India should Move to Protect its Interests in Afghanistan

(Originally appeared in the 1990s in the Times of India, as published in M. D. Nalapat's book "Indutva", Har-Anand Publications, 1999)

Should the Taliban consolidate its hold over Afghanistan, it will

be bad news for India. At present, the fundamentalists in

Kashmir are using Pakistan as a base for their operations. Now

under US pressure to cease such support, Islamabad may simply

transfer formal responsibility for the Kashmir insurgency to

Kabul. Given that there will not be an extension of the "Turn the

other cheek", policy adopted towards Pakistan, New Delhi will

then have to decide on the methods of retaliation.

In geopolitics as in public health, prevention is better than

cure. While the Najibullah regime, identified with the Soviet

occupiers, was not sustainable among the Afghan people, that of

President Burhanuddin Rabbani is. The only way to prevent

Taliban's consolidation is for New Delhi to declare that it

continues to recognise the Rabbani government, and to give it

assistance to beat back the fundamentalist offensive. Should

India dither and Rabbani’s forces get routed, the ISI will ensure

that the next target is the democratic government that will soon

get formed in Srinagar.

There are excellent legal and moral reasons for such a stand.

While a change of government brought about by democratic

means needs to be accepted, a shift in power brought about by

force is unacceptable. It is indeed remarkable that the very

countries that correctly waged war on Saddam Hussain for

annexing Kuwait are today condoning the Taliban’s recourse to

"Saddam" methods in Afghanistan.

This appears to be less the product of a well-conceived

strategy than one more aberration created by the Pakistan-

centric leadership at the South Asia division of the US state

department. Thanks to such officials, Washington has ignored

the twin holes in its anti-terrorist front caused by Saudi Arabia

and Pakistan. While Iran, Libya and Sudan are sought to be

contained, as yet little has been done about Saudi funding and

Pakistani training of extremists.

New Delhi will need to implement a programme of help to

the legal government in Afghanistan, besides taking up through

diplomatic sources the dangers to regional security caused by

the virulent teachings of the Taliban.

In Kashmir, India is attempting to fashion a democratic

alternative to rule by the extremists. They can be expected to

respond by sending in fresh levies of terrorists, once they are

freed of the need to deal with the Rabbani forces. Thus, security

in Kashmir is tied to the success of the legal government in

Afghanistan against the extremists.

The international drug bazaar has become an important

source of funding for extremists, almost as important as Saudi

millionaires. Through the UN, India needs to spearhead an

international campaign against drug cultivation in Afghanistan,

Pakistan and elsewhere, a campaign that includes the aerial

spraying of defoliants on areas where drugs are cultivated. In

addition, the domestic laws against drug trafficking need to be

made much more stringent, so that they are brought on a par

with Singapore. Extremism cannot be fought only by soldiers.

The roots need to be tackled, through helping Afghan moderates

fight extremists, and by fashioning an international campaign

against drugs in the subcontinent.

Sadly for this country, the Rao-Manmohan years witnessed

a "penny wise pound foolish" policy on security. As a result of

lack of support for Afghan moderates and parsimony in defence

expenditure, vast amounts of money had to be spent fighting the

insurgencies that such a policy encouraged. Today, should New

Delhi hesitate to help President Rabbani, it will be spending

many times that money in the next three years fighting the

Mujahideen that may flood it after Rabbani’s final defeat.

This is true despite the fact that the Taliban's success may

prove as self-defeating for Islamabad as the growth of Hamas

proved for Tel Aviv. In the early years of Hamas, Israel saw it

as a counter to the PLO. It was only much later that it realised

that it had a monster on its hands far more potent than chairman

Arafat’s men.

While the Pashtuns in the Taliban have thus far been willing

V to take Islamabad’s help, once they themselves form the Afghan

government, traditional ethnic nationalism will come into play,

and there is a high probability of a future linking up of Pakistani

and Afghan Pashtuns to attempt to carve out an ethnic state out

of both countries, Many within the Taliban—those that are not

fully under the control of the ISI—may realise that a policy of

jehad in Pashtun areas has lower costs and greater returns than

attempts at subverting Kashmir.

Rather than adopt in its entirety the Narasimha Rao policy

of turning the other cheek whenever slapped by Pakistan, New

Delhi needs to evolve separate responses to Pakistani businessmen

and people, and to the attempts by the Benazir government to

foment insurgency in India. While the first group needs to be

won over through concessions and contact, the second needs to

be tackled firmly.

In this, the US is a model. Despite international disapproval,

Washington went ahead with its show of force in Iraq, to

reinforce the point that defiance will not pay. Hopefully, the

apparent confusion at the Taliban takeover of Kabul will be

replaced by a policy that serves this country's strategic interests.