Thursday, March 27, 2014

India: jostling for geopolitical control in Afghanistan --- Forecasts past the withdrawal of US and British forces in Afghanistan tend to prize fears of violence and instability spilling over into Pakistan, obscuring the country's vital importance to both India and China. -- There is increasing anxiety among stakeholders as US forces prepare for a drawdown in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The international community, including the United States, is still groping in the dark when it comes to Afghanistan’s future. As such, they have somewhat ignored India, which, in fact, will be pivotal in solving the Afghan dilemma. Instead, the west and regional stakeholders have focussed on Pakistan as the major player in post-2014 Afghanistan. -- Pakistan has been accused of supporting the Afghan Taliban and of providing sanctuary to them inside Pakistan in order to maintain strategic depth and influence within Afghanistan. Furthermore, Pakistan has been charged with supporting the Afghan Taliban and their affiliate, the Haqqani network, in order to counter India in Afghanistan, as well as of sending militant groups such as Laskhar-e-Taiba into Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan has denied these accusations. --- In contrast, India, along with Russia, Iran and Tajikistan, has always been a supporter of the anti-Taliban Panjshir-based Northern Alliance, as well as the Tajik-dominated and anti-Pashtun Afghan military. India has provided the Northern Alliance with high-altitude weaponry worth about $8 million, defence advisers to help counter the Taliban, and technicians from the Aviation Research Centre (affiliated with its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing) to repair Soviet-made Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopter gunships. --In the past decade, India has also established more than a hundred sub-consular offices and information desks near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan border, which are suspected of being outposts for Indian intelligence and covert operations. Indian intelligence operatives are believed to be active in the border area of Khost and the Pakistani tribal area of Miranshah with the support of the Afghan Border Security Force, which facilitates their meetings with pro-Afghan dissidents. Islamabad also accuses New Delhi of supporting the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has been wreaking havoc in Pakistan.-- Pakistani apprehensions are indeed valid; Indian intelligence is not idle in Afghanistan. In a video recording of a 2011 speech revealed last year by investigative news website Washington Free Beacon, now US defence secretary Chuck Hagel said: ‘India for some time has always used Afghanistan as a second front, and India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border. And you can carry that into many dimensions.’ --- The largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, are also the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, where over half of the world’s 50 million Pashtuns live, divided as they are by the Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan, therefore, sees itself a major stakeholder in its western neighbour. -- Pakistan contributed more than any country in accommodating Afghan refugees during the 1979-89 Soviet war in Afghanistan and after the Soviet forces withdrawal. It had a devastating impact on the Pakistani economy, and the country’s social fabric was torn asunder because of the influx of Afghans, and subsequently, heroin smuggling and the weaponisation of its urban centres. -- At the same time, Pakistan trained and supported the Afghan mujahideen during the war. These mujahideen groups have developed over time into the Afghan Taliban, and are seen as Pakistan’s proxies in countering the threat India poses to Islamabad’s interests in Afghanistan. -- If there is a civil war in Afghanistan after the US drawdown, Pakistan is highly likely to see an increase in terrorism on its own soil. There is also a possibility that the civil war could spread across the border. Pakistan is still hosting a large number of Afghan refugees, and a further influx could be expected in case of a civil war. -- Afghanistan’s geo-strategic location is another lure for Pakistan and other regional stakeholders. As the gateway to Central Asia, Afghanistan serves as an important energy corridor. Pakistan needs a stable Afghanistan to overcome its own energy crisis. Pakistan has provided landlocked Afghanistan with access to its Karachi port, and the Pakistan-Afghanistan Transit Trade Treaty allows Afghanistan access to the port at Lahore and access to a land route to India. --- Afghanistan’s vast reserves of oil, gas and minerals have attracted the interest of Pakistan and other regional players, including China, not to mention the United States and other Western powers. Afghanistan has the potential to be the ‘Saudi Arabia of lithium’ according to an internal Pentagon memo, with deposits so large they are game changers in the likely competition for resources between Pakistan, India, China and the West in a post-NATO Afghanistan. - MORE, Shazad Ali - Open Democracy, at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/shazad-ali/india-jostling-for-geopolitical-control-in-afghanistan

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