Geopolitical Analysis

By K N Pandit

Because of the covert and overt help of Pakistan, and the US’ blurred vision of Afghan policy, the Afghan Taliban are walking the streets of Kabul without a stiff battle. The Americans are gone. The “elected” government of Ashraf Ghani is gone and the Afghan national army raised by the Americans with great fanfare is invisible – destroyed, absconding or deserted.

Huge war material, arms, ammunition, vehicles, choppers, missiles, communication gadgets etc. and tons of unused material has become the booty for the Taliban to loot. These sophisticated arms are now in the hands of the Taliban against whom these were designed to be used.

Is this incredible abandonment of military hardware of high value to the “enemy” without a design? No, never. It is not done even under the gravest of compulsions. We have no clue whether this phenomenon came under discussion during the 45-minute telephonic talk between PM Modi and President Putin.

Strangely, while many charges are brought against President Biden for allowing a chaotic situation to develop in Afghanistan, no media source and no lawmaker has raised the issue of criminal abandonment of military hardware of such a quantitative and qualitative significance in the hands of an enemy. Is there something more than what has been revealed in the US-Taliban peace agreement signed in Doha?

There is a frantic expression of concern in national media and within the political circles in the country that after consolidating their position in Kabul, the victorious Afghan Taliban will move towards Kashmir on the prompting of Pakistani warmongers.

It will be noted that Pakistani official circles and the broad sections of media give extra hype to the Afghan Taliban and Pak proxies combine that Kashmir’s fate will be decided by them sooner than later. The rabble-rousers are oblivious of the fact that this propaganda blitzkrieg is for the consumption of Kashmiri separatists and their sympathisers among the discredited politicians. In particular, the Pakistani propaganda machine wants to provide crutches to the sagging morale of the indigenous terrorists who have been hunted down by the security forces and whose ranks have dried up for want of fresh recruitments.

We would like to analyse the Pak drum-beating of cherished Taliban attack on Kashmir and clarify Pakistan’s position vis-a-vis the Taliban. In the first place, Pakistan wants to ensure that the Taliban stand by their promise of showing no favour towards the Tahreek-i- Taliban-i-Pakistan (TTP) who have vowed to fight against the Pakistan army that is running the errands of the Pentagon. Pakistan’s apprehensions have come true because the first important person set free by the Taliban from Kabul prison is Faqir Muhammad, a well-known TTP commander who had been arrested and detained by the previous Afghan government. Thousands of people in Bhawalpore came out to receive him in his native place. TTP has been long associated as an arm of the Afghan Taliban.

Secondly, the Taliban and the ISIS-K (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran group) – in which K stands for Khurasan – are at daggers drawn. The two bomb blasts at the Kabul airport that killed 13 US soldiers and about 60 Afghan nationals, besides scores of wounded soldiers, have been owned by the Islamic State activists, reported Radio Amaq. Pakistan, too, is bitterly opposed to ISIS just because the latter considers the Pak army the handmaid of the Americans.

In this background, Pakistan and ISI will have to cross not one but two obstacles. The first is that they must be able to maintain control of the terrorist groups of its creation lest they decide to go along with the Taliban and the TTP. The second hurdle will be to face ISIS whose activists have spread out their tentacles into the Pak society extensively. In either case, the target is the Pakistan army.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Russia has deep interests in Central Asian Republics. She has defence agreements with many of them, and the one with Tajikistan, the republic contiguous to Afghanistan. Tajik-Afghan border is extended over a length of more than 250 miles. The Valley of Panjsheer, which has emerged as the epicentre of resistance to the Taliban, is dominated by the people of Tajik ethnicity. They enjoy the friendship and trust of the Republic of Tajikistan. Russia and Tajikistan have together deployed nearly 200 tanks along the border and are doing exercises to instil confidence in the border-dwellers on both sides of the border. Tajik army has deployed helicopters to drop arms and ammunition and food items in the resistance camps in Panjsheer.

Other Central Asian Republics especially Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan know that their security lies in the security of Tajikistan. This indirectly means neither the Afghan Taliban nor the ISIS –K will succeed in carving a toehold in Central Asia.
Conscious of the fact that even the Soviets were not successful in overpowering the Panjsheer Valley during their incursion of Afghanistan in 1979 because of the presence of great warrior Ahmad Shah Mas’ud, and after the exit of the Soviets, Ahmad Shah Mas’ud had fought the Taliban again, Shah Qureshi, the foreign minister of Pakistan took a quick jaunt to Dushanbe and met with the Tajik President Imomali Rahman. The Tajik President bluntly told him that his country has been fully involved in supporting the Taliban to succeed and create problems for the Republic of Tajikistan. If Pakistan considers it her moral duty to support the Taliban in Afghanistan then by same token Tajikistan has the moral duty to come to the rescue of the Tajiks in Panjsheer.

The entire world has understood that Pakistan has been playing a double role in the Afghan issue. No power is convinced that the Taliban have changed in their behaviour from what it was in 1996 when it came to power for the first time. Keeping its eye open to what has been said above we find Pakistan embroiled in a big messy situation from which cannot wriggle out easily.

To crown it all, there are irrefutable proofs of Pakistan supporting and promoting terror in the region and the FATF will take cognizance of it. Pakistan is now facing the threat of being shifted to the black list. Many members of the European Union have demanded that economic sanctions should be imposed on Pakistan. This demand is finding reverberations in the British Parliament and the American Congress also. Why should not India support a proposition like that and pursue it vigorously?

And lastly, India has historically good relations with Afghanistan. She has invested more than three billion dollars in the development of infrastructure for Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan are all aware of the goodwill India has for them. They will not allow destroying this edifice of goodwill built over centuries. India still wants peace to prevail in Afghanistan so that death and destruction now visiting the people of Afghanistan are banished from the land.

The world community must come to the support of the people of Afghanistan and unless Pakistan is crippled, peace will remain elusive in the Asian region.