A stable Kabul in India’s interest

Key to India's peace and tranquility is its ability to thwart Taliban's regrouping. If Afghanistan emerges as an epicentre of radical forces then it attracts the flow of similar elements not only from Pakistan but also from beyond. As a friendly and harbinger State, Pakistan then would be in a better position to coordinate its attack on India any day. Here is where India should have taken the lead – in stopping Pakistan from gaining an upper hand in Afghanistan

The threat of ISIS to India should come neither as a surprise nor a shock, given the fact that every such fundamentalist force is bound to target India one day or the other, if it has time and history conspiring together on its behalf.

The 'Caliphate' war being waged on in the Middle East now has still a long way to go before it engulfs more of countries and regions nearby to look towards India. Indian security establishment is not that much worried about the ISIS scenario at present. The threat to India is more from the immediate neighbourhood always.

The terror operatives across the Western border will keep our security forces busy for a long time to come and there is no reason why they would not do so, too. After all, there is a significant improvement in their position now with their political establishment breathing a bit easy compared to the previous years.

The post 9/11 scenario has changed and the US and other Western countries are more than willing to do business with Pakistan now. The Sino-Pak friendship is blooming and the Afghan theatre has changed beyond general expectations in the last three years. In between, India has somewhere lost its line and is struggling to maintain it toe-hold in a region that has remained a potentially explosive arena since long.

This precisely is the reason why India should be more worried about the immediate neighbours that are far superior to the ISIS groupings elsewhere. The Taliban theatre across the border could see players coming together under any canopy to attack India as political differences between Pakistan and Afghanistan keep melting away faster than the glaciers in the Climate-change conditions. Let us make no mistake about it.

Key to India's peace and tranquility is its ability to thwart Taliban's regrouping. If Afghanistan emerges as an epicentre of radical forces then it attracts the flow of similar elements not only from Pakistan but also from beyond. As a friendly and harbinger State, Pakistan then would be in a better position to coordinate its attack on India any day. Here is where India should have taken the lead – in stopping Pakistan from gaining an upper hand in Afghanistan.

This failure of India has got largely to do with the America's failed strategy in Afghanistan. India had always wanted an Afghan-led solution to the process of reintegration of Taliban for the peace and stability of the region. But, the ground reality has always been that it's Pakistan that is central to such an exercise and without its support nothing transpires there.

The limitations that America faced in Afghanistan in any reconciliation effort are no different from that of India. The concerns of our defence experts over India's weakened bargaining position are genuine. The link between the Taliban and al-Qaeda cannot be wished away. The graph of violence in Afghanistan is drawn mostly by the Haqqani group of North Waziristan, the Quetta Shura and the Karachi Shura that has emerged in the past five years.

All these are believed to be under the control of Pakistan ISI. Sadly, India does not have any say with these groups and if it has over some groups, let us note that those groups are 'weakened Taliban who have given up violence.’ Eliminating Taliban depends on neutralizing the al-Qaeda and vice versa. But India's unqualified support to the Karzai government in the past distanced it from its important Northern allies in Afghanistan.

Despite its developmental work in Pashtun dominated areas, it could gain not many friends due to Karzai Government's corruption and its unpopularity. One problem for India has always been that the West – whenever it sought to pull out of Afghanistan – always preferred a calender-based approach rather than a solution-based or situation-based approach. Against this background, India should have taken a lead in the return of Taliban but its fears about the unknown made it politically stumble.

A development that offers a glimmer of hope is the India's active engagement with other countries in the region now-a-days. It is important to make all these countries realise that economic development of the South Asian region as well the business interests of several countries here depend upon the peace and stability of Afghanistan.

Independent approach by each of these countries to the Afghanistan problem has forced the latter to seek comfort in the embrace of Pakistan. This has also made other countries realise that Afghanistan could not become an extension of the military establishment of Rawalpindi as explained by the Defence experts earlier.

The Union Shipping Minister, Nitin Gadkari, recently signed an MoU with Iran for the expansion of Chabahar port expansion project. The denial of access to Afghanistan land routes by Pakistan does not affect us much with this MoU now. This project and India's consistently good relations with Iran would give us access to the four major cities of Afghanistan in future (Herat, Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharief).

This port would also be India's gateway to Eurasia and Central Asia which are actively being engaged now. Here's where India needs to think and seek out of the box solutions. If we cannot deal with Pakistan's designs directly, then the best option would be to act through countries like Iran and other Central Asian nations. Coordinated efforts with these countries in roping in Afghanistan would neutralise Pak's Taliban-alQaeda plans to a great extent.

After all, Afghanistan has vast natural resources like coal, copper, iron ore, lithium, uranium, rare earth elements, chromite, gold, zinc, talc, barites, sulphur, lead, marble, precious and semi-precious stones, natural gas, and petroleum. In 2010, the US and the Afghan government officials estimated that the untapped mineral deposits located in 2007 by the US Geological Survey are worth between $900 billion and $3 trillion.

China too, like others, has an eye on this more than any other country. With the help of Pakistan it would like to play a lead role in this country. But, China would be more interested in protecting its economic interests in the region than seeking peace between Pakistan and India. Hence, it is in India's interest that it evolve and sustains its role in the region and use the same to prevent coming together of the fundamentalist forces in the region.

Nothing could be accidental with Pakistan in relation to terror. If the latest ISIS threat to India had a Pakistan connection (the note said to have originated from Pakistan) and there are occasional citings of the ISIS flags in the Kashmir valley and on the PoK region, there could always be a design to the same. It is all part of the Pakistan's proxy-war strategy. Remember, the entire Kargil scene was waged using such a ploy.

If it is going to use ISIS name to use Qaeda-Taliban combine against India, no one need be surprised. As Dr Manmohan Singh often used to say we cannot choose our neighbours. India would do well to deal with Pakistan separately from Afghanistan and the matrix need not include both together. Peace and stability in Afghanistan is a must for preventing the ISIS situations - even fake ones - across the border.