Indian Defence Review

“The Iraqi and Afghan wars have not ‘ended.’ Only America’s involvement has ‘ended.’ …When a country leaves a war before achieving victory it is not called leaving. It is called defeat. …When the decent leave, the indecent win.” — Dennis Prager, Dennis Prager: Volume I

“The West has to take a critical look at itself and examine the apparent double standards at work that allow it to attack Iraq for possessing weapons of mass destruction but not North Korea, whose leader shared Saddam Hussein’s megalomaniacal qualities; that permit it to rail against Iran about nuclear weapons but be silent about Israel’s arsenal; that allow it to only selectively demand enforcement of UN resolutions. The West has to own up to the mistakes it has made: such as with Abu Ghraib and the torture in Afghan prisons; in the errant attacks on civilians; in its disregard for the basic precept of a civilized legal system, which maintains that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.” — Kathy Gannon, I is for Infidel: From Holy War to Holy Terror in Afghanistan

In the late December of 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in order to force a change of regime to one that was more favourable to them; a decade later, the Soviets had made an ignominious exit. There was a gap of a decade when all sorts of hoodlums tried to govern the country, but failed. Since the radical Taliban had a limited presence in the hinterland, which allowed the likes of Osama-bin-Laden to establish bases in the remote regions of Afghanistan where from he planned and executed his terrorist activities around the globe. One such terrorist mission was directed at the US. That proved his misgiving and drew the Americans along with a motely group from the NATO countries into Afghanistan. In the global war on terror Bush Junior divided the world into two groups – those with America and the rest fell into the category of being against America. Their mission was to root out terrorism from its supposedly safest havens on the planet and thereby free the world, for all time to come, from Islamist Terror. Now, two decades later, the US has made an equally mortifying exit from Afghanistan. Globally, has the level of Islamist Terror decreased since 2001? By any measure it has only increased manifold.

It is not here that the conduct of the US ‘War on Terror’ in the last two decades is being discussed. That is for the US administration and military to analyse and draw lessons, before they venture out on another global expeditionary misadventure. However, the drawdown and final exit of the US and Western allies from Afghanistan and the Asian region has one long term serious repercussion – which is that now no power or superpower will ‘directly’ intervene in any foreign country to either change the regime, or force a country to accept democracy as a form of government or even intervene to stop serious violation of human rights and gross mistreatment of ethnic religious minorities. Certainly China heaved a sigh of relief! This will enable existing dictatorial and oppressive regimes to thrive and new ones to proliferate. The world can expect to see mass migrations of oppressed people and a rise in illegal drug trade. Armed mercenary groups, as surrogates, will increase as will private military companies. Overall instability in the world will be on the rise.

The Soviets came to change the regime more for their interests than for the interest of the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban ruled more for their fundamentalist hard line beliefs and imposition of Sharia, than for the people who were just fodder for the itchy fingers of trigger happy Talibanis. The Americans came along with token forces of reluctant NATO countries for eliminating a band of terror planners. The people were always viewed with suspicion by the Western forces because the terrorists were harboured in their midst. The people end up just as some numbers – men, women, and children. For statistical purposes the population would have been divided into categories of – infants, below 10, 11 to 16, 17 to 20, 21 to 35, 36 to 45, 46 to 60, over 60 and so on. These divisions were required for monitoring and controlling the population under the ubiquitous guise of the catchy phrase of “winning hearts and minds”!! Thus for the 10 years under the Soviets and 20 years under the Western Allies, the people of Afghanistan did not have their voices heard. However, it cannot be denied that there was much effort made to uplift the population by opening schools, hospitals, vocational training centers, skill development and a host of such projects to make some difference in the country’s Human Development Index. The lack of basic infrastructure and a fragmented tribal society loyal to regional war lords hindered the processes. The numbers of these foreign forces, boots on ground, too was woefully inadequate for effective presence at the ground level. Resultantly, there was a lack of accountability and since there were no suitable measures of checks and balances instituted it allowed corruption to grow exponentially in every aspect of the Afghanistan military and administrative system. Did the Taliban in its decade at the helm care for development? In fact it went about destroying all that the Soviets had done for the people. For them the people were only there to be indoctrinated in their philosophy of jihad and the supremacy of their faith, everything else was superfluous. Those who had usurped power only pursued their tunnel vision agendas. The references to the down-trodden, ‘masses’, civil society etc. are mere fig leaves behind which the power brokers, not only in Afghanistan but the world over, camouflage their naked ambitions. Will the current crop of Talibanis in power care to alter their stance and focus on the people and the country? It will need tremendous compromises in their beliefs and attitudes that may not suit most of the hardliners. The fact that the Afghan youth below the age of 30-35 years have seen a liberal lifestyle and experienced a freedom where they could make choices, something which never existed for the earlier generations. For them to accept the hardline regime will not be easy. Will they rebel against the regime? It is a possibility, provided a strong leadership emerges that has a sense of commitment to the country and a will to counter the Taliban for the sake of the people.  Also provided, some countries extend covert support. After all Afghanistan was a prosperous nation prior to the sixties though there always was an element of religious conservatism.

