‘India,’ argued a former member of the Afghan Taliban, ‘is not itself a problem.’ Instead, this battle hardened insurgent made clear, ‘The ISI’s obsession with India’ is the main difficulty, ‘making it impossible for the Taliban to maintain distance between Indian and Pakistani rivalry.’¹ From the outset, such comments, coming as they are from what many consider to be a group that is close to being a Pakistani proxy, might well be read as nothing more than a public relations exercise designed to reach out to India: a country whose footprint within Afghanistan is firmly established.

Another way to read such statements is to appreciate that more than ten years of war has partially changed those taking part in the conflict. Indeed, there is no doubt that Afghanistan in the present milieu is – to some extent – a changed place. The political, social, economic, and strategic environment within and around Afghanistan might not be said to be dramatically different, but it is certainly not the same as in 2004 when the Congress-led government was voted into power in New Delhi.

At the time, General Pervez Musharraf was widely considered as a prized ally of an American administration that was either unwilling or simply ignorant of the general’s two-faced approach to the war. President George W. Bush even confessed to having ‘admired’ the self-appointed Pakistani president’s ‘decision to side with America after 9/11.’² Musharraf, then sixty-one, did well to manage his American patrons. Whilst he made sure to arrest at least some Al Qaeda operatives and hand them over to American agencies, he also provided shelter and sustenance to the Afghan Taliban leadership led by Mullah Mohammad Omar. Such support would prove vital to the Taliban’s resurgence,³ making it almost impossible to imagine even a near-peaceful transition of power in and outside of Kabul as the majority of American and NATO-led battalions head home.

Musharraf now faces charges of treason, something perhaps neither the Indian government nor those in Washington could have ever envisaged. In fact, that the General’s chosen political party – Pakistan Muslim League (Q) – would be ousted in the elections in February 2008 was itself surprising to many within Pakistan.⁴ Musharraf’s eventual dismissal by the winning alliance between the People’s Party of Pakistan and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) was equally shocking. The relatively peaceful transition of democratic power – that placed Nawaz Sharif as prime minister following the elections in June 2013 – was a first for Pakistan. It signifies the imperatives underlying a growing resilience within and appeal for the democratic process.

Equally, and for the time being, such a process has been aided by the army’s reluctance to directly and obviously take command of domestic politics. This is again something few could have imagined between 2004 and 2007. Their confidence in Musharraf and his administration prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to pin his hopes on a back channel dialogue. Reportedly, these sessions were close to negotiating the demilitarization of Siachen. A possible advance with regards to the conflict in Kashmir around what Singh famously referred to as a solution based on ‘soft borders’ was also said to have been interrogated, one of four points of action considered by Musharraf.⁵

 

Yet, and apart from Musharraf’s removal from office, the heinous attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 sealed the fate of a dialogue process that has never really recovered. In fact, as noted by the scholar Stephen Tankel, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group that masterminded and recruited the ten gunmen who stormed select sites in Mumbai, ‘remains relatively secure’ within Pakistan.⁶ Instead, incremental steps to improve economic relations, evident in the Sharif governments’ decision to consider buying 500-1200 megawatts of electricity from India have done well to capitalize on modest initiatives. To be sure, and whilst hypnotized by domestic concerns and focused on surviving a string of corruption allegations during Singh’s second tenure starting in 2009, the prime minister and his foreign policy advisers have done extraordinarily well to relay the groundwork for future cooperation.

 

As pertinently, the last ten years have witnessed the rebuilding of relations with Afghan elites and institutions that were broken since the Soviet 40th Army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. At the time, Rajiv Gandhi – whilst in talks with Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s – worried incessantly about a ‘resurgent Pakistan’.⁷ This was hardly surprising. India and Pakistan found themselves on diagonally opposite ends of the conflict. Whilst Pakistan, and the ISI in particular, cheered the mujahideen victory, India provided an escort and ultimately safe haven to Mohammad Najibullah’s – the Afghan President executed by the Taliban in 1996 – family. The situation is rather different in 2014. The withdrawal of a majority of American-led troops does not mean the end of Indian leverage or political influence. India is simply too big and important an actor to be marginalized, a position it has carefully and independently carved out for itself over the last decade.

