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When the Americans go home
Gautam Adhikari,Jan 11, 2011, 12.00am IST
WASHINGTON: Change may be afoot in the US-Pakistan relationship. If carried out as recently reported, a new US approach may prove to be a turning point in the nine-year-old Afghan conflict. It may even bring a semblance of peace and stability to the region in the medium term. But New Delhi must watch the developments closely.
The Washington Post reported last week that the Obama administration would give Pakistan more military, intelligence and economic support after assessing that the US could not afford to alienate Pakistan, a precariously perched nuclear armed state and an indispensible ally in the Afghan conflict. In arriving at that assessment, the White House rejected proposals made by military commanders who, after losing patience with Pakistan's refusal to go after the Afghan Taliban, recommended that the US deploy ground forces to raid the insurgents' safe havens inside Pakistan.
The idea is to forge a regional peace with Pakistan's cooperation. Joe Biden, the US vice president, will be in Islamabad soon to explain the new approach, which aims for a political solution to the Afghan conflict. The US has realised that the war cannot be won without the Pakistani army wiping out the shelter and support the ISI provides the Taliban insurgents. Since that won't happen, why not buy peace?
The Obama administration faces mounting domestic pressure somehow to bring about a conclusion to its involvement in Afghanistan. Public opinion is now clearly against the war. A presidential election is due in 2012. President Barack Obama would like to show visible progress in Afghanistan by then.
If General Ashfaq Kayani agrees to cooperate with the new US approach after extracting all the goodies he can from the deal, the AfPak region might in fact witness some stability and apparent peace in the medium term. The Pashtun regions of Afghanistan will be effectively under Taliban control with the ISI promising to keep its wards on a leash; Kabul can have a token Afghan government while various warlords continue to manage the rest of the country.
The remaining al-Qaida biggies, who are all inside Pakistan and not in Afghanistan, can be quietly shipped off to Yemen or whichever sanctuary money can buy. The Pakistani army, in perennial search of 'strategic depth' against India, will have got what it wanted and the region's war-weary face might acquire a patina of peace.
In other words, Pakistan's army has the US over a barrel. General Kayani and his cohorts know well that the Americans want to leave the region without appearing to lose face. And he is aware that Washington is acutely nervous about an unstable Pakistan that has a nuclear capability within possible reach of terrorists.
Attempts at democratising and de-radicalising Pakistan have so far failed. The recent assassination of a liberal governor of Punjab merely underscores that reality. As India knows well and as the Americans have apparently accepted, the only source of stability in Pakistan is the military. Or, to put it another way, there can be no peace within Pakistan or in the region unless the Pakistani army agrees to ensure it.
But where does the new US approach, if implemented and successful over the next couple of years, leave the region as a whole? And where does it place India?
The AfPak region, for better or for worse, will somewhat resemble a status quo ante bellum. In other words, it won't be all that different from what prevailed in the decade preceding the outbreak of war in 2001. This time, the ISI-backed Taliban will effectively control a large part of Afghanistan while a weak Kabul will go along with the arrangement as long as it can persuade the Taliban not to take over the whole country. Pakistan will once again obtain space outside its borders to shelter radical Taliban as well as other potential insurgents. An international force will continue to guard Kabul while the Americans can see it all in the driving mirror as they depart.
Such a scenario, if it indeed comes about, will not be very different from what Robert Blackwill, a former US ambassador to India, has been suggesting for a while, his latest articulation coming in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. Which is that Afghanistan be partitioned de facto; the US gets out of a mess; al-Qaida goes away somewhere; Pakistan is left to its devices; and AfPak moves out of prime time TV.
As for India, there's little to do but wait and watch while weighing our options. We must keep looking over our shoulder at the looming presence of China, with which we can't see eye to eye in many matters, from unsettled borders to its unsettling camaraderie with our hostile neighbour. And we have to watch every move by a Pakistani military that we know needs an India bogey to justify its hold on power.
In a disturbed neighbourhood, we probably have to fend for ourselves. In case there is trouble, can we rely on support from newfound partners like the US when their national interest and domestic pressure call for a quick exit from the region? Who knows. Maybe it's time to put together a few wise heads to rethink policy options.
( The writer is a FICCI-EWC fellow at East West Centre in Washington DC.)
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