The situation in Afghanistan will remain a defining factor in US-Pakistan in the coming years. Will there be a full-fledged civil war in Afghanistan? Will the Taliban be able to achieve a military takeover of Kabul – a scenario that Americans are ready to go to any lengths to avert and that can vitiate diplomatic relations between Washington and its erstwhile ally, Pakistan, in a big way.
Pakistani position is perilous to say the least. Our clout with the Taliban could become our biggest liability, potentially fraught with both a diplomatic fiasco and a security nightmare.
The potential diplomatic fiasco inherent to the situation is that the international community is not ready to accept a military victory for Taliban in Afghanistan and given the impression of Pakistan’s more than a little influence with the militia, the guns will turn towards Pakistan in case Kabul falls in the coming months.
The potential security nightmare inherent to the situation is that a military victory for Afghan Taliban will embolden Pakistani Taliban and associated militant groups into renewing their militancy and terror attacks against Pakistani security apparatus and urban centres.
A palpable sense of Pakistan’s dwindling strategic importance has come to the fore in the wake of the US strategic decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. This means that Washington is no more fixated on terrorism and extremism as a primary threat worthy of its military, political, and financial resources in future.
The US strategic direction has changed and Pakistan and its security forces will no longer have a crucial position in Washing- ton’s strategic calculus as they had been playing in the wake of 9/11.
Afghanistan’s outsized role in US foreign policy will diminish. But there is every chance that the US would continue to exert political and diplomatic pressure to achieve its desired goals on Afghanistan’s chessboard – the first of which will be to deny the Taliban a clear cut military victory.
Pakistan will be at the receiving end of this diplomatic political pressure coming from Washington. The second important political aim that Washington seems to have in mind – as far as the public assertions of its senior officials are concerned – is to ensure an oversized role for India in the future political game of Afghanistan.
The US decision to withdraw from Afghan- istan unilaterally was received with a palpa- ble sense of shock in New Delhi. New Delhi’s strategic community perceived the US decision as a betrayal and a clear indica- tion that India’s economic interests in Afghanistan were least of US concern.
This sense gleaned from the emerging security situation in Afghanistan, where Taliban were militarily advancing and government in Kabul lacks the means to put up any tangible resistance, was contrasted by US official assertions that which expressed the US intentions to give an oversize political and military role to New Delhi in Afghanistan – a scenario which visibly perturbed Pakistani security appara- tus.
In February 2020, during his only visit to New Delhi, the former US President Donald Trump reportedly offered Indian Prime Minister Modi certain guarantees about US decision to reconcile with Afghan Taliban.
“India need not worry” is how one Indian official, as reported in Indian media, described the US President’s message to Indian government as the US started to plan its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Later, the US Administration continued to make efforts to assuage the fears of Indian officialdom with regards to the security nightmare that US withdrawal would likely bring for India economic assistance and intelligence operations in Afghanistan.
According to Indian media, New Delhi believes that US-Taliban Agreement amounts to a sell-out and indicate US willingness to leave Afghanistan at the mercy of Taliban and Pakistan – something that caused great anxiety within the Indian officialdom.
Indian fears are not restricted to what will happen to their USD 3 billion investment in developmental aid to Afghanistan or what will happen to Indian economic interests in the country.
These fears are much larger in scope – we can sum up these strategic fears under two the following heads in the light of what we gleaned from Indian media and papers written by strategic and foreign policy thinkers.
- The Indian fear of a spill over of terror threat based in Afghanistan and reaching its territory
India perceives most of the Sunni militant and terror groups based in Afghanistan as a threat to its security.
There has been lot of mixing up of ideas and technique among the militant groups which can be described as regional and the militant and terror groups that are now based in Afghanistan but came from the Arab world.
For instance, Daesh is based in Eastern and Northern Afghanistan and have interacted thoroughly with Pakistan based militant groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Al-Alami, which is now based somewhere in Southern Afghanistan and had carried out a large number of sectarian attacks in Quetta.
Similarly, the Indian fear that the remnants of Al-Qaida – a shadow of their former self according to US officials – might get emboldened and try to become instrumental in terror attacks in Kashmir – a region under Indian control where there is a lot of indigenous political unrests underway.
India also perceives Afghan Taliban as a highly anti-India force. Indian officials have been visiting Tehran and Moscow recently after US withdrawal was announced in a bid to muster support against the threat of rise of Sunni militancy and terror in Afghanistan.
Reportedly, Taliban representatives were also present in Moscow and Tehran when Indian officials visited these capitals, indicating that India would be facing a different political situation and might face difficulty in building an anti-Taliban consensus in the regional capitals.
But that doesn’t change India’s perception and strategy of projecting Sunni militancy as a brainchild of Pakistani ISI and making an attempt to build a regional consensus against Pakistan and Afghan Taliban.
2. US withdrawal will pave the way for Pakistan control of Afghanistan
This is India’s second strategic fear that Pakistan will be in a controlling position in the post-withdrawal Afghanistan. The fear stems from perception of Indian officialdom that sees Pakistan’s security apparatus in a position to dominate Sunni militancy and terror emanating from Afghanistan.
Indian government has made massive investment in communications in Afghani- stan in order to ensure that it has access to the landlocked country through Iranian ports, but it also has plans to further access Central Asian oil and Gas rich economies both as markets and suppliers of energy to meet the demands of the fuel thirsty and growing Indian economy.
In this way, Indian strategic planners aimed to undercut Pakistan’s strategic importance. Now with Afghanistan drifting towards a total military control of Taliban, India’s heavy investment in road and communications in Afghanistan are likely to be trashed – or so India officialdom fears.
Indian media and strategic thinkers feel that India has a lot of goodwill among Afghan population. They think that they made the right investment and in the right country, but not at the right time.
In the post-2014 situation, the rise of the Taliban was clearly written on the wall – this was the year when US and western intelligence and diplomatic officials started engaging Afghan Taliban in backchannel talks.
Reports about these engagements started to make headlines in newspapers and media outlets across the world. The Indians simply ignored these reports. It seems they didn’t factor post-US Afghanistan into their future planning for the war torn country.
They continued to pose themselves as the most potent opponent of Islamist militancy and terror. One continuous indication of this advocacy role was reflected in their media and strategic thinkers’ writings and blogs, where they started to put all their eggs in the baskets of American military power, even in south Asian regional politics and in their propaganda efforts against Sunni militancy and terror.
Now that the US has made a deal with the Afghan Taliban, a paragon of Sunni militancy in our region, and has left the region militarily, India has been completely left high and dry.
It will be alone, at least militarily, to feel the heat of remnants of Sunni militancy left in Afghanistan, which, according to Indian fears, could reach their territory within no time.
The US administration is clearly but subtly advising Pakistani security that there is nothing for Pakistan in this situation – that Pakistani security apparatus must not try to exploit the situation.
Anything happening in Afghanistan to Indian interests will impact Pak-US relations – especially as India is not only a symbolic counter to Sunni militancy but also has pretentions to being a counter to possible growth of Chinese interests and presence in Afghanistan. A fact that seems to be strangely missing from the calculus of all sides is that Pakistan will inevitably be the first victim of Sunni militancy if this menace makes an attempt to reach Indian territory.
