{"id":223111,"date":"2021-10-13T13:01:35","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T07:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=223111"},"modified":"2021-10-18T02:48:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-17T21:18:47","slug":"afghanistan-iii-india-searches-for-a-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/afghanistan-iii-india-searches-for-a-role\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghanistan III – India Searches For A Role"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/p><\/div>\n

(Continued from Afghanistan I<\/a> and Afghanistan II<\/a>)<\/p>\n

India intervened in Afghanistan on the wrong side of history \u2013 on the side of America and its allies\u2019 new colonialism \u2013 under the 2011 Afghan-India Strategic Agreement<\/a>. Neither the Taliban nor the Afghan people are likely to forget this myopic geopolitical tactic anytime soon; and New Delhi\u2019s schemes to undermine Islamabad\u2019s influence in Kabul is unlikely to go down well with the Taliban who are solidly backed by Pakistan\u2019s ISI.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse, India is a member of the QUAD, a four-country alliance led by the US that includes Australia and Japan; it began unsteadily in 2005, consolidated by 2017<\/a> and is hyped as the \u201cAsian NATO<\/a>\u201d in the Indo-Pacific Region to \u201ccontain\u201d rising China. By joining the QUAD, India in effect has endorsed America pursuing \u201cFull Spectrum Dominance<\/a>\u201d \u2013 official-speak for good old Imperialism \u2013 in keeping with the \u201cStrategic Partnership\u201d forged under the 2008 Indo-U.S. Nuclear Agreement<\/a>; the US Senate reinforced it in 2018 by passing the $716 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).<\/p>\n

As we know, there is no free lunch in life. The years from 2005 to 2018 are roughly the same period, beginning in 2001 to be precise, when the US sank deeper into the Afghan quagmire. The \u201cStrategic Partner\u201d India was sucked into the war on the side of the US.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan New Delhi had many irons in the fire. First it schemed to push Islamabad back by debilitating its drive for Strategic Depth; second it sought to arrest the seeping Chinese influence; third, it buttressed successive US satraps in Kabul with \u201csoft power\u201d to fortify Washington\u2019s hold on Kabul. India is America\u2019s Partner in the QUAD that challenges China in the South China Sea and, simultaneously, is a member of the China-led SCO<\/a> (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) that confronts US-led NATO.<\/p>\n

New Delhi dignified the foreign muddle (not policy) as \u201cStrategic Hedging<\/a>\u201d. But a former Foreign Secretary was forthright: \u201cwhat we are witnessing is strategic paralysis<\/a>\u2026India has become a bystander in Afghanistan\u201d, unable to open a dialogue with the incoming Taliban regime. New Delhi does not have a policy of not negotiating with non-State groups but self-consciously prefers to deal with apparently lawfully constituted governments. The Foreign Secretary sarcastically decried New Delhi\u2019s foreign policy mandarins as \u201cwise men\u201d and lamented the External Affairs Minister\u2019s allusion to Taliban\u2019s military successes while categorically stating (in the Rajya Sabha, July 29) that India \u201cwould never accept any outcome which is decided by force\u201d. However New Delhi is not shy to cohabit with Washington, which has used unparalleled force to decide political outcomes in Afghanistan during the past two decades.<\/p>\n

Moreover, New Delhi enthusiastically recognised Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani\u2019s puppet regimes the \u201cinfidel\u201d US-led NATO occupation forces installed in Kabul, although it is blindingly obvious that \u201celections\u201d, stage-managed by an alien, invading army to legitimate its client rulers, are entirely fraudulent. They had no credibility among most Afghan people except for the minuscule urbanites who relied on the regime and its allied mostly foreign-funded NGOs for their survival, and whose bleats are magnified by the Western and Indian corporate media.<\/p>\n

New Delhi\u2019s resistance to a dialogue with the Taliban is an outcome of the practical difficulty of hunting with the (US\/NATO) hounds and running with the (Taliban) hare, by applying \u201csoft power\u201d \u2013 constructing a parliament building, investing in education and promoting welfare programs and so on \u2013 that was expected to somehow please both sides. It has also deeper roots than a preference for the lofty Gandhian ideal of non-violence.<\/p>\n

