South Asia
Jul 10, 2008
India caught in the Taliban myth
By M K Bhadrakumar
The horrendous terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday has no
precedents. Never has the mission there been attacked in this fashion - not
even during the darkest periods of the civil war in the 1980s and 1990. Nor has
any other diplomatic mission in Kabul been so targeted in the current phase of
the civil war that began with the United States invasion in 2001.
The suicide attack claimed the lives of 41 people, with more than 140 injured.
Among the dead were Indian Defense Attache Brigadier R D Mehta, diplomat
Venkateswara Rao and two Indian paramilitary guards.
Unsurprisingly, Indian opinion makers have been swift in depicting
the terrorist act as a moral evil, which it probably is. All the same, it is
necessary to draw a line while presenting what happened as a kind of morality
play of good versus evil. The danger is when the narrative begins depicting a
moral universe where we are hated solely on account of our altruistic motives
and intrinsic goodness.
Whereas, the reality is that we live in savage times where realpolitik and not
morality often enough happens to be the guiding force inciting our monstrous
enemies. A need arises, therefore, to take a more honest look at any hidden
sewers that may exist. Such an exercise cannot and should not in any way
detract from the total condemnation that the terrorists deserve. But it will
serve an important purpose in so far as we do not fall into a false sense of
innocence.
Even the death of a sparrow is a tragedy. Too many Indian lives are being lost
in Afghanistan. The death of a brigadier, certainly, is a huge loss to India's
armed forces. It is about time to ask questions why this is happening. First
and foremost, do we comprehend the complexities of the Afghan situation?
The primary responsibility for this task lies with the Indian mission in Kabul,
which should assess the situation correctly and report to Delhi. The Ministry
of External Affairs will be the best judge to decide whether there have been
any lacunae in putting in place the underpinnings of India's Afghan policy.
After all, a distinct pattern is emerging in the recent past. Is it mere
coincidence?
Each time an Indian life was lost, top officials in Delhi reiterated their
resolve not to be deterred by terrorists. A high-level meeting of officials
ensued to take stock of the security of Indian personnel in Afghanistan. Apart
from diplomatic and other staff, several thousand Indians are involved in
reconstruction work in the country.
We then moved on. But does that approach suffice? Is anyone listening out there
in the Hindu Kush? Isn't a comprehensive re-look of policy warranted? Something
has gone very wrong somewhere. The government owes an explanation.
One thing is clear. The Taliban are a highly motivated movement. They are not
in the business of exhibitionism. Their actions are invariably pinpointed,
conveying some distinguishable political message or the other. This has been so
all along during the past decade. Anyone who interacted with the Taliban would
agree.
Even on the eve of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, they were prepared
to deal, but by then the Gorge W Bush administration was bent on the military
path. In the present case of India's embassy, the terrorist attack was
carefully targeted. Equally, its timing must also bear scrutiny. The overall
fragility of the security situation or the prevailing climate of violence in
Afghanistan alone cannot account for it. India is not part of the tens of
thousands of coalition forces stationed in Afghanistan. But why is India being
singled out? After all, Iran has been no less an "enemy" for the Taliban or
al-Qaeda - or Russia and Uzbekistan for that matter.
The first point is that the Taliban have once again chosen to target Indian
interests, which are located on Afghan soil. They haven't stretched their long
arm to act on Indian soil. Even though India's army chief recently speculated
that Kashmiri militants could have tie-ups with the Taliban or al-Qaeda, such a
link seems highly improbable. (Why there should have been such a speculative
statement at all on a sensitive issue at such a responsible level, we do not
know). The Taliban message is that they have a score to settle with India's
Afghan policy; that it is best settled on Afghan soil; and that they do not
have any hostility toward India as such.
Two, the Taliban have ratcheted up the level of their attacks on Indian
interests. Targeting the Indian chancery makes it a very serious message. It is
unclear whether the Indian defense attache was specifically the target.
Conceivably, he was. If so, the timing of the attack is relevant. India has
sharply stepped up its military-to-military cooperation with Afghanistan. Media
reports indicate that India is training Afghan military personnel and possibly
supplying military hardware to the Afghan armed forces. The Indian authorities
have not cared to deny these reports.
Needless to say, the Taliban would be keeping a close tab. The Taliban have
infiltrated Afghan security agencies and would know the nature of the
India-Afghanistan military cooperation. In any case, in the Kabul bazaar,
nothing remains secret for long. The Taliban seem to have sized up that the
Afghan-Indian "mil-to-mil" cooperation is assuming a cutting edge, and the
resent it, seeing it as unwarranted Indian interference in their country's
internal affairs.
