The Lengthening Shadow over Kabul

The recent spate of exposures in Western media about Pakistan’s heightened ambition of expanding its “srategic depth” in Afghanistan, which was severely dented in the post-9/11 period, serves to strengthen the traditional skepticism about the long-term efficacy of a search for peace in South Asia.

The “trust deficit” between themselves that both India and Pakistan aspire to reduce through renewed dialogue is being expanded quite effectively at this very moment by Islamabad’s well-planned and meticulously executed manoeuvres in Afghanistan.

It is well-documented that ever since the USA announced its plan to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by July 2011, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate has been noticeably active in expanding its influence among the Afghan Taliban.

This is sought to be achieved by a two-pronged strategy; one is to assist the Taliban in fighting the American and international forces and the other is to attack Indian interests and personnel with the ultimate objective of eliminating the Indian presence altogether from the post-USA Afghanistan.

The Western media reports have merely served to confirm the well-founded knowledge in both New Delhi and Kabul of Islamabad’s determi-nation not merely to hold on to but also dig deeper into the country.

There is no further intelligence about this, but there is little doubt that the recent discovery of the US $ 1 trillion worth of minerals in Afghanistan will serve to enthuse the ISI-Taliban nexus in its quest for capturing the country.

For the first time, previously undetected reserves of lithium, iron, gold, niobium, cobalt and several other minerals—their extent not yet measured but scattered all over the country— have been found in a preliminary survey by the United States Geological Survey. The US media has reported that lithium deposits may prove to be as large as Bolivia’s which presently is known to hold the largest deposits. The light-weight lithium goes into manufacturing of batteries of every use, and is expected to be in growing demand for the manufacture of electric and hybrid cars.

Iron and copper deposits are also expected to prove to be enormous. Chinese and Western firms are already in the field competing for contracts to explore these deposits.

The Karzai Government is naturally enthused by these geological findings and rightly emphasises Afghanistan’s legitimate aspirations for benefiting from them. President Hamid Karzai, for example, said earlier this year that the deposits, when fully developed, could help his war-ravaged country become one of the “richest” in the world. The Ministry of Mines and Industries said that the natural resources of Afghanistan would play a magnificent role in its economic growth.

Looking positively at this significant development, one could anticipate a world-wide interest among developed nations and their multinational firms to be involved deeply in the development of the country. In other words, Afghanistan should logically see growing international financial, industrial and commercial presence within its territory.

However, a wide-scale international economic involvement would naturally require a stable congenial environment; in other words, it has to be a completely different Afghanistan from what the world has seen so far in the post-Taliban period in order to qualify for large-scale financial, industrial and commercial investment.

The rudest fact today, nearly nine years after the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine was eliminated, is that the Taliban are very much back and destructively active in the country, Not even the Americans are claiming any more that this terrorist outfit is on the verge of elimination. On the contrary, Western observers are quite candid in acknowledging that the group has bounced back with surprising strength and success.

However, what may eventually motivate international business to get more intimately involved with huge investments is the ability of the legitimate government based in Kabul to successfully establish its writ all over the country, for the present and future mineral explorations must necessarily take place all over the country, including the Kandahar province presently witnessing a steadily growing Taleban presence.

•

WHEN the US decision to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in a year’s time is viewed against this background, and Pakistan’s reported decision to assist the Afghan Taliban as part of its “official policy” for the ISI is taken into account, the inherent fault-lines in the sill unfolding situation cannot be glossed over.

Two recent Western media reports have attracted wide attention in this context. A study by the London School of Economics, while reporting on the ISI’s policy determination, has claimed that the level of Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban is “very extensive” and on a much larger scale than previously regarded. Based on interviews with Taliban field commanders and Western security experts, the study avers there is a strong case to believe that the ISI “orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign”. As the provider of sanctuary and substantial financial, military and logistical support to the insurgency, the ISI appears to have strong strategic and operational influence—reinforced by coercion.

The study goes on to claim that Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari recently personally assured some Afghan Taliban leaders lodged in Pakistan jails that they had his government’s full support. This particular claim and the study in its entirety in fact have been denied angrily by the Zardari Government.

Nevertheless, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the most upcoming Pakistan-based terrorist organisation, is also in the field, if one could go by a mid-June report in the New York Times. This report says that the Pakistani group has expanded its operations inside Afghanistan, setting up new training camps with an aim of hitting Afghan, international and Indian interests. The newspaper said: “The intent seems to be to retain ties to those who might one day return to power in Afghanistan or exercise influence there. (LeT’s) inroads in Afghanistan provide a fresh indication of its growing ambition to confront India even beyond Kashmir, for which Pakistan’s military and intelligence services created the group as a proxy force decades ago.”

The report revealed that in a recent campaign in the eastern province of Nangarhar the US-Afghan Special Operation Force killed nine militants and captured one, all of whom were found out to have been Pakistanis. Significantly, the majority of them were discovered to be members of the LeT, lending further credence to the assumption among Western governments that Pakistan is systematically trying to fill up the void created by the near-decimation of the Al-Qaeda by facilitating a large role for the LeT. The major attack on the Indian embassy last year and the more recent assaults on guest houses in Kabul frequented by Indians, which both the Indian and Afghan governments attributed at the time to Pakistani operatives, were later confirmed to have been indeed so by the Americans.

The question is if it is possible at all to divorce Pakistan’s India and Afghanistan policies from each other and if they are not inter-related. Can Pakistan pursue a policy of normalising its relations with India without any reference to its interests in Afghanistan? For that matter, can India successfully divorce its Pakistan policy from its Afghanistan policy?

The author, a veteran journalist, is an analyst of South and Central Asian affairs.