War in Afghanistan by the Soviets and later by US led NATO forces, was an unequal contest. Conventional Soviet forces equipped with tanks, a whole range of artillery in support, attack helicopters and air power operations facilitated by modern communication network could not subdue the Taliban fighting in small groups operating on foot with small arms and shoulder fired rocket launchers, poor communication but making optimal use of the terrain. Ten years later the Americans came in with high tech weapons, network centric concept of warfighting where the buzzword was – ‘sensor to shooter’. The sensor picked the target and the shooter responded – the shooter could range from a B1/B52 bomber or a ship launched cruise missile or a ground attack aircraft launched Precision Guided Munition (PGM) or an attack helicopter with Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, rockets and cannons, or long range field artillery or a vehicle launched fire and forget anti-armour missile, or shoulder fired anti-armour missiles or the small arms on ground. Collateral damage did happen irrespective of the claims of the use of cutting edge precision munitions technology. The Taliban fought no differently than they did with the Soviets. Their strategic weapon was the Improvised Explosive Devices (IED’s). Casualties’ resulting from these IED’s restricted the Soviets and later the Western Forces operations on the ground. Seeing the Talibanis, as victors, piled up in pick-up vehicles and in hordes of two or even three on motorbikes in loosely clad “salwar kameez” and unstrapped sandals on their feet carrying a rifle entering Kabul must have been an embarrassing moment for the sophisticated tech-savvy western soldier?!

What went wrong? Was the political aim of the mission ambiguous? Did the US Administrations which followed that of Bush Junior modify the political aim and the military objectives? Did the Western Powers push an agenda of ‘liberal democracy’ against the will of the people? It will be recalled that King Amanullah instituted reforms, such as the abolition of the traditional ‘burqa’ (the head to toe Islamic veil) for women and the opening of several co-educational schools, this alienated many tribal and religious leaders, and led to the Afghan Civil War (1928–1929). Were the efforts to institute reforms and modernise the state a misjudgment? History will tell.

Over the last decade the Western powers presence and influence in the Asian region (including West Asia) has dwindled. With the exit of the US and its western allies from Afghanistan a new geopolitical and strategic reality has come to fore. Has the US exit left a vacuum or created a turbulent flow from which a vortex emerges and acquire a vicious linear momentum?

Vacuum is a word of Latin origin that denotes a space containing very little or no matter at all. The Latin term ‘in vacuo’ is used to describe an object that is surrounded by a vacuum. Even in physics the abstract concept of a featureless void faced considerable skepticism: it could not be apprehended by the senses.  Aristotle believed that no void could occur naturally, because the denser surrounding material continuum would immediately fill any incipient rarity that might give rise to a void. By this definition the Taliban in Kabul and other capitals of the Afghan Provinces, could be seen to exist ‘in vacuo’. That is that Taliban is existing as a government in a few pockets surrounded by a vacuum in which no external power has as yet rushed to step in. In this scenario an ideal situation is created wherein the remote inaccessible hinterland core of the country can be exploited by non-state actors and active Islamist terror groups. Al-Qaeda, IS-K, Haqqani Network and their splintered independent groups are already openly flaunting their presence. Taliban has neither the capability nor the economic capacity to re-raise and sustain the Afghan National Army (ANA). Also the Taliban which is a group of gun-toting gang of killers numbering around 30-40,000, cannot have an effective presence in the hinterlands. Such an environment will enable these ultra-radical groups to consolidate with gains. The large quantities of war making military hardware left behind by the US, is an unexpected bonanza. Consequently, the Al-Qaeda, IS-K, and Haqqani Network will create niche spaces for themselves to plan and execute terrorist attacks globally from these safe havens. As a result, in the near – and mid-term it is not a favourable situation for the neighbours, particularly India.

On the other hand, a vortex, (as in fluid dynamics) is a region in a fluid in which the flow revolves around an axis line and is a major component of turbulent flow. In the absence of external physical forces acting on the fluid, viscous friction within the fluid tends to organise the flow into a collection of irrotational vortices. Once formed, vortices can move, stretch, twist, and interact in complex ways. A moving vortex carries linear momentum, energy, and mass with it. In a vortex situation, if pockets of local resistance to the Taliban arise (or are generated) within Afghanistan it will create internal vortices which can acquire a linear momentum and move in a way to challenge the Taliban holding the important communication centres. If the accumulated sum of resistance is considerably large it will result in a protracted civil war in Afghanistan. However, this will occur only if a crop of young leadership emerges and these groups get external support in terms of military hardware and wherewithal. As a consequence, the situation so obtaining will increase the turmoil within Afghanistan and is likely to result in mass migrations from the country – leading to a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and in the neighbouring countries. In such a scenario, the Al-Qaeda IS-K and Haqqani Network type of global terror groups may be forced to revert to their erstwhile safe havens in Pakistan. However it is unlikely to curtail their ability to recruit and operate globally. These groups will, without doubt, target the West and assist the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) sponsored terrorist outfits to target India. Any assurances to the contrary are of no worth.

