even the future. Bangladesh and Pakistan are different — as one of the main political players in Dhaka, the Awami League, traditionally has good ties with India. This is mainly because part of the Bangladeshi military, the Mukti Bahini freedom fighters, is indebted to India. Ziaur Rehman’s BNP under the leadership of his wife Khalida Zia, on the other hand, had relatively better ties with Pakistan. This could also be due to the fact that Bangladesh’s General Zia was part of the repatriated officers who form a bulk of Bangladesh military’s officer corps.
In Bangladesh, the common man, especially those in the border areas, dislikes India more than Pakistanis due to border skirmishes between the two neighbours, and other issues including smuggling of cattle and water. The reason such popular opinion does not translate automatically into more conflict is because, unlike in Pakistan, Bangladeshi governments are not willing to use this negative opinion to their political advantage.
As for the Bangladeshi model of political change that Mr Chaudhry and others of his ilk so like, it was a top-down change envisioned by the country’s middle class. However, it did not manage to weed out the political actors it so wanted to. Nor has the Grameen Bank model brought real change in Bangladesh. In fact, it was later discovered that the bank was deceptive in reporting its financial performance. More recent research, some of which can be read in the autumn issue of the South Asian magazine Himal, shows that Yunus’s was a neo-liberal approach which increased indebtedness of the local community without increasing profits because too many people were doing the same thing through micro-credit loans. However, since the collateral was indirect, people tended to waste money rather than put it to good use.
Had Mr Chaudhry looked deeper, he might have discovered two broad reasons for why Bangladesh has performed better than Pakistan. Despite the high polarisation of the Bangladeshi state and society, they are largely committed to a secular identity. Although the majority of people are Muslims there have never been claims of the country being the fortress of Islam which can only be defended militarily. The separation of religion from politics provides a healthy space in which faith can grow and allow people to coexist.
To Bangladesh’s advantage, its military’s initial structure was not professional despite the fact that the bulk of its officers were those repatriated from Pakistan. This meant that the military continued to be less Machiavellian in the initial part of the country’s history. Although the army conducted two coups, it could also be pushed out because it had not managed to create a powerful national narrative that was based on inciting fear and gathered people around the armed forces.
The fact of the matter is that India-hatred is the raison d’être of Pakistan’s security apparatus. This, in isolation, is not wrong since all militaries are designed to respond to an external threat. The main problem is that like the Prussian army, our military has become larger than life and continues to paddle anti-Indianism as the nation’s driver. Under the circumstances, many like Shahzad Chaudhry may privately or publicly confess to anti-Indianism, posing a problem for economic growth, but fail to offer a solution. Settlement of outstanding disputes alone may not solve the problem — the solution of disputes itself is linked with a change in perception.

