Kabuliwalas
Aaye kahaan se? Jaaye kahaan re? The case for not sending Indian combat troops to Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of the London Conference on Afghanistan, it is easy to be underwhelmed. The resulting joint communique has a whole lot of agreement, but sift through the diplomatic pablum, and it reveals few serious efforts to address critical areas of divergence amongst the parties. Only Islamabad interpreted events as some sort of miraculous breakthrough. Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, typically brazen, treated the whole affair as the end of “Af-Pak,” a successful attempt at keeping out meddlesome India, and a unanimous decision to reconcile with the Taliban. That’s all a bit of a stretch, even by the Foreign Minister’s lofty standards.
But leaving aside the bad comedy, two outcomes are of some significance: the rough timetable for a phased transition to Afghan security forces and the reintegration plan for militants, the so-called (cringe) “good Taliban.” Both throw up their own sets of problems. First, the transition to ANSF is still predicated in large part on success in training initiatives. It’s unclear what—if any—progress has emerged there. The communique calls upon the community of concerned parties (which includes India) to “meet outstanding requirements for trainers and mentoring teams,” but leaves out the messy details.
The second challenge involves continuing disagreement over whether to reintegrate Taliban-allied militants and whether to reconcile with the Taliban leadership. ”We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers who are not part of Al Qaeda or other terrorist networks,” said President Hamid Karzai, specifically, those “who accept the Afghan Constitution.” Fair enough. Yet it’s his calls for a jirga featuring the Taliban leadership, as well as the role he has articulated for Saudi King Abdullah, that are particularly disconcerting.
On this second question, there are—in some respects—three views. In a nutshell, Karzai wants both reconciliation and reintegration, Washington wants reintegration only, and New Delhi (ideally) wants neither. Newsweek’s Ron Moreau shares this view; the Taliban can’t be bought, and may not want to be reintegrated. India’s grudging acceptance of a reintegration policy represents, to a great extent, the inability to further its objectives unilaterally. If its desire is to keep the Taliban—and ex-Taliban—out of Kabul at all costs, it has to back up its words with action, to stand up or shut up.
Which brings us to the vibrant debate underway on what role, if any, India should assume in Afghanistan, a debate for which my colleagues Nitin Pai and Rohit Pradhan deserve much credit for instigating in an article in January’s Pragati. Nitin and Rohit’s logic is compelling. If U.S. troops need to be involved, to the greatest extent possible, along the frontier with Pakistan, India should step up to the plate by deploying troops in the north and west. This is in India’s national security interests. This is in no way anti-Muslim, as many opponents of such a policy have construed it, and this is fundamentally different from India’s intervention in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. The political logic is also compelling, they argue, as the electorate rewards risk-taking, as with last year’s Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.
While I too am critical of some of the reasons regularly forwarded in India for ruling out the possibility of Indian deployment—the supposed subjugation of India to the United States, the lack of logistic support, the so-called ‘Graveyard of Empires’ thesis—I harbour another set of reservations about both the feasibility and wisdom of Nitin and Rohit’s strategy.
First, what exactly would the ‘freed up’ U.S. troops be doing that is in any way different from what they are doing at present? I admit to being a little confused upon this point. And if Indian troops, according to Nitin and Rohit’s vision, are to remain in the relatively stable north and west of Afghanistan, how useful would combat-experienced Indian troops be over the United States’ NATO allies?
Second, as regards India’s long-term objectives, I don’t find Indian deployment to provide many answers. As Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao said in a recent speech, “Pakistan’s concerns of the perceived threat in the East and on Indian activities in Afghanistan need to be unequivocally rebutted.” If the ultimate objective of India in this region is to reorient the Pakistani military away from treating India as a threat, then sending troops to Afghanistan would serve the opposite effect, and strengthen the military politically. As it is, Pakistan supposedly feels threatened by the existence of a few Indian diplomatic outposts, which are used to justify the army’s continuing linkages to terrorist networks. This should not lead to a relaxed India posture, but rather a search for creative solutions.
“But let’s not forget that the Pakistani military-jihadi complex might escalate the proxy war against India even if India doesn’t send troops to Afghanistan,” Nitin and Rohit write. I would be inclined to turn their version of Pascal’s Wager on its head. Even if we deploy troops to Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that terrorism and insurgencies will die down in India. In fact, it is likely to increase, and Nitin and Rohit admit this point: “India must be prepared to accept a short-term spurt in terrorist attacks as the cost of this option.” I am quite sure our public and political class would never stand for this.
There are many more aspects of this debate that are ripe for discussion. One could argue that the IPKF parallel holds, as the LTTE were indeed a major national security threat (after all, they assassinated an ex-Prime Minister and sought a Tamil Eelam, meaning their success could have proved much more destabilising). Voters, arguably, are more sensitive to an upsurge in terrorism that to political risk taking—the UPA did not win the last election on the nuclear deal alone. And India has a weak history of accepting casualties on foreign soil (at home, it’s a completely different matter). The IPKF experienced about 450 deaths per year, while the U.S. has lost some 640 per year in Iraq, and over 5400 a year in Vietnam. Yet it’s the United States that often faces criticism for its inability to take casualties in Indian policy circles.
All of this, and more, concerning India’s role in Afghanistan was debated on Offstumped on January 9.
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