The following part of this essay is divided into two sections. The first outlines the challenges of dealing with Pakistan. The second outlines those to do with Afghanistan. Neither of these is, of course, delinked from the other. The essay argues that the present time offers a notable opportunity to strengthen relations with Sharif’s government in Pakistan. Similarly, there is a window of opportunity available in the current state of affairs to help Afghanistan through a highly uncertain period whilst preserving Indian interests in a country vastly different to the one left behind by the Soviets. But to make it count, a new leadership in New Delhi will have to act swiftly. Windows of opportunity are necessarily time bound. Alas, and for reasons that have little to do with India, such opportunities are unlikely to be available even a year down the line.

 

In his early sixties, Nawaz Sharif occupies a position he is familiar with. Prime Minister for the third time in two and a half decades – he was first elected to power in 1990 – Sharif has made clear that he has domestic support to improve relations with India. ‘We didn’t have any India-bashing slogans in the elections in 2013,’ he argued in the first interview he gave after taking office. His position during the campaign was clear. ‘If we get a mandate,’ he asserted, ‘we will make sure we pick up the threads from where we left off in 1999.’⁸ In the present time, and Sharif’s encouraging interview aside, an advance towards India is partially handicapped by the governments need to deal with two immediate issues.

First, the political need to enter into a meaningful dialogue with the so-called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or the TTP that has launched successive attacks within Pakistan. The TTP was formed following Musharraf’s decision to storm the Lal Masjid in Islamabad in 2007. With all eyes on the fight against the TTP and the feeble attempts to negotiate peace terms, the appetite for a far reaching dialogue with India is difficult to imagine. That the pressure on Sharif will mount in the following few months are undeniable too. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI), which champions the cause of peace with the TTP, has made it that much more incumbent upon Sharif not to give up on talks. Such negotiations have domestic support as evidenced in Khan’s victory in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), and Sharif realizes this. Second, and related, the army continues to have a monopoly over anything to do with Kashmir. Yet, and interestingly, there is a degree of support from within the army for incremental steps in the direction of improving economic relations with India whilst staying clear of broader political negotiations.

 

Pakistan’s partial willingness to both consider recognizing India as a most favoured nation (MFN) with the view to ease financial relations and its support for a feasibility study financed by the World Bank to buy electricity from India is encouraging. The Pakistani Cabinet agreed to a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India in January 2014. With regards to electricity, this is imperative. Pakistan produces only 65% of its domestic energy needs. Importing 500 to 1200 megawatts of electricity from India will be more than that currently bought from Iran plus the projected amount of electricity to be supplied by Tajikistan in the future.⁹ Hence, the openings exist. Sceptics may underestimate or fail to see value in modest advances, but for those in the business of peace, something gradual but sustainable is as attractive as something more pronounced like talks.

Capitalizing on these incremental steps to help build confidence will be essential.¹⁰ In fact, the next government in New Delhi is well placed to re-invigorate a back channel dialogue with Sharif’s envoys. Sartaj Aziz – Sharif’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Adviser – is a pragmatist, and sees little difference in dealing with the Congress or the BJP. While talks on and around Kashmir itself is likely to invite limitations placed by the Pakistan Army, an Indian offer to continue to discuss further economic relations, the demilitarization of the Siachen glacier and even the impact of the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan are less likely to attract martial censure. A whole series of track-two proposals suggest the same.¹¹

 

