Geopolitical Analysis

By K N Pandita

The Minister of External Affairs, S Jaishankar was right in saying that India wanted peace in and around Afghanistan. As Taliban are reported to be taking control over more and more towns and border crossing points, the neighbouring states, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, China and Russia, all are closely watching how the situation is developing in strife-torn Afghanistan after the exit of the US and NATO forces.

In an interview given to Sputnik, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said:

• “Afghanistan’s Northern provinces are rapidly turning into a new hotspot as a result of the hasty withdrawal of the US troops, with the Taliban already controlling almost the entire border with Tajikistan, and international terrorist organizations gaining a foothold in the area.
• The consequences of the US and some NATO countries troops’ hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan are becoming obvious: once relatively calm northern provinces are rapidly turning into another hotspot. The Taliban almost completely control the border with Tajikistan. Numerous international terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda branches are gaining a foothold. In addition, foreign militants from combat zones in the Middle East and North Africa are being pulled into Afghanistan.”

This is a grim picture and repudiates the Biden administration’s assessment. However, Washington argues that the purpose of withdrawal was to decimate Al Qaeda that had hatched the 9/11 conspiracy. It added that the Afghan Taliban had forged a nexus with Al Qaeda once Osama bin Laden managed to find a haven in the Af-Pak region. The Pentagon argued that since Osama had been eliminated along with many other commanders of the organization, it does not envision any threat from the Taliban because the organization was badly battered and enfeebled during two decades of fighting.

Nevertheless, the contentious decision of withdrawing almost unconditionally from a two-decade-long engagement with the Taliban without having broken its backbone has raised many an eyebrow. There were voices of opposition even from some Congressmen as well.

The only attempt of face-saving to which the US resorted was of engaging the Taliban for talks that would lead to making them the promise of giving a safe passage to the retreating American and NATO troops. Pakistan used its clout with the Taliban and managed to bring them to a peace dialogue in Doha in January 2020. Until that time the US sources had been using its sources but only unsuccessfully because the Taliban had taken the position that peace talks would be held only when foreign troops vacated Afghanistan.

The notable point is that the peace talks were held between the US and Taliban leadership and not with the elected government in Kabul which the Taliban have all through declined to recognize. It is a different matter that President Ashraf Ghani government representative was present in the Doha meeting where the peace agreement between the US government and the Taliban leadership was signed. The agreement did carry a clause purporting that once ceasefire was implemented, the Afghan stakeholders would sit down and discuss the Doha agreement was signed, the Taliban launched a massive attack on government forces in the eastern province of Kunduz in which nearly two dozen soldiers were killed. The Taliban escalated violence and began making successful advances in capturing more territories and border crossing points. The Taliban demanded that the Kabul regime should set free thousands of their activists taken prisoner by the Kabul government. The process of releasing a large number of prisoners was not that simple because of the nature and content of criminal charges against them.

As the Taliban began capturing more and more district towns and crossing points of strategic importance and claiming that it had 85 per cent of the territory under its control soon after the American exit, it included northern Afghanistan bordering with the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan – once called the underbelly of the erstwhile Soviet Union – Moscow took cognizance of the seriousness of the situation and the implications of Taliban capture of Badakhshan-Pamir watershed. It was evident that the Taliban would resort to the enforcement of strict sharia mandate in its worst form viz. depriving the Afghan women of all freedoms under human and civil rights including denial of education to the female children.

Moscow was alerted on the vulnerability of the southern border of the Central Asian Republic of Tajikistan. A situation similar to the one in 1996 could be repeated with very serious consequences for the fragile cohesion of Tajik society. After all, it was with great difficulty that the Tajik government under President Emomali Rahman had been able to restore normalcy in the republic that had seen six years of brutal civil war.

Quoting AFP, the Economic Times of 28 July wrote:

• Russia will bolster Central Asian ally Tajikistan’s military with weapons, equipment and training amid a deteriorating situation in neighbouring Afghanistan, Moscow’s defence minister said Wednesday on a visit to the country (Tajikistan). Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will hold joint military drills next week near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan, where the Taliban has made huge military gains and claims to control 90 per cent of the country’s borders. Speaking in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe where he met his counterpart Sherali Mirzo, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow had organised additional supplies of weaponry and equipment to bolster Tajikistan’s army. We continue to train qualified Tajik military personnel. We prepare them both at our military universities and the 201st Russian military base. Moscow was ready to offer “any necessary help to (our) Tajikistan friends”.

Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Andrey Rudenko had said:

• “People from Central Asia are being actively recruited into the ranks of such organizations. Drug production has reached record heights. The degradation of Afghanistan’s security situation poses a direct threat to Central Asia.
• “We share corresponding concerns of our neighbours in the region. The importance of maintaining coordinated effort to minimize the negative impact of these risks on our countries’ security was emphasized during the fourth meeting of the heads of Russia’s and Central Asian nations’ foreign ministers in Tashkent on July 16 and in the adopted joint statement.
• Russia will take measures to prevent aggression against Tajikistan if required. “If necessary, the Russian Federation will take all measures to prevent aggression or territorial provocations in line with the spirit of the Russian-Tajik strategic partnership and alliance.”