The Realist Prism: U.S.-India Partnership Needs Substance, not Rhetoric

Nikolas Gvosdev | 15 Oct 2010

In advance of President Barack Obama's visit to India next month, the administration is sending signals about great and wondrous changes ahead in the Indo-American relationship. But in reading Lalit K. Jha's dispatch from Washington, a term I have come to dread in foreign policy rhetoric made its predictable appearance: Obama's visit is supposed to herald the establishment of a "true strategic partnership." "Strategic partnership" entered the U.S. diplomatic lexicon as a way to find a halfway house between those countries that are formal American allies -- especially those for whom this status is a matter of treaty and Congressional statute -- and countries that might otherwise not be hostile to Washington but who did not enjoy any special or privileged relationship with the United States. The problem, however, is that "strategic partnership" was often applied as a catch-all diplomatic term devoid of real practical applications. The concept was originally drafted into service in the context of post-Soviet U.S.-Russia relations, to provide a basis for cooperation between Washington and Moscow. But comforting talk about Russia and the United States being "strategic partners" often vanished when the relationship ran into real difficulties, particularly after Russia's power began to resurge. Similarly, Georgia's status as a "strategic partner" was a way to promote the illusion that Tbilisi was joining the Euro-Atlantic world. But Georgians keenly felt the absence of concrete security guarantees in the aftermath of the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. The other tendency is for the term to be so widely applied that any real importance or significance of the designation is lost. The U.S. is a strategic partner with both Russia and China, who themselves enjoy a strategic partnership as well. Meanwhile, Russia and India also consider themselves strategic partners, while Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of the United States. Does this imply any sort of a Quintuple Alliance between Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Islamabad and New Delhi? Certainly not. Behind all of the vague protestations of friendship, the reality is that "strategic partnerships" do not carry the same weight as actual, concrete, defined interstate agreements. The relationship between Moscow and Beijing, for instance, is undergirded by a raft of intergovernmental contracts as well as joint participation and leadership of a regional organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization -- not just by the rhetoric of "strategic partnership." So the optics of Obama's India visit may be quite positive, and the rhetoric celebrating the ties between the world's oldest democracy and its largest one might be positively glowing. What's more, Washington and New Delhi have a clear set of common interests that should drive a closer political, economic and strategic relationship between the two powers. But the question remains, What will this trip actually change? What actual agreements on economic relations or on security cooperation are likely to be reached between Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? And what sort of private, bilateral "understandings" on Afghanistan are likely to emerge? Indian analyst B. Raman recently expressed concern about a "paucity of ideas" regarding what India and the U.S. can accomplish together: "Apart from the Joint Counter-Terrorism Initiative launched by the two countries during the visit of the Indian prime minister to the U.S. in November 2009, there has been hardly any new idea which could be called Obama's own and over which India could feel excited." He's right. The problem is that Washington is in no position at this point to make any grandiose steps towards New Delhi. Given the state of the U.S. domestic economy, and continued outrage over the "export" of American jobs, any sort of free trade pact is out of the question. The current U.S. strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan to allow for the gradual disengagement of the United States from that conflict rests upon the active cooperation of Pakistan, and Washington cannot take steps to formalize its security ties to India without seriously jeopardizing its relationship with Islamabad. Moreover, the United States' tacit encouragement of Chinese investment in Afghanistan as a way to provide jobs and income to dry up popular support for the insurgency also raises New Delhi's hackles, as did a 2009 statement about the positive role the United States hoped China would play in the South Asian region. The U.S. has tried to focus Pakistan's attention on combating al-Qaida and other militant groups on its territory that plan terrorist attacks against targets in the West. But as Raman points out, Washington's anti-terror strategy is less concerned with "Pakistani Punjabi terrorists posing a threat to Indian nationals and interests, whether in India or in Afghanistan." In fact, both Islamabad and New Delhi have grown impatient with Washington's attempt to placate both sides as "good friends" of the United States. And if the president decides to raise the sensitive issue of Kashmir in his talks with Singh -- even by couching such a discussion within the larger context of the entire Afghanistan-Pakistan theater -- it might create some friction, because India is not interested in having the U.S. serve any sort of mediator role in a process that New Delhi feels might compromise its territorial integrity. We must also be realistic about the many remaining areas of divergence between Washington and New Delhi that prevent the contemplation of any real alliance. As Richard Haass has noted, "Alliances require predictability: of threat, outlook, obligations. But it is precisely these characteristics that are likely to be in short supply in a world of shifting threats [and] differing perceptions . . . " Raman and others, however, have highlighted one promising area for Indo-U.S. cooperation: expanding the two countries' naval relationship. Given the growing importance of the Indian Ocean as a central sea lane of communication for the global economy, this would provide a way for the American and Indian militaries to work more closely together. As Raman notes, "U.S. policymakers and public opinion would be comfortable with naval cooperation with India, but might not like to get involved with India in its territorial conflicts with China and Pakistan." A stronger naval relationship also avoids the pitfalls of the terminology of "strategic partnerships" by setting down concrete areas for U.S. and Indian security cooperation. For instance, the U.S. and India could conceivably reach an agreement about shared operations as defined in a specific geographic zone, just as the NATO treaty specified the area of the world where the alliance was operative. NATO allies in Europe, for instance, need not worry that U.S. security problems in the Pacific region, or Britain's dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, will involve them, allowing for genuine security cooperation within the actual framework of the alliance. Agreements on naval cooperation might also break existing logjams in the types of high-technology goods and services that U.S. defense and civil contractors can export to India, currently a sticking point in the relationship. Giving India a special status as a non-NATO naval ally of the United States might allow for greater technical cooperation in certain designated military fields. The United States has a delicate balance to navigate in seeking closer ties with India without torpedoing already difficult relations with Pakistan and further complicating an increasingly problematic relationship with a rising China. Moving the discussion of the U.S.-India relationship away from a zero-sum approach that portrays India as either ally or non-ally would open the door to creative thinking about how to forge U.S.-India ties in the coming decade. And that will prove far more valuable than the bland, inoffensive but ultimately meaningless rhetoric about "strategic partnership." Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the former editor of the National Interest, and a frequent foreign policy commentator in both the print and broadcast media. He is currently on the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are his own and do not reflect those of the Navy or the U.S. government. His weekly WPR column, The Realist Prism, appears every Friday. Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a G-20 leaders working dinner, Pittsburgh, 2009 (White House photo by Pete Souza).