India's one chance
Shobori Ganguli in The Pioneer
The recent killing of K Suryanarayana, an Indian engineer, by the Taliban has sparked off a debate on how safe Indians are in Afghanistan, to what extent the Government is responsible for ensuring their security and whether India should actually withdraw from the reconstruction efforts it is currently engaged in. Many suggest the Taliban is on the offensive against India because of the American angle. However, it would be erroneous to believe that Indians are being targeted in retaliation to India's growing proximity to the US and by extension to the Hamid Karzai regime.
It may be recalled that in September 1999, only months after Kargil, Osama bin Laden had called for a jihad against the US and India. This threat predated his devastating 9/11 attack on the US. He declared from Jalalabad that India and the US were his biggest enemies and exhorted like-minded Pakistanis to join his holy war. Interestingly, the threat coincided with the Delhi visit of US State Department's coordinator for counterterror, Michael Sheehan.
Seven years down, the bin Laden mindset is alive and kicking in the deserts of Afghanistan. The US, along with its "most trusted ally" Pakistan, "dismantled" the Taliban and set up Karzai's regime but little did it realise that Karzai's writ would barely run till the outskirts of Kabul, if at all. Recent reports suggest the Taliban is regrouping in southern and eastern Afghanistan where Karzai has no hold. With active aid from Pakistan, it has been on the rise since last March, operating from Quetta in Pakistan from camps sponsored by the ISI.
India, currently on a peacemaking honeymoon with Pakistan, would be fool to believe that Pakistan has renounced its anti-India passion. Bureaucrats cordially meet in the corridors of power in Delhi and Islamabad but the jihadi out there has a sinister agenda with no room for civility.
Suryanarayana's killing, as also M Raman Kutty's murder last November, is an unambiguous message from the Taliban which India can ill-afford to ignore: The Taliban, as also Pakistan, want India out of Afghanistan. Should India heed this message and withdraw? The answer is negative. It is clear why the Taliban and the Pakistani regime do not want India's influence to grow in the interiors of Afghanistan. The roads India is engaged in constructing there symbolise India's access to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and the troubled Pakistani province of Balochistan.
In recent months New Delhi has used Balochistan to beat Islamabad with the same stick the latter uses on Kashmir - suppression of the Balochis' "legitimate right" to independence. With India making literal inroads into south Afghanistan on to the Iran border, the Taliban is genuinely disturbed. This coupled with India's support of the Karzai regime has refuelled the Taliban's hatred for India, a hatred shared by the Musharraf regime.
A section of opinion feels the Government should have negotiated with the Taliban for Kutty's and Suryanarayana's safe release the way it did during the 1999 IC 814 hijacking. However, neither murder can be compared to the hijacking when the Taliban desperately wanted Masood Azhar back and was therefore willing to negotiate. The haste with which Kutty and Suryanarayana were put to death proves that the Taliban has a non-negotiable ultimatum for India this time. It has now renewed its old war against India and its army includes the like-minded Pakistanis bin Laden appealed to way back in 1999.
The question is, why, all of a sudden, have threat levels gone up in recent months when Indian personnel have been involved in reconstruction efforts for the past four years? One, because it has taken the Taliban four years to regroup, with active help from its Pakistani sympathisers. Two, Pakistan is uncomfortable with India's growing access to Balochistan where trouble is spiralling out of Musharraf's control each passing day.
While it is clear that India must not opt out of Afghanistan, there are two issues that need to be addressed immediately. One, the Americans should be told that their war against terror has not been effective enough. That the Taliban has managed to regroup itself proves that apart from establishing Karzai in Kabul, the US has been let down gravely by Pakistan in eliminating terror from Afghanistan's vast tribal belts because America's war against terror failed to comprehend the inherent nature of tribal Afghan society, a significant section of which is under the influence of the militant Taliban.
It is no secret that across the Afghan border, the Taliban enjoys enormous support in Pakistan but Musharraf has done precious little to quell that support since it helps build pressure on India through the Kashmir route. In essence, the two recent killings in Afghanistan are an alarm bell for the so-called coalition against terror to wake up with a fresh strategy because there is an Afghanistan beyond Kabul that is waiting to explode.
Two, the Indian Government must back its reconstruction efforts with a failsafe security system to effectively counter the jihadis' brazen assaults. While it is simple to suggest that India must stop sending its personnel to such a hostile country, it must be remembered that the Afghan route is India's only way to stall Pakistan's search for strategic depth in the region. It must be remembered that the Taliban has not upped its ante against India suddenly. The hostility was never gone.
They were only waiting to attack from a position of strength, which they have in recent months. Knowing the Taliban psyche, India must prepare for more such assaults and put in place, post-haste, a security mechanism that conveys India's firm resolve to remain in Afghanistan. Given that the US has not allowed India to engage in any military cooperation with the Karzai regime lest it upset Islamabad, reconstruction is the only way for India to remain relevant in Afghanistan.
If, under jihadi pressure, India withdraws, history may not give it another chance. The 218 km road it is building to link the main Kandahar-Herat highway to Iran will not only give Afghanistan access to the world beyond, it will also neutralise Pakistani efforts to deny India a transit route to Afghanistan. This is a chance India cannot lose.