In fact, and especially with regards to Siachen, a future Indian government would be well served to first make sure to build a degree of consensus within the armed forces, and especially within the army. The army’s limited but obvious reluctance to agree to demilitarization has shaped government imperatives. This was most clear when General J.J. Singh – the former Chief of Army Staff – publicly announced caveats to demilitarization. General V. K. Singh – the recently retired Chief of Army Staff and now a member of the BJP – also reportedly opposed Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s want to press ahead with talks on Siachen in 2012.¹² As he writes in his autobiography, ‘This sentimental nonsense has to be put aside for good. CBMs with Pakistan are fine, but not at the cost of our national security.’¹³

Notably, General Kayani – the former Pakistani Chief of Army Staff – argued that ‘both countries should sit together to resolve all the issues, including Siachen.’¹⁴ His statement was, of course, made following the death of 140 Pakistani soldiers in an avalanche. Interestingly, both the PTI and members of the PML (N) have come out in support of talks on Siachen, signifying a degree of domestic support for engaging India on this issue. A new government would be well placed to embrace this opening from the very beginning, whilst making sure to generate consensus from relevant agencies and services within India – something the Manmohan Singh government failed to do. Sensible strategy, experts often argue, is dependent on the level of buy-in from within organizations.

 

Further, whether it is to do with economic relations or the much more complicated matter of Siachen, engaging Pakistan needs to be at least partially isolated from India’s demands on bringing the LeT to book. There is no doubt whatsoever that ‘the attackers,’ according to General Ahmed Shuja Pasha – the former head of the ISI – ‘had ISI links.’¹⁵ This fact alone is difficult if not impossible to accept, especially as LeT chief Hafiz Saeed ‘remains a free man’.¹⁶ This notwithstanding, if a new government is to decide on dealing and working with Pakistan, it will need to accept the paradoxes and bitter irony embedded deep inside Pakistan’s body politic.

That the future of Afghanistan remains uncertain is a cliché that has lost its utility in the practice of diplomacy. Those advocating ‘state collapse’ tend to do so on the basis of weak governance, unbelievable levels of corruption, the raging insurgency, and finally because of the withdrawal of a large number of western forces, leaving Afghanistan vulnerable to an expanding civil war.¹⁷ It is hardly surprising that this is the dominant view with regards to a state that has longed for stability since the Saur revolution in 1978 invited Soviet intervention a year later. Yet, dominant views tend to ignore alternative explanations. For instance, an equally strong argument could be made to suggest that there is nothing inevitable about the collapse of institutions and the outbreak of civil war.

 

In 2002, soon after Hamid Karzai was made president at Bonn, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that ordinary Afghan’s lived on less than half-a-dollar a day. Around a quarter were literate and only one television station worked. By 2009, literacy rates tripled, access to sanitation increased from 13 per cent in 2001 to 27 per cent, with an annual growth rate of 15 per cent between 2001 and 2006.¹⁸ This is, of course, not to even remotely suggest that Afghanistan is a haven for investment or development. It is not. Rather that sceptics need to balance their prescriptions with a degree of optimism supported by facts on the ground. Indeed, a part of Afghanistan’s growth story was and continues to be aided by Indian funds, assistance, and infrastructural development. It is not for nothing that India tops all popularity charts in most surveys.¹⁹ A fresh selection of elites in New Delhi might keep three points in mind, all of which requires making the best use of a window of opportunity that is rapidly disappearing.

 

First, no matter which of the three primary candidates for President – Abdullah Abdullah, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and Zalmai Rassoul – win the elections in May, a non-Pashtun head of state will only exacerbate the already edgy state of relations with the Pashtun dominated South and East. Abdullah might be seen to be India’s choice for the top job, but this is estimated to do little for stability. Instead, a new government would need to act fast to continue to support those that have entrenched themselves within line ministries in and outside of Kabul. President Barack Obama and western leaders more generally, may balk at Karzai’s desire to play the role of an elder statesman, but he and his political network – at least for the immediate future – will continue to assist and aid Indian efforts, even under the premiership of Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani.

