Indian Defence Review

U.S. Marines return fire on enemy forces in Marjeh, Afghanistan. Marines are securing the city of Marjeh from the Taliban.

Subsequently, India and the USA began to see much more in common – the aggressiveness of China, proliferation of nuclear technology by A Q Khan, democracy in the world, freedom of religion, and secularism.  And, Indian intelligence tipped off US intelligence about the BBC China that was shipping nuclear materials to Libya.  Today, Karzai is supported by the USA and India, while Pakistan seethes at the insults of Karzai who seeks to rake up the reunification of Pashtun territories when he is strong enough, and decries Pakistani duplicity in the war in Afghanistan.  It must not be forgotten that Afghanistan was the only country to vote against Pakistani membership of the United Nations in September 1947, mainly because Afghanistan objected to Pakistani occupation of Pashtun provinces in the northwest frontier provinces (NWFP) of that time.  Karzai now further deplores Pakistani interference in Afghanistan through its secret aid to the pernicious Taliban.

It goes without saying that Pakistan and the ISI are biding their time to 2014.  Once the USA is back home, it is easier for Pakistan to talk to them (when they are 12,000 miles away) than when they are next-door and literally breathing down Pakistan’s neck.  With the USA gone from Afghanistan, having been bloodied and depleted in many ways, the ISI and Pakistan’s army will have free hand to regain “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, and they may not desist in their aim once the opportunity presents itself.  Pakistan still has a few scores to settle with Afghanistan, and all of it is blood-stained.

Thus, Hamid Karzai could be looking at only months or weeks of additional power after the US withdrawal.  One only hopes his fate can be better than Najibullah’s, who was castrated and left to hang from a traffic light in a public square – a brutal retribution by a truculent people.

Once the Taliban-ISI combine begins to assert itself, the fate of the Afghan forces will fall into doubt.  The USA currently prides itself at training and building the Afghan forces, and hopes that a 50,000 strong Afghan force with American armaments and backing will be able to hold off the rag-tag Taliban.  But what the US does not wager for is that the Taliban is not by itself: it is surreptitiously aided and abetted by the duplicitous ISI, which funnels the same US armaments to the Taliban that Pakistan receives from the US with the avowed assurance to use it against the militant terrorists, but which they would happily use against India if they had to, without batting an eyelid.  Though the Afghan forces may be able to hold off a rag-tag Taliban all on its own, their ability to hold off the Taliban-ISI combine is much less certain.

One must also look at the Afghan Forces with circumspection:  First of all, some 25% are probably Taliban fifth-columnist agents earning military training at the expense of the USA, thus making a bloody fool of the USA; this is, in fact, evidenced by the increasing number of insider shootings of American and NATO personnel inside Afghanistan.  Another 25% will simply drop out and go home once the USA leaves, feeling scared for their survival in a dreadful Afghanistan; another 25% will probably desert their battalions when push comes to shove, not wanting to fight their fellow Afghans in a future civil war, such being their nature, mentality, and caliber.  Thus, the 50,000 strong Afghan Forces could well pare down to one-fourth(12,500) their strength, ending up fighting 12,500 of their own fifth-columnists plus a mad rag-tag group determined to capture Kabul.  The chances in favor of the Afghan Forces is much less in this scenario, especially when tipped by ISI support behind the scenes that the USA will never discover, let alone be able to prove.

Such is the personality of the people on either side of the Durand Line, and the USA has simply mis-read them altogether by applying Western concepts of logic and rationality that are nearly always opposed to Islamic concepts of justice and equality.

What will the result be of a castrated Karzai and a Kabul in the hands of the new Taliban?  Perhaps, the northern Uzbeks under Abdul Rashid Dostum, and the Tajiks under Atta Mohammed Noor will unite to battle the new Taliban-ISI combine.  This would then precipitate into another déjà vu civil war.  The capability of the Uzbeks and Tajiks against the Taliban and ISI is not convincingly superior at all.  But there is the added possibility that a China, which already has military engineer officers in Baltistan, would be simply all too keen to gain a foothold in Central Asia, and will come to the covert rescue of the Pashtuns.  This will bring China closer to the Lithium fields of Afghanistan and the gas fields of Iran.  It can be asked as to why the Chinese will not choose to help Karzai and the northern group rather than the Taliban.  The answer is that Pakistan will dissuade China from helping Karzai.  Consequently, China would become the next secret power in Afghanistan, with another secret aim to suppress all aid from the Muslim fighters in Afghanistan to its own rebels in Sinkiang.  Soon, China and Pakistan would train the Pashtuns to join their axis group of powers.  China would further expand trade with the Pashtuns, giving aid freely as they do in Angola, Zimbabwe, and Sudan, and the Western world would once again have lost a country to the axis forces.  Victory would turn to defeat for the United States.