Rudenko had clarified Russia’s stand on the issue as follows:

• “Drug production has reached record heights. The degradation of Afghanistan’s security situation poses a direct threat to Central Asia. We share corresponding concerns of our neighbours in the region. The importance of maintaining coordinated effort to minimize the negative impact of these risks on our countries’ security was emphasized during the fourth meeting of the heads of Russia’s and Central Asian nations’ foreign ministers in Tashkent on July 16 and in the adopted joint statement. If necessary, the Russian Federation would take all measures to prevent aggression or territorial provocations in line with the spirit of the Russian-Tajik strategic partnership and alliance. Of course, we will continue to assist in boosting the defence capabilities of Tajikistan, both in a bilateral format and in line with the decision of the CSTO Collective Security Council as of September 23, 2013, on strengthening the Tajik-Afghan border.

The readiness to support the friendly nation – both bilaterally and under the CSTO – has been reaffirmed by President Vladimir Putin during his phone conversation with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon in early July. The Kremlin Press Service reported that “the parties had a detailed discussion on the complex situation on the Tajik-Afghan border prompted by the escalation of armed confrontation in Afghanistan, including in the border zone. President Putin reaffirmed his determination to provide all necessary support to Tajikistan, both bilaterally and within the framework of the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO],” it said.

The Washington Post of 6 July wrote that more than 1,000 Afghan soldiers fled into neighbouring Tajikistan early Monday to escape clashes with Taliban insurgents who have mounted an aggressive offensive as NATO forces withdraw, according to Tajik border officials. With that President Rahmon of Tajikistan ordered the re-location of 20,000 Tajik troops along the Tajik-Afghan border to forestall further deterioration of the situation. The Washington Post of August 2 reported that Afghans are leaving their native land at the rate of 30,000 souls a week and with that, the refugee problem is burgeoning for the near and far countries.

As part of the upcoming joint tactical exercise, Russian tank crews from the 201st military base stationed in Tajikistan made a 200-kilometre (124-mile) march from the Lyaur training ground to the Kharb-Maydon training ground bordering Afghanistan. During the march, the T-72 tank crews worked out combat protection for convoys of military vehicles, moving across conditionally contaminated sites in the area, and repelling attacks by an enemy’s sabotage and reconnaissance groups.

The reports are that the Kabul regime is seriously working on the plan of raising a special force of Afghan nationalist youth – something like conscription – for which the US may offer adequate financial assistance. It has to be noted that the US is desperately asking Pakistan for military bases from where her defence forces can operate against the Taliban if the need arises. However, Pakistan is mired in deep internal dissension as the Pak military seniors have been discussing the subject with counterparts in the Pentagon but the Islamabad civilian leadership is shying away. The presmption is that during their meeting in Geneva, Putin agreed to offer a military base to the US for its fight against the terrorists including the Taliban. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, both are said to have agreed to go by the advice of President Putin. If the US succeeds in finding the military bases in Central Asia close to Afghanistan, she is likely to reinforce it with the support from its naval presence in the Gulf region.

A side product of this strategy aimed at containing the Taliban is the counter-strategy of Beijing which invited a delegation of nine Taliban under the leadership of Mulla Baradar for talks in Beijing. China has two purposes. One is to keep the Taliban on its side so that in case they do take over in Kabul, shecan enter into a mega economic deal with the Taliban. The second aim is to strengthen the unilateralism now poised against the western type of democracy. It also aims to soften the restive Uighur Sunni population of Xinjiang because the Taliban may deny China its pound of flesh in Central Asia.

In the final analysis, the Taliban upsurge on the one hand and the US’ withdrawal on the other are likely to generate rivalry between Russia and China for the dominance of Afghan politics. Moscow looks at the ongoing situation from a geostrategic perspective. The Central Asian Republics were once the confederating units of the Soviet Union, and the contribution made by the Soviet Union in the transformation of Central Asia from a medieval to modern society is indelible. Moscow’s relations with all of five Central Asian and two Trans-Caucasian states are deep. China’s latent Central Asian aspirations are likely to widen the gulf of rivalry between the two Asian powers, Russia and China. Russia’s willingness to allow some military bases to the US nearby of Tajik-Afghan border immediately received the response from China in her invitation to a high-powered delegation of the Taliban to Beijing for talks. After withdrawing from Afghanistan, one does not find any immediate interest left for the US in the Central Asian region. Hence, it boils down to the cliché “Exit US enter Russia”
(The writer is the former Director of the Centre of Central Asian Studies, Kashmir University).