India’s Af-Pak policy: Missing in Action

Osama bin Laden might be dead but the turmoil he helped unleash in Af-Pak is getting complicated by the day. The manner of Osama’s death has underlined the rapidly deteriorating US-Pakistan ties. Pakistan continues to claim its positive role in the fight against terror but the Obama administration is more convinced than ever about the Pakistani security establishment’s duplicity. Just last month, in its report to the US Congress on the state of the war in Afghanistan and the efforts to defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan, the Obama administration went public with its frustration with Pakistan’s efforts at tackling al Qaeda and other militants. The 38-page report makes clear that despite a sustained offensive against it, the Taliban insurgency has gained strength in Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan, underlining that “there remains no clear path toward defeating the insurgency.” And now with Osama’s death, new questions have emerged about Pakistan’s reliability as Washington’s partner.

America and Afghanistan are negotiating a Strategic Partnership Declaration for beyond 2014 which has been described by the US officials as a “long-term framework for bilateral cooperation with Afghanistan” and by its critics as the “Permanent Bases Agreement.” The Afghanistan government is worried about the situation after 2014 when the first withdrawals of some American troops are to start. It is hoping to become the central disburser for aid money and so want an agreement on the transfer of provincial reconstruction teams, which channel aid from the US and NATO states directly to projects in the Afghan countryside.

The danger for the US is that such negotiation could scuttle the so-called peace talks with the Taliban which started earlier this year. The Taliban would be loathe to see a lasting American presence in Afghanistan whatever shape or form it might take. After a wide-ranging debate within the Obama administration about the need to enter into talks with the Taliban, it decided to enter into direct talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders. These talks are not yet formal peace negotiations, rather they are exploratory in nature intended to test waters before making any final move. The US would like to assess if Taliban leaders can be trusted with a formal peace process and what conditions might lead to a reasonable outcome.

For a long time, Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai has taken the lead and carried out negotiations with elements of the Taliban but that did not yield any substantive results. The US intervention is intended to ensure that certain sections of the Taliban might break with al Qaeda and participate in Afghanistan’s democratic process. The Obama surge announced in 2009 was aimed at forcing the hands of the Taliban by inflicting a damaging blow to their morale, forcing them to come to the negotiating table. Voices in Washington are now suggesting that American military’s counter-insurgency efforts have reversed gains the Taliban had made over the last five years.

At a time of economic turmoil in the US, the war’s cost that is estimated to reach $120 billion this year is leading to increasing public disenchantment with the war. Attention is shifting to the 2012 Presidential elections and the political class, including Barack Obama, will be reluctant to challenge public opinion. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, according to latest surveys, do not find the war in Afghanistan worth fighting.

Obama’s failure to take complete ownership of the war is becoming a big liability. Moreover, he has failed to reconcile the differences among his advisors even as the perception is gaining ground that the war is going nowhere for NATO forces. Though Obama made it clear that the current war strategy will continue and not be altered, there is a grudging acknowledgment in the US policy-making circles that Obama’s surge is not showing any signs of success so far. Although military officials contend that the surge has enabled US forces to blunt the Taliban in key areas over the past several months, White House officials remain skeptical that those gains will survive without the presence of American troops and without US financial aid.

Faced with this reality, Pakistan’s military establishment has been quick to reach out to Karzai and earlier this month Kabul and Islamabad announced the establishment of a two-tiered joint commission, giving the Pakistani military a formal role in reconciliation talks between Kabul and Pakistan-based insurgents. Pakistan has been openly lobbying Karzai against building a long-term strategic partnership with the US, urging him instead to look to Pakistan and its Chinese ally for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy.

At a time when so much is happening on the Af-Pak frontier, New Delhi’s only response so far has been to invite Pakistan’s prime minister to a cricket match. Though it has also been reported that the Manmohan Singh opened secret talks with Pakistan Army chief Ashfaq Kayani sometime back, the exact ramifications of such a step remain clouded in mystery. The reality remains that India has become marginal in the evolving strategic situation in Af-Pak. Even in that marginal role, New Delhi has been on the defensive about its role in Afghanistan. India has substantially scaled back its profile in Afghanistan arguing that its growing presence was making its personnel and projects vulnerable. And sections of the Indian government have indicated that New Delhi is ready to talk to the Taliban reversing country’s long-standing policy of refusing to deal with the Taliban.

But all these strands together do not a coherent policy make. India’s legitimate security interests are at stake in Afghanistan. Every other actor in this emerging Great Game is busy safeguarding its own interests. Delhi cannot expect others to stand up for its own interests and thus can ignore the rapidly changing regional dynamic only at its own peril.

— The writer is the author of The China Syndrome