The US would simply be left dumbstruck and impotent to send another full army to Afghanistan.  Nature abhors a vacuum, and the vacuum left by the US withdrawal is all too likely to be filled by the China-Pakistan nexus.  This is not good for India, and not good for the geopolitics of USA or Russia.  But, what will India do at that time?  The answer is that they will likely do nothing more than they are being able to militarily do right now.

It should be noted that India missed the opportunity of sending a division to Afghanistan in 2001-02 when the USA was begging India.  If India had jumped at the first opportunity, Pakistan’s objections would have been moot when tempers were flaring and George Bush was breathing fire.  As destiny would have it, Pakistan slowly but surely predicated its support for USA on the denial of military access to India in Afghanistan.  And, once again, the USA sought the short-term solution in preference over the long-term solution.  But India behaved worse — like a sissy dragging its feet.  Abandoning Pakistan and aligning with India is clearly in the long-term interests of USA, but the US doesn’t appear to think that far ahead, being handicapped by their long nose, but India is simply scared to think outside itself, being convinced of its inferiority.

And what would have happened if India had its foot in the door in Afghanistan?  It could have sent another division later, such as in 2014.  What would Pakistan or China be able to do about that?  Virtually nothing more than what they are doing now or were doing then, except complain and lodge diplomatic protests.  Not only would a scenario of 40,000 Indian troops in Afghanistan assure Karzai’s survival, but it would simultaneously deny Pakistan strategic depth, deny China the foothold in Central Asia it seeks, deny the Islamic militants and Taliban terrorists the opportunity to once again plan terrorist attacks, or shoot young 14-year old girls for going to school in Afghanistan, or bring down Buddhist statues that are a world heritage.  India could build supply depots and a self-sufficient military base in Afghanistan.  Those Indian troops in Afghanistan could also have helped India outflank Pakistan in a future Indo-Pak war, liberate Baluchistan, and yank the Northwest provinces from Pakistan.  However, this is all speculative and hypothetical now.

Whereas, India should aim to resurrect the Mauryan empire that extended up to the Hindu Koh mountains, which is possible, India is simply incapable of the play with the tenor of its leadership, the personality of its dhotiwalas, the throttling grip of the bureaucrats on the government, the delays in its defense procurements, and now the decline of leadership in the Indian military.  The behavior of India, in essence, is simply not good enough for its survival.  India must pause to ask itself why it isn’t what it wants to be.

The country that controls Afghanistan controls the crossroads of Asia.  For centuries, the routes through Afghanistan intersected with the Silk Road.  The play for Afghanistan now continues between Pakistan and India—as to who will gain an upper hand there — and right now it looks like Pakistan has the longer leg in Afghanistan than India.  Thus, the Great Game of the 19th century continues today in its morphed state.  It is still possible that the next war between India and Pakistan could be over rivalry in Afghanistan.

The one solution in Afghanistan even now is for the US to put off its withdrawal, but that appears unlikely given the internal politics and sentiments in USA that want people in the rest of the world to handle their own affairs.  This also means that the dream of India that USA will break up and capture Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal before it falls into Taliban hands is simply a daydream that will not be realized.  Further, India will have to face the ensuing music when Pakistan, with China’s financial backing, renew their support to LET and the Al-Haqqani network, Harkat al-mujahiddin, etc., to stir trouble in India through severely skewed asymmetric warfare, the like of which India has not seen yet, but which can be imagined is possible.   The damage that India stands to see with an Afghanistan left to itself is far too serious, since the effect will be one that will minimize India.  A withdrawal from Afghanistan by USA, without a break-up of Pakistan by way of wrenching Baluchistan and de-militarizing the Northwest provinces of Pakistan, doesn’t look like a scenario that can in any way be in India’s, USA’s, or NATO’sinterests.