New Delhi\u2019s approach is overwhelmingly influenced by the history of reliance on ideological tools in India\u2019s mainstream anti-colonial movement against British rule. It eschewed armed struggle (except Subhas Chandra Bose\u2019s short-lived Indian National Army) and, instead, emphasised the moral dimension, for example, in the Quit India Agitation<\/a>. Mahatma Gandhi crafted the Agitation to focus on individual<\/em> civil disobedience employing the weapon of Satyagraha<\/em>, which was meant to civilize the oppressor, meaning here the British colonial masters, and assist as Gandhi visualized the \u201cOrderly British Withdrawal” from India (rather than flee in disorderly retreat as Americans did later in Vietnam and are now doing in Afghanistan).<\/p>\n

The Agitation was limited to non-violent acts of defiance: fasting to death, self immolation and long marches \u2013 acts which aimed to stiffen the British rulers\u2019 moral fibre. But the British masters missed the subservient Indian political elite\u2019s subtle point about establishing moral high ground; they swiftly crushed the Agitation by mass arrests (more than 100,000), public floggings and shootings and briefly imprisoning Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party leadership.<\/p>\n

However, over time London ascertained through its travelling Missions for constitutional reform that the Congress Party \u2013 founded by a senior British colonial bureaucrat A.O.Hume<\/a> to politically organize the Anglicized Indian elite who ruled on Britain\u2019s behalf \u2013 merely sought to rule directly and will protect British economic and strategic interests. Thereafter London cheerfully made arrangements to place the Congress leadership in charge of India (and Muslim League leaders in Pakistan).<\/p>\n

In essence, India\u2019s freedom movement did not seek to defeat Britain\u2019s military power and, therefore, it\u2019s rarely regarded as a war of liberation, for example, fought by Bangladesh\u2019s Mukti Bahini<\/em><\/a>. As a result India\u2019s independence came not from winning in battle but through London\u2019s benevolent Transfer of Power, which, crucially prevented the Indian political class from learning vital lessons in realpolitik<\/em> that are forged in the crucible of war. It\u2019s no surprise then that Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru acquiesced to the arch British colonialist Lord Mountbatten taking over as the first Head of State (Governor-General) of the new Dominion of India.<\/p>\n

In the absence of a military victory, Indian historians imagined independence was \u201cwon\u201d largely by the strength of moral persuasion. That legacy deeply ingrained and entrenched a self-righteous thinking in the formulation of India\u2019s State policy, especially of foreign policy.<\/p>\n

A case in point is Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi\u2019s intervention in Sri Lanka under the 1987 Indo-Lanka Accord<\/a>. Rajiv Gandhi categorically (and unnecessarily) announced that the Indian military will be withdrawn at President J.R.Jayawardene\u2019s request \u2013 a stance that revealed the South Block\u2019s clouded thinking, which oscillated between pressing its military advantage to the hilt on the one hand and striving to preserve India\u2019s assumed moral stature on the other. In contrast American realpolitik<\/em> adopts moral postures \u2013 for example, imposing democracy or highlighting human rights in Iraq \u2013 fully conscious they are merely instruments to advance US interests and would be discarded when convenient.<\/p>\n

The Indian High Commissioner took great pains to explain at an informal dinner in Colombo, a week or two after the Accord, that Jayawardene appreciated India\u2019s principled commitment to withdraw its forces at Sri Lanka\u2019s request and confidently predicted the President would in turn accommodate New Delhi\u2019s interests, by which he meant the issues spelled out in the Annexures to the 1987 Accord. That, we suspected, was more diplomat-speak and less an analysis.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless we interjected that among countries bordering India, Sri Lanka is the only one where the dominant elite does not speak an Indian language and therefore its political culture and value system are beyond the ken of the South Block; and we clarified that the Sinhalese political class will incrementally sabotage the Accord, imposed under Indian military occupation and widely viewed by Sinhalese as symbolic of national humiliation. The High Commissioner appeared unconvinced but the subsequent tragic history of the Accord\u2019s (non)implementation is well known.<\/p>\n

