A Regional Dimension: Pakistan & India - Rahul Roy-Chaudhury
For Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, India, there can be no ‘exit strategy’ from Afghanistan, unlike the west. Both countries have long-term interests in Afghanistan. But, their strained bilateral relationship and mutual suspicions over each other’s activities in Afghanistan have led to conflicting priorities and rivalry and competition for influence in Afghanistan.This has been exacerbated by the absence of any official bilateral dialogue on Afghanistan. Whereas Delhi is reluctant to engage exclusively with Islamabad in such a dialogue, Islamabad appears reluctant to raise India’s prominence in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s advantage vis-à-vis India is its geographical contiguity with Afghanistan, resulting in strong and deep interests in the country. It is Afghanistan’s principal transit provider and largest trading partner. But, geography is also a source of friction, with bilateral relations being strained for the most part. The border is contested and porous, and straddled by sizeable ethnic and Baloch communities. Pakistan is widely held to provide sanctuary and support to the Afghan Taliban’s Quetta shura and the Haqqani terror network to carry out cross-border attacks in Afghanistan, even as it wages a massive counter-insurgency campaign against the local Taliban on its side of the border. This has led to an intense ‘blowback’ within Pakistan, with 5,000 Pakistani security forces and 30,000 civilians killed.
With the quest for a political settlement with the ‘Taliban’ in Afghanistan gaining momentum, Islamabad’s primary strategic interests now appear to be to ‘facilitate’ a political ‘end game’ in its favour in Afghanistan, while ensuring that arch-adversary India’s presence and influence is reduced, and the ‘worst-case’ outcomes for Pakistan – that of a civil war or Pushtun irredentism - are pre-empted. But, the deterioration of Islamabad’s relations with Washington, following the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, has complicated this scenario. Moreover, for Pakistan, India remains the principal existential threat to its security, despite ‘home-grown’ domestic security concerns. Pakistan perceives India’s presence and influence in Afghanistan as a deliberate attempt to ‘encircle’ it. India’s diplomatic missions in Afghanistan are accused of carrying out clandestine operations in the restive province of Balochistan and the tribal areas, claims strongly rejected by Delhi.
Meanwhile, INDIA’S geographical disadvantage vis-à-vis Afghanistan - with which it shares no border – results in far lesser stakes than Pakistan but provides for greater opportunities for its ‘soft power’ in Afghanistan. This includes a $2 billion programme for the civil reconstruction and development of Afghanistan, making it the largest regional donor with significant Indian influence in Afghanistan.
India’s interests in Afghanistan are also predominantly strategic - to prevent the return of hard-core Taliban rule in Afghanistan which could permit safe havens for terror attacks and the spread of jihadi violence in India, alongside strengthening governance in Afghanistan. But, since 2007-08 India has also become increasingly concerned over Pakistan’s role against Indian interests in Afghanistan – including the planning of the July 2008 and October 2009 suicide car bomb attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul, strongly rejected by Islamabad - perceiving this as an attempt to force India to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Yet, it is not inevitable that Pakistan and India need to be locked into an unending cycle of rivalry in Afghanistan. The possibility of both governments taking ‘unilateral’ initiatives in an attempt to alleviate each other’s suspicions and concerns over each other’s activities – and thereby preventing any future confrontation - may already, tentatively, be under way:
PAKISTAN:
-
Pakistan army chief Kayani’s reported comments seeking ‘enduring peace based on a stable environment’ in Afghanistan significantly omitted the traditional reference to a ‘friendly Afghanistan’. This has been interpreted by the Pakistani strategic community that Pakistan needs Afghanistan to be ‘peaceful’ not just vis-à-vis India, but for Pakistan’s own domestic stability and security.
-
Pakistan has also withdrawn its opposition to India’s participation in the international conference on Afghanistan in Turkey later this year, after having vetoed its participation in the conference last year. Significantly, Islamabad made no official comment on India’s recently bolstered economic package for Afghanistan.
-
Two years ago, Pakistan also withdrew six divisions of army troops from the border with India to carry out counter-insurgency operations against Al Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban in its tribal areas.
-
Moreover, the Pakistani security establishment clearly does not exercise the degree of influence over the Afghan Taliban that it would perhaps have liked.
There is therefore now greater realisation that it is not in Islamabad’s interest for the Afghan Taliban to seize power in Kabul as this could set up a model of success for the Pakistan Taliban dedicated to fighting the Pakistan state since late 2007.
INDIA:
-
The Indian government has made it clear that it has no intention of deploying army troops or military trainers in Afghanistan, which would clearly be seen as a provocative move by Islamabad.
-
No new major Indian construction projects have started in the past two-three years, resulting in the reduction of paramilitary troops protecting Indian nationals.
-
Indian officials in the Jalalabad and Kandahar consulates increasingly find themselves ‘hunkered and bunkered’ in view of an increasingly hostile security environment; a reduction in their staff may already be happening.
A bolstering of these ‘unilateral’ initiatives by both Islamabad and Delhi could well lead to an informal official dialogue on Afghanistan to alleviate mutual concerns over each other’s objectives and activities while providing a degree of mutual transparency.Moreover, both countries would also benefit greatly from helping Afghanistan emerge as an economic hub linking south and central Asia. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project may well one day become a new ‘Silk Route'. All these developmentsneed to be further encouraged by the international community.