Both situations have negative potential for India.

India should not go onto the defensive. India should plan to tackle the threat at the source before it manifests within the country. India needs to create groups of like-minded nations to keep these groups engaged in squabbling amongst themselves in internecine wars thus not allowing them to build capacity to acquire any linear momentum thereby containing them within that region – a sort of active containment without getting directly involved. US and Russia have to be made to act against Pakistan which will continue to vitiate the environment by its dirty tricks department – the insidious ISI. For this India has to shed its reluctance to act big and bold. Otherwise it will be the same story of issuing rhetorical statements after the damage has been done.

The Clausewitzian trinity of society, state and military is being challenged in this century because of the ever widening spectrum of manifestation of threats to a state. Since ancient times, empires and states have, at least partially, employed auxiliaries, substitutes and proxies for the execution of military functions. Surrogates have been the norm in the history of warfare as much as irregular, asymmetrical or unconventional warfare has been. Today nations are outsourcing wars. The Russians have adapted to have surrogates fight their wars. The Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC’s) owned by businessmen close to the powers that be in the Kremlin are doing the job for the military. Barak Obama’s doctrine of “leading from behind” encapsulated the growing reliance on surrogates. These partnerships with surrogates help the state to provide security for itself by minimizing the risks of inaction due to political compulsions and excessive costs to the exchequer and in terms of blood of its soldiers and military resources. However, the ethical implications have to be considered before any decision is taken. Surrogate war is not proxy war. Proxy war is waged against a conventional force which is not so in the case of surrogate war. Evidently, defending the country is not restricted to military actions within the boundaries of the state as has been the conventional norm in India. In a boxing bout the winner is one who has landed maximum effective punches on the opponents target area of his body. Defending these punches does not draw any points from the judges. As the saying goes, a punch protects itself, which, therefore, is the best way to keep an adversary away. It applies to states as well, to generate options to protect the country beyond the confines of its boundaries.

There have been voices advocating the government of India to keep channels of communications open with the Taliban and some have even vociferously demanded that the Taliban regime be recognised! The tearing hurry to do so is not understood. As if by doing these advocates expect the Taliban to upgrade India as being a “Good Kafir” (Good Infidel)!!

The so called victory of the terrorists in Afghanistan is simply a military victory, if it can be so claimed. Terrorists can only plan destruction. But can they plan and execute nation ‘construction’ and institution building? Can they govern a nation through the fear of the gun over a long period? Can hospitals, schools, universities, infrastructure come up without finances and expertise? With state exchequers drained empty and no funding forthcoming the economy will collapse. The Taliban will use all fertile land for cultivation of poppy for illegal trading in drugs. India becomes vulnerable to this enterprise of theirs. War lords also use the same method to generate funds. This will lead to internal strife and people will be without food. Who does one then talk to? Therefore, the need to wait and watch.

The basic definition of diplomacy mentions of “the established method of influencing the decisions and behaviour of foreign governments and peoples through dialogue, negotiation and other measures short of war or violence.” Historically diplomacy meant the conduct of official bilateral relations between ‘sovereign’ states. Diplomacy is further categorised as: ad-hoc, classical and multilateral. The last has in its ambit: cultural, parliamentary, economic, public and military diplomacy. Going by this basics definition, India has very little clout to influence the decisions and behaviour of the Taliban. India has no leverage against the Taliban in Afghanistan. There are no pressure points that can be taken advantage of in talks or negotiations with the Taliban. India does not have the tools and capability for covert coercive diplomacy. ‘Red Lines’ cannot be drawn when a state does not have the power to force the other to back track or face retribution. Therefore it seems that these advocates subscribe to the Indian policy of meek appeasement – something which has been India’s forte for too long. Let India build leverages and create pressure point to bargain from a position of strength. Create capability to act if the ‘Red Lines’ drawn are violated. If the Taliban is to govern a nation it has to seek help which cannot be obtained by threats or violence. They are the ones who have to prove their credentials. Stable governments have the stamina to hold back and choose not to deal with an untested and unproven band of terrorists seeking to form a government of a nation.

Buzz words of the strategic community seem to have been just that – making buzzing sounds with little oomph! Global citizens, international community, smart power, right of self-determination and even superpower are questionable notions/ideas. Like in war, diplomatically difficult situations need a simple plan of execution. The more elaborate the plan more the ‘friction’ that it will generate within its moving parts. Thus, greater are the chances of it going haywire. The fog of war created due to its unpredictable nature together with friction caused by misunderstanding, individual perception, individual ability and a host of such intangibles are real and can radically change the outcome – something not anticipated at all.

India is at the cusp of transforming itself into a regional power to reckon with. Shed the diffidence and reticence as also the abject desire to please one and all. India now needs to think big and bold and act firmly.

However, be warned. In Afghanistan every man is a Khan. And behind every hillock there sits an Emperor. As a proverb goes “An Afghan Emir sleeps upon an ant hill”. Dealing with Afghanistan cannot be a routine exercise in diplomacy.