Two consequences flow from New Delhi\u2019s lack of mindfulness and an impractical view of politics. First, the worldview of India\u2019s political class is hobbled by a nebulous moral position, which, therefore, prevents that class from recognising and honing the realpolitik<\/em> it is actually practicing in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Second, the willed blindness to realpolitk<\/em> often led to acute misjudgements and, counterproductive actions<\/a>. For instance, unaware of the deeply anti-Indian mindset of the Sinhalese political class, New Delhi forfeited its leverage \u2013 the LTTE \u2013 by providing military assistance to the Sinhalese armed forces to decimate the Tamil LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). New Delhi\u2019s expectation that Colombo would thereafter gratefully take its subordinate place within India\u2019s sphere of influence was nothing more than a rosy mirage that shattered as China rapidly made inroads into the Island.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless Indian strategic planners apparently anticipated a favourable reception from Ghani\u2019s regime in Kabul, believing their exercise of \u201csoft power\u201d and the popularity of Bollywood films have endeared India in the hearts of many Afghans. The belief may contain a kernel of truth though a Taliban spokesman alleged India used \u201chard power\u201d too, when Indian planes bombed government buildings and a hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the first indication that all is not well surfaced when US President Donald Trump excluded President Ghani \u2013 a \u201cfriend\u201d of India \u2013 from the February 2020 Doha Talks between the US administration and the Taliban leadership. The Agreement<\/a> between the two for US withdrawal hung Ghani and the Northern Alliance out to dry.<\/p>\n

The cyberspace is humming with Indian strategic planners\u2019 inevitably contradictory assessment of New Delhi\u2019s complicated position. In their attempts to negotiate the self-inflicted political minefield they cleaved into the \u201cBe Active\u201d and \u201cBe Patient\u201d schools<\/a> before the Taliban rolled into Kabul on15 August. Thereafter New Delhi appears mired in a \u201cdamned if you do\u201d and \u201cdamned if you don\u2019t\u201d dilemma, juggling factions within the interim regime, remnants of the Northern Alliance and perhaps sections among the Taliban.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile HRW (Human Rights Watch) has urged an investigation into Taliban\u2019s human rights violations<\/a>. Beijing on the other hand has invited UNHRC to examine violations of human rights by foreign armies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The general belief is that the Taliban regime is short of financial and technical resources in the war-ravaged economy, on which the US-manipulated IMF has put the financial squeeze. To make matters worse, the Central Bank has been drained of its meagre dollar reserves before<\/em> Taliban took power<\/a>, apparently by fleeing Ashraf Ghani.<\/p>\n

When the Taliban announced the intention to re-activate<\/a> the TAPI project the US energy majors smacked their lips, confident that the new regime bereft of money and technology would soon cave in to their demands. President Biden\u2019s administration freezing the Afghan Central Bank\u2019s New York reserves increased Taliban\u2019s vulnerability. The US administration piled on the pressure: it despatched CIA Director William Burns to meet Abdul Ghani Baradar<\/a> in Kabul, before the Taliban leader could hardly rearrange the furniture inside the presidential palace.<\/p>\n

Washington has not disclosed the reason for the hasty visit; however we surmise that US intelligence is back in Kabul to arm-twist Taliban to approve the re-entry of American investors in TAPI and mineral extraction. If the Taliban resist, the CIA is likely to wield the big stick: as before, unleash torrid media propaganda about Taliban \u201catrocities\u201d and \u201coppressed women\u201d, of which the CIA-indoctrinated Taliban have an atrocious record, and spur anti-Taliban groups mainly within the Northern Alliance. Disturbingly, the CIA Director had \u201cvisited Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Mossad director David Barnea earlier<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Taliban, however, appear to have a range of sponsors to choose, from US and allied investors in the West, Qatar and UAE in West Asia and the SCO in the East, in which Afghanistan enjoys Observer Status.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless the horizon is not free from dark clouds. India is facing China on three fronts: in Afghanistan, in northern India along the McMahon Line and across the South China. Sea. It leans on the extra-regional power US in its confrontation with China rather than evolve a regional dialogue within<\/em> South Asia that could address China\u2019s interests. In contrast the smaller ASEAN countries have not bought into the QUAD and intend to dialogue directly with China.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly Beijing reacted to ratchet up the pressure on India; it issued revised maps in 2014 that include India\u2019s Arunachal Pradesh as China\u2019s South Tibet<\/a>, seemingly more to shock Indian military planners to their senses rather than covet territory.<\/p>\n

New Delhi is left on the side-lines clutching at straws for now in Afghanistan. As the new Taliban government settles in, a delegation comprising Special Representatives from China, Russia and Pakistan<\/a> is in the forefront recalibrating their cooperation with Kabul. Tellingly India is not included in the delegation while its entanglement in the QUAD has vitiated relations with key ASEAN nations. Peace in South Asia and perhaps beyond crucially depends on New Delhi\u2019s maturity to negotiate directly with China to structure a new Asian Order.<\/p>\n

* Dr Sachithanandam Sathananthan received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge. He was Visiting Research Scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of International Studies, New Delhi, taught at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi University and is an award winning filmmaker.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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