The Great Game continues
When the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, it marked the beginning of the end of Soviet Union, rise of the United States as the sole superpower and emergence of Islamist separatism as a US-legitimised political agenda everywhere, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir. After all, communism was defeated by jihad, though armed with Stinger missiles. Obviously, J&K and thereby the whole of India had to suffer the spillover effect of this Islamist euphoria. The role of US diplomat Robin Raphel (who was later investigated by the FBI for spying for Pakistan) in creating Hurriyat Conference, billions of dollars worth of US military aid for Pakistan and an intellectual validation for religious secessionism were all immediate fallouts of the withdrawal of Soviet Union.
Just as communist internationalism was buried with the death of Soviet Union, the epochal end of the war in Afghanistan should put an end to global jihad.
Now, as the US withdraws from Afghanistan, all that is remembered even in India are the last 20 years since 9/11, not the 1990s — the decade of Islamist terrorism that recreated the Indian polity, ending in the pre-eminence of the Hindutva forces. A repeat of the 1990s is what India should fear, but that seems unlikely to happen. After all, this time around, the withdrawal of the US is not really the victory of the Taliban or the validation of jihad. Even when about half of Afghanistan is in Taliban control, none of the capitals of its 34 provinces has been fully captured by them, proving that the Afghan forces haven’t simply melted into the dusty hills. The Taliban do not have an air force and the US-supplied choppers still give government forces an edge over them.
Despite stories of thousands of Afghan armymen running away to Tajikistan, there could still be a US-sponsored ceasefire and an earnest effort to accommodate non-Taliban elements in the interim government. The de-legitimisation of the Ashraf Ghani government can only be seen as the fall of yet another puppet regime that was foisted on an indifferent people, not really different from all experiments, old and new, by alien forces. Yet, the Taliban, with their rule by tribal diktats, are not ready for a transformation into a political entity that runs a parliament or contests elections. So, the interim government can be expected to be a jirga of mullahs with daggers drawn.
But more importantly, the present-day Taliban are not a monolith, as they used to be, and not fully controlled by Pakistan. The leaders in Peshawar, Doha and the ground forces need not necessarily remain pawns in Pakistan’s strategic games. Sure, their families in Pakistan are at the mercy of the ISI and the leaders have been told in no uncertain terms about the price they would have to pay for talking to India. In fact, Pakistan so badly wants the Taliban to have international legitimacy that it wants them to talk to everyone but India. Still, India is talking and all the investments by the security and intelligence agencies in the last two decades are finally paying off.
While the Taliban were welcomed as liberators earlier, now they are feared — even hated, at times — and that makes them more vulnerable, and also amenable to those reaching out. They have indeed started to portray themselves as reasonable by not killing those who surrender before them. A Foreign Policy news report of last year talked about daughters and sisters of some Taliban fighters going to school, which was unthinkable earlier. That does not mean that the Taliban have stopped being regressive; there are reports of the Taliban clergy asking for lists of girls above 15 and widows under 45 to be married off to their fighters. But the fact remains that there are various shades of regression among the Taliban, prompting observers to believe that there could be various shades of opinion, aspiration and allegiance too.
Meanwhile, the ISI seems to be grooming a new leadership that would toe its line blindly, unlike veterans like Mullah Baradar or inheritors like Mullah Yaqoob. Some of these Afghan nationalists of the old guard may see reason beyond Islamist internationalism and respond to Indian overtures. For, many of them are straining at the Pak leash, wanting to have an independent role and seat at the Afghan high table. The least that the Indian agencies can seek from the Taliban leaders who are willing to do business with them is to secure the Indian embassy, consulates and assets. This will be the real test of the Indian enterprise in Afghanistan. India has sunk nearly $3 billion in Afghanistan creating infrastructure — bringing power, roads, schools and health facilities to the people. Scholarships for students and medicare for the critically ill should have generated some goodwill that Pakistan cannot easily obliterate.
If the agencies that have overseen this Indian investment have been serious in their efforts these last two decades, there is every reason for them to succeed in negotiating with the Taliban and nurturing some genuine allies in order to protect Indian interests in Afghanistan and also back home. The worst-case scenario of Afghanistan slipping fully into Pak-Taliban control and turning into a human bomb-making laboratory for all Islamist hotheads ought to make the Indian government draw up a contingency plan.
This time, withdrawal is not the defeat of the US forces and hence it should make them put an end to Islamist internationalism as an accepted political ideology for regime change in Islamic countries or a tool for political destabilisation in countries with Islamic minorities. Just as communist internationalism was buried with the death of Soviet Union, the epochal end of the war in Afghanistan should put an end to global jihad. The practice that began with religious soldiers — the mujahideen — travelling to fight the war against the kafir in Afghanistan has spread far and wide, even to the American shores, with devastating results. Afghanistan needs peace, as does the rest of the neighbourhood.
