India and Afghanistan’s future

With another round of prisoner release it seems the Afghan peace process is indeed inching along. However ridiculous the White House’s plan was to get to this point, which initially included completely sidelining the legitimate Afghan government, things have finally got to the point that perhaps pretty soon the formal end of the war would be clearly within sight. Now all the people involved will try to speed things up for their own reasons. The Taliban have fought long and hard and cannot wait to be back in Kabul. The Kabul government is tired of all the bomb blasts and the killing and would do anything for a fresh start. Regional countries are worried about the spread of IS (Islamic State) in Afghanistan and want to see the government and Taliban on the same page immediately. And the US administration did all this not just to get out of a lost and costly war but also to secure another term for President Trump.

It’s still too soon to tell whether all this is happening in time to affect the US election the way President Trump would like it, but Washington would do well not to forget the essential part that Pakistan played in bringing the Taliban to the table. Initially, according to far too many reports in far too many outlets, the Afghan insurgents weren’t in the mood for a ceasefire. Their field commanders, especially, reckoned they were winning enough land, on a fair enough time table, to win the battle on their own one way or the other. They were continuously winning back land since 2006-07 at least, and came to the table only after considerable effort on the part of Pakistan. Islamabad wants them to remember all this because we got our fingers burnt in the past; when the Americans simply packed up and left after we helped them win the war against the Soviets.

And the Americans will also have to realise, as we told Ambassador Allis Wells recently, that there is no way India will be allowed to snake its way into Afghanistan in the garb of reconstruction assistance, etc. The Afghans, the Taliban, even the Americans know that India’s sole purpose in that country, for many years now, has been ring-fencing Pakistan. And there is no way Pakistan is going to allow this charade to go on once the war is over and Kabul is able to patrol areas close to the Pakistani border successfully; where a few remnants of the insurgents that killed tens of thousands of Pakistanis are still holed up. Simply put, India has no role to play in Afghanistan any longer. *