Second, India’s leverage within Afghanistan is measured in terms of its continued ability to economically support the Afghan state. Apart from the large injection of funds between 2003 and 2012, the wait and see policy in practice in the last two years is hardly encouraging. To stay relevant it is imperative to continue to support large infrastructural projects – like the 218 kilometre Delaram-Zaranj highway. This ought to be a key priority for a new government. The goodwill on the streets of Afghanistan will remain so only if ordinary Afghans are able to witness India’s largesse.

Third, the Congress-led government has done well to temper the degree of military support provided to Afghanistan. In fact, the focus on economic aid and not military assistance is a policy dating back to January 1950 when India and the Royal Government of Afghanistan entered into a Treaty of Friendship. The Strategic Partnership Agreement signed in October 2011 reflects the same. It focused on ‘capacity building’ and mentoring and training a small number of Afghan officers and non-commissioned personnel on Indian soil. Notwithstanding the ISI’s claims that India seeks to expand its security and intelligence infrastructure within Afghanistan – a point debunked by Pakistani ambassadors serving in Kabul²⁰ – it would appear that Prime Minister Singh and his advisers have in fact done everything possible to restrict and manage security related activities.

 

Any change in such policies, or even a vague, deniable, and unspecific set of pronouncements to change the status quo will be detrimental to India alone. This is not easy. The ISI supported attacks – executed by the so-called Haqqani network – have led to the loss of Indian lives on multiple occasions. Yet, prudent diplomacy is about measure, something the Congress-led Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) understood better than most. Whoever mans the advisory portfolios in a new PMO would be well advised to take cognizant of what went right in the past decade, and why indeed India is considered the partner of choice in Kabul. In foreign policy, it is perhaps safe to say that the ignorant deal only with what they chose to interpret as mistakes of the past. The wise look to capitalize on what went right. One can only hope that future leaders prove to be even wiser than their predecessors, a challenge not easily realized.

 

* Rudra Chaudhuri is the author of Forged in Crisis: India and the United States Since 1947. HarperCollins, Delhi, 2014.

Footnotes:

1. Author’s interview with a former deputy minister in the erstwhile Taliban-led government between 1996 and 2001, Dubai, July, 2011.

2. George W. Bush, Decision Points. Virgin Books, New York, 2010, pp. 212-213.

3. For a short note see Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back. Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, 2013, pp. M139-148.

4. Carlotta Gall, ‘Pakistan’s Victors May Lack Strength to Oust Musharraf’, The New York Times, 21 February 2008.

5. Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster, London, 2006, p. 303.

6. Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Hurst, London, 2011, p. 257.

7. Artemy M. Kalinovsky, A Long Goodbye: The Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2010, pp. 81-82.

8. David Blair and David Munk, ‘Nawaz Sharif’, The Telegraph, 23 August 2013.

9. Zafar Bhutta, ‘Pakistan All Set to Import Electricity From India’, The Express Tribune, 20 March 2014.

10. For details see, Non-alignment 2.0: A Foreign and Strategic Policy for India in the 21st Century. Penguin, New Delhi, 2013, pp. 35-41.

11. See, http://www.delhipolicygroup.com/page/trilateral-dialogues.html

12. Gaurav Sawant and Shiv Aroor, ‘Blood Politics on Siachen’, India Today, 5 May 2012.

13. V.K. Singh with Kunal Verma, Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography. Aleph Books, New Delhi, 2013, p. 145.

14. Sawant and Aroor, ‘Blood Politics’, op. cit.

15. See Husain Haqqani, Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding. Public Affairs, New York, 2013, p. 331.

16. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, The Siege: The Attack on the Taj. Penguin, New Delhi, 2013, p. 293.

17. Stephen Biddle, ‘Ending the War in Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs, September/ October 2013.

18. Paul Miller, ‘Finish the Job’, Foreign Affairs, January-February 2011.

19. Matthieu Aikins, ‘India in Afghanistan’, The Caravan, October 2010.

20. See, Riaz Mohammad Khan, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Conflict, Extremism, and Modernity, Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, Washington, DC, 2011, p. 131.