Arguably, India's cooperation is within legitimate parameters. Delhi is dealing
with the duly elected Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, which enjoys
international legitimacy. But such things are never quite that simple in war
zones. It took all the persuasiveness on the part of India's envoys to get the
mujahideen to accept, with the benefit of hindsight, that India's erstwhile
ties with president Mohammad Najibullah's regime in the 1980s were history and
were not directed against the mujahideen but merely signified
government-to-government relations, which were usual.
Again, as India learned at enormous cost, in the ultimate analysis, it became
completely irrelevant that the Indian Peace Keeping Force saga in the mid-1980s
in Sri Lanka began at the insistence of the established government in Colombo
under the leadership at the highest level. The dividing line between the
judicious and injudicious becomes thin when an outsider becomes involved in a
fratricidal strife.
In this particular case, there is an added factor. The Afghan army has
pronounced ethnic fault lines. Ethnic Tajiks account for close to 70% of the
officer corps of the army. So, when India trains Afghan army officers in its
military academies to fight the Taliban - who are a predominantly Pashtun
movement - India is needlessly stepping into a political minefield of explosive
sensitivity. Either India does not comprehend these vicious undercurrents in
Afghan politics or it chooses to deliberately overlook them. In any case, it
demands some serious explanation.
Three, the United Progressive Alliance government in Delhi has incrementally
harmonized its Afghan policy with the US's "war on terror". This is most
unfortunate. India ought to keep a safe distance from the Bush administration's
war against militant Islam. Besides, the US has complicated motives behind its
intervention in Afghanistan - its geostrategy toward Russia and Central Asia,
its agenda of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's expansion as a global
political organization, its crusade against "Islamofascism", etc.
Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh recently revealed in the New Yorker
magazine what was an open secret - Washington has been using Afghanistan as a
base for training and equipping terrorists and planning and executing
subversive activities directed against Iran with a view to speeding up "regime
change" in that country.
India does not share these diabolical US policy objectives and hare-brained
dogmas. But unfortunately, influential sections within the India security
community have labored under the notion that acquiring a sort of frontline
status in the US's "war on terror" in Afghanistan would have tangential gains
with regard to Pakistan. The temptation to harmonize with the US is all the
greater when we see that US-Pakistan security cooperation has come under strain
on account of Islamabad's growing resistance to the American attempt to shift
the locus of the war into the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the tribal areas
within Pakistan that border Afghanistan.
Again, some others in India's strategic community hold a belief that it is time
India began to flex its muscles in its region. Indeed, US think-tankers
routinely encourage their counterparts to believe that India is far too shy and
reticent for a serious regional power in the exercise of its muscle power.
At any rate, there is a widespread perception in the international community -
including former US officials who held responsible positions and even British
statesmen - that Afghanistan is the theater of a proxy war between Pakistan and
India. But we can certainly do without such a proxy war. There are five good
reasons for saying so.
First, it is tragic, immoral and contemptible if India indeed is cynical enough
to overlook the suffering that it would be inflicting on the friendly Afghan
people - who barely eke out a living as it is - by making them pawns in India's
"low intensity" wars with Pakistan. Second, such a proxy war is contrary to
India's broader regional policy, which is to make Pakistan a stakeholder in
friendly relations with India. Third, India would be annoying or alienating the
Pakistani military, which is a crucial segment of the Pakistani establishment.
Fourth, it undercuts the climate of trust and confidence, which is gathering
slowly but steadily in the overall relationship with Pakistan.
Finally, it is plain unrealistic to overlook Pakistan's legitimate interests in
Afghanistan. It would be as unrealistic as to expect that India would sit back
and take with equanimity if it perceived creeping Pakistani influence in the
Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bhutan. (Three top Indian officials recently
visited Colombo to make precisely such a point about trends toward Sri Lanka's
expansion of ties with China and Pakistan.)
Call it "sphere of influence", call it the "Monroe Doctrine" [1], but there are
geopolitical realities that cannot be overlooked. Afghanistan poses fundamental
challenges to Pakistan's territorial integrity and sovereignty. Therefore,
Pakistan is highly sensitive about Afghanistan's external relations. It is
inconceivable that Pakistan would take in its stride any Indian activities in
Afghanistan, which it perceives as threatening its security interests.
(Sophistries apart, Delhi's calculated political decision to maintain
consulates in Jalalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif is a case in
point.) A futile cycle of tit-for-tat will ensue
whereby India and Pakistan would end up bleeding each other.
>From the Indian perspective at least, its national priorities at the present
>crucial juncture of economic growth and development should be very obvious. It
>can do without mindless distractions and extravaganzas. It needs a peaceful
>external environment. China's fascinating example of national priorities is in
>front of India - almost mocking it.
