Indian Defence Review

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meeting the President of Afghanistan, Mr. Hamid Karzai

With all the historian accolades to William Dalrymple, his Brookings Essay titled ‘A Deadly Triangle: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India’ insinuating that “The hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current war in Afghanistan” not only is absurd in the extreme, it depicts convolutions of the typical scheming western mind intent upon obfuscating their own skullduggery.

Being a credited historian of the AfPak-India region, it is no coincidence that in tracing India-Afghanistan relations, he overlooks the devious deceit of the British at Skardu during the Partition of India. Had this deliberate act not been done, India would be connected with Afghanistan through the Wakhan Corridor, which would have changed the geopolitics of the entire region for all times to come; India-Pakistan relations, India-Afghanistan relations, India-China relations, China-Pakistan relations included. Then, in all the history penned down of British India replete with fairy tale love affairs of the lordly British and local women there is no mention of extreme brutalization of the populations of both India and Pakistan (undivided India) by the British, at par if not more than the Moghuls. Of course, there is no mention of the systematic loot of the region either.

Now let us examine who is behind this deadly triangle and the current war in Afghanistan. To start with, William Dalrymple will find it very difficult to deny that all these years Britain has had no option but to quietly tag along like a pet on a leash behind the United States, whether it was ‘nuclear’ Iraq, invading Afghanistan or looking the other way in case of the terror factory, that is Pakistan. It is a well known fact that the US was behind raising the Frankenstein called Taliban, not that China was not arming them equally strongly against the Soviets. But it is also no secret that while invading Afghanistan, the US permitted Pakistani regulars (including military and ISI officers) disguised as Taliban and fighting against Northern Alliance to be air evacuated from Kunduz and Khost. Then was the façade of so called GWOT targeting Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda alone. But the sub-conventional defeated the US in Vietnam, the Soviets in Afghanistan and the US now again in Afghanistan, last one with Britain in tow.  The fact that Afghanistan has been brutalized and will continue to be brutalized after US/NATO scoot is of little consequence for that has been the norm in Iraq, Libya, Syria and will be in Afghanistan, which Afghan scholars have no hesitation in saying is being sub-contracted to Pakistan, Pakistani proxies and US terror proxies, Taliban-Al Qaeda-Haqqanis included. So the bluff of blaming the situation on India-Pakistan relations in the ‘deadly triangle’, and the reason for the current situation in Afghanistan can hardly work.

This so called GWOT, with Britain in tow, looked only at AfPak not the AfPAK-India region as should have been. The fact that India was already being targeted by Pakistani proxies for over a decade plus, was totally disregarded. GWOT itself never targeted the mother of terrorism (Pakistan) beyond perfunctory predator attacks. All the millions of dollars of aid, that continues, hav never been linked to promotion of terror and radicalization. Organizations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) was permitted to become an international level terrorist organization like Al Qaeda itself that led an anguished Ashley Tellis to say, “The only reasonable objective for the United States is the permanent evisceration of LeT and other vicious South Asian terrorist groups …. with Pakistani cooperation if possible, but without it if necessary“. But then does the US (and Britain) want these terrorist organizations to be eliminated in the first place? All the brutalizing of Afghanistan and thousands of US led coalition casualties apart, US and Britain casualties by themselves number 2,220 and 444 respectively. How many of these dead would you attribute to Al Qaeda, Haqqanis, Taliban, if not all? So, when you used Al Qaeda in Libya, are using them in Syria and prepare to handover Afghanistan (in part or full) to Al Qaeda-Haqqanis-Taliban, is this in honour of the sacrifices made by your soldiers? The exit itself is so hasty without letting the Aghan National Army stabilize and more importantly the yet to be elected new government to stabilize  – designed prescription for chaos, mayhem and instability.

Skardu apart, Britain’s bear hug with Pakistan since the 1955 Baghdad Pact is well known, bias well reflected even in current BBC reporting, but the blind hole of terror Pakistan is plunging this region into should be very apparent.  There is no doubt that the likes of Ghulam Mohammed Fai have managed to colour western perceptions but perhaps you can follow Ayesha Siddiqa on Twitter to tell you what Kiyani and his army are up to. And, perhaps you failed to note that Pakistan’s Punjab (Nawaz Sharif’s own lair) officially has doled out millions in aid to JuD-LeT, who are considered a threat by western scholars. Perhaps, Brookings could assign William Dalrymple to undertake a study on the massive increase in radicalization wherever western footprints have gone including after their departure. It may be quite revealing and one wonders if the long term consequences of Shia-Sunni wars that are perpetuated globally by design, including in Syria with an eye on Iran, have been war-gamed adequately.

The most intriguing part of this entire narrative by William Dalrymple is that he fails to acknowledge there is an entity called China. The small mention of China training 300 Afghan policemen hardly covers the true story. It is no secret that the PLA trained and supported Afghan Mujahedeen during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, supplying hundreds of millions worth of anti aircraft missiles, rocket launchers and machine guns, moving their training camps on Chinese soil. Chinese training of Taliban was going full swing when US was still invading Afghanistan. Later, China was arming supporting and even providing military advisers to Taliban in fighting the NATO led ISAF, and would have contributed to at least some of the 444 British killed in Afghanistan. Today, China is replicating dirty games of the west in this entire region by arming terrorist organizations in Afpak, India, Nepal and Myanmar. So why is there no mention of China in this so called deadly triangle, even if the supply of nuclear technology to Pakistan by China was ignored?

Incidentally, Chris Sands, had reported in Global Post, Kabul on 20 February 2013 that in the southern province of Uruzgan in Afghanistan, a militia led by a US supported Hazara was accused of deliberately destroying houses, raping women and murdering dozens of civilian Pashtuns. So who is playing the dirty games; pitting Hazaras against Pashtuns even before the security was handed over to the Afghan National Forces? Don’t blame India-Pakistan relations for the situation in Afghanistan. This triangle is deadly because of the west propping up Pakistani Military-ISI (not Pakistani democracy) at the cost of India, supporting terrorism in the process in the faint hope Pakistan will stop subletting itself to China. You may say that there are no permanent friends and enemies in geopolitics where national interests are concerned but you can hardly impose your national interests on Pakistan when you have continued to acquiesce to what Pakistan thinks her national interests are.

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Lastly, this business of Pakistan wanting a strategic depth in Afghanistan in case of war with India is the most naïve interpretation, as is also the case with many western scholars. Surely, you don’t visualize Pakistani Army retreating into Afghan territory in event of a India-Pakistan war. With due respect, all these learned friends need to read the book ‘The Revenge of Geography’ by,  Robert H Kaplan wherein he writes, “An Afghanistan that falls to Taliban sway threatens to create a succession of radicalized Islamic societies from the Indian-Pakistani border to Central Asia. This would, in effect, a greater Pakistan, giving Pakistan’s ISI the ability to create a clandestine empire composed of the likes of Jallaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba : able to confront India in the manner that Hezbollah and Hamas confront Israel”. That is the strategic depth being offered to Pakistan on a plate post the 2014 withdrawal, even though Afghanistan may not fall completely to Taliban. However, I do disagree with Robert Kaplan to the extent that he has only highlighted increased threat to India. It is a matter of time that west as well as China will be consumed by terrorism if these dirty games continue. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have already breached your firewalls, giving caution to the terrorists. They will find new ways to get you.