The Kabul effect

Hamid Karzai, chairman of the interim government of Afghanistan, announced on March 30 that the Loya Jirga (the grand tribal assembly) has been summoned to meet in Kabul around June 10 to determine the future political dispensation in the land. Over 1,400 delegates representing major ethnic groups are expected to participate. Discussions would be aimed at creating the new power structure for Afghanistan and the institutional framework of its government. The exercise will be carried out in a competitive, even fractious, atmosphere rooted in ethnic, regional and religious adversarial relationships between different sections of Afghanistan’s population.

One does not have to go into great detail about the suspicions and rivalries between the Pushtuns, Hazaras, Tajiks and Uzbeks. Nor does one have to over-emphasise the internal dichotomies between the Pushtuns of western and south-eastern Afghanistan or the internecine conflicts between the Hazaras and the Uzbeks and Tajiks who constitute the Northern Alliance. This situation has been compounded by local tribal leaders and warlords questioning the authority of the interim government and reports about Taliban and Al-Qaeda cadres re-grouping and initiating military operations against both US troops and Afghan forces. Operation Anaconda and the tenuous truce among troops of the Northern Alliance confirm this critical reality.

It is in this uncertain context that the Afghan government has to initiate its reconstruction and stabilisation programme. Nearly 2,000 km of roads and practically every primary and secondary school in Afghanistan have to be re-built. Hospitals and medical clinics not only in Kabul but in all the major urban centres of Afghanistan have to be re-established from scratch. Practically all the power projects, particularly the hydel projects based on the Helmand and Kabul rivers systems, have to be revived after a gap of nearly 25 years. This is apart from keeping the people supplied with essential medicines and foodstuffs. The task has become even more challenging after the recent earthquake in which nearly 3,000 Afghans died.

The over-arching phenomenon to take note of is that since October 7 (when the US-led coalition launched its anti-terrorist military campaign) there has been an incremental US military presence not only in Afghanistan but in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Pakistan. The US is assured of operational and logistical support and facilities in India and Bangladesh. This is augmented by American forces in the Gulf and in the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean, including in the Arabian Sea.

Objectively speaking, the US military presence and political interaction in Central, West and South Asia is considerably higher than during the Cold War or the Gulf War. It is obvious therefore that the security, political and economic objectives of this incremental US presence go beyond eroding and then eliminating the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

The more immediate objective of the US is to mop up remnants of Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces. The second objective is to stabilise Afghanistan. Given the absence of any cohesive Pushtun military force in Afghanistan, Karzai has had to accept troops of the Northern Alliance as the main instrument for defence and security of the interim administration. He has had to give a number of important portfolios to leaders from the Northern Alliance (Uzbeks and Tajiks) in the interim cabinet to ensure that the coalition holds.

It is important to note that the major powers led by the US envisage two distinctive roles, one for the US-led military force which would be concentrating on the anti-terrorist war — and the other a combined military force led by Britain consisting of troops from western democracies which would function as a peacekeeping and internal security force for the stabilisation of Afghanistan.

It is the broader objectives of the US military presence in different parts of Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and the Gulf which merit attention. US political and military leaders led by President Bush have publicly stated that the war against terrorism would be a long struggle. Bush has been more specific, talking about the ‘Axis of Evil’, indicating that North Korea, Iran and Iraq could be the next targets of US military operations. There are seven countries on America’s list of states sponsoring terrorism — Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria. Only Cuba and Libya lie outside the geographical limits of Central and West Asia. The augmented US military presence from Turkey in the north to the Philippines in the east is clearly a physical manifestation of strategic and security understandings the US has reached with various countries in this region — to contain religious extremism and violence as well as stabilise the region with a view to ensuring long-term energy and economic security for the international community, particularly western democracies and their allies. It must also be realised that three out of five Central Asian countries are also members of the partnership for peace arrangements of NATO.

The twin macro-level strategic objectives of the American politico-strategic presence in the region are aimed at balancing or preventing any excessive domination or influence by China and Russia in the region. The second objective is to secure the energy resources of the Gulf and to have long-term access to proven hydro-carbon and mineral resources of Central Asian countries. Equally relevant is the objective of stabilising the nuclear weapons and missiles security environment in the region.

The presence of US troops and creation of a pattern of political and security concentrations positions the US to effectively intervene in any nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan. Such an exercise could contribute to gradual capping of nuclear weapons and missile capacities of the two countries and persuade them to effective arms control measures within the framework of the international non-proliferation agenda determined by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The cordon sanitaire being put in place by the US would also be a more direct instrument in preventing the horizontal proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in countries stretching from North Korea to Iran.

Developments since September 11 are not limited to international consensus about fighting terrorism. They also signal critical changes in the strategic and security environment in Asia and in the new global order envisioned by the US. India will have to assess the extent to which these new arrangements would benefit it or militate against its substantive security interests and freedom of options. It is obvious that in the short and medium terms, a positive equation with the US is the practical option.

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