The biggest danger is that in the present climate of euphoria over India's
so-called strategic partnership with the US, Washington may egg Delhi on to a
"proactive" role in Afghanistan. Indeed, this may be happening already to some
extent. India (and China) has been approached by the Bush administration to
send troops to Afghanistan. Understandably, with the Afghan war posing such a
profound dilemma to the US, Washington would be immensely pleased if India,
with its surplus manpower, geared up for a bit of load-sharing in the "war on
terror".
Nothing would be more foolhardy on India's part than to be drawn into the US
stratagem. There cannot be any two opinions that when the chips are down, the
US would know that Pakistan is a fundamentally more valuable ally in
Afghanistan than India ever could aspire to be. Simply put, geography favors
Pakistan, and geography delimits a direct Indian role in Afghanistan.
India can only end up as a doormat for US regional policy. However, there are
disturbing signs that sections of the Indian strategic community, egged on by
the armchair cheerleaders in its media, are raring to go for a bit of action in
the great game. Indeed, the great game in the Hindu Kush is a heady,
exhilarating game. But it is also a high-risk one. It can even end up
tragically, which was what happened to imperial Britain and the Soviet Union -
and quite probably will happen to the US.
It is understandable if India were to retaliate against the Taliban for its
hostile activities towards India. But that is not the case here. The case is
more of the powerful pro-American lobby in India's security community hoping
against hope that somehow or the other a justification could be found for a
raison d'etre for India to get involved in the Afghan war. The easy route is to
cast the Taliban as inimical to India's national security.
Part of the problem is also India's lack of understanding about the phenomenon
of political Islam and its manifestations in its neighborhood. Carnegie scholar
and author of Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy, Fawaz A Gerges,
has tackled the intellectual challenge of disentangling myth from the reality
of Islamism. He came up with some facts to consider: a) Islamism is highly
complex and diverse; the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates which form the
overwhelming majority (over 90%) of religiously political groups embrace
democratic principles and oppose violence; b) Mainstream Islamists have become
unwitting harbingers of democratic transformation in Muslim societies, learning
to make compromises and even rethink some of their absolute positions; c)
Mainstream militants serve as a counterweight to ultra-militants like al-Qaeda;
d) Islamists, like their secular counterparts, are deeply divided among
themselves and the intensity of the
fault lines are very real.
Interestingly, Gerges had this to say about the Taliban: "There is nothing
uniquely 'Islamic' about their internal governing style except the rhetoric and
the symbolism. They have not offered up an original model of Islamic
governance." Thus, once in power in the late 1990s, the Taliban did face a
Herculean task of coping with political reality. If not for their cynical
manipulation in the 1990s by outsiders - the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -
the Taliban would not have been driven into the welcoming arms of al-Qaeda.
Much of the currently perceived threat to regional stability from the Taliban
is a dark illusion that has been exaggerated and distorted. But then India
became trapped by a fear and adversarial perceptions had crystallized by the
late 1990s. India promptly, unconditionally, surrendered the right to question
the myth about the Taliban. Indeed, Taliban functionaries kept conveying to
India directly and through intermediaries that they didn't harbor ill will
toward India to provoke such vehement Indian support for the anti-Taliban
Northern Alliance.
Maybe India overreacted; maybe the searing pain of the blood-letting in Jammu
and Kashmir in the late 1980s and early 1990s percolated into India's thinking;
maybe the specter of Islamic extremism genuinely haunted the country; maybe
Pakistan's hostile manner prompted India to retaliate; maybe the hijack of the
Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in Afghanistan in 1999 and the humiliation
that followed was too much to accept; maybe the destruction of the famed Bamyan
statues in Afghanistan in 2001 was already an affront to India's civilization.
Certainly, one thing led to another.
But 2001 was a cut-off point. India should have stopped in its tracks and
reassessed. The Bonn conference in the winter of 2001 following the invasion of
Afghanistan was the occasion for an ancient country like India to have pointed
out to the world community that there could be no durable peace unless the
vanquished and the defeated party was also brought into the settlement. The
Europeans would have understood. But India's political leadership let the
country down. Instead, India revived belief in its role to battle evil. On the
other hand, if India had plodded through, the myth might have easily fallen
away. And that might have offered a permanent solution to India's Taliban
problem.
Note
1. The Monroe Doctrine is a US doctrine which, on December 2, 1823, said that
European powers were no longer to colonize or interfere with the affairs of the
newly independent nations of the Americas. The United States planned to stay
neutral in wars between European powers and their colonies. However, if later
on, these types of wars were to occur in the Americas, the United States would
view such action as hostile. President James Monroe first stated the doctrine
during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress, a defining
moment in the foreign policy of the United States. Most recently, during the
Cold War, the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (added during the
presidency of Theodore Roosevelt) was invoked as a reason to intervene
militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of communism. - Wikipedia
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service.
His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
With Regards
Abi
