The Pakistani Spectator

Gen Ashfaque Parvez Kayani’s recent comments where he described the Indian role in Afghanistan as “Unhelpful” summarises our national security concerns. Pakistan has been voicing for some time its serious apprehensions regarding Indian support to the terror outfits in Pakistan including Baluch separatists and Pakistani Taliban. Only last month Pakistani Intelligence unearthed a RAW hatched conspiracy to highjack a Pakistani civilian aircraft to internationalise the Baluchistan issue. This is not a coloured Pakistani view alone, in his landmark assessment late last year, the US Force Commander in Afghanistan, Gen McChrystal echoed the same perception when he said that peace in Afghanistan cannot prevail unless Pakistani state interests are taken into account and that, increased Indian influence and its growing role in the Afghan affair was counterproductive in view of its being unacceptable to Pakistan.

Pakistan has suffered the most due to the Afghan morass and therefore Afghan stability is absolutely vital to our national interest. Unstable Afghanistan provides the space to anti Pakistan elements to spread chaos in our country. On the contrary, India finds chaotic Afghanistan with spill over in Pakistan suiting its designs and in harmony with its national interest.  This scenario hurts Pakistan; it not only weakens our economy, caps our development projects, creates a serious image problem but also embroils sizeable Pakistani military assets. Indian Army Chief, Gen Kapoor’s brag of fighting a two front war with China and Pakistan has its roots in this Indian design of weakening Pakistan internally. By actively backing the Pakistani Taliban, Baluch separatists and other terrorist groups, India aims at diluting and dispersing Pakistani military strength on counter terrorism and counter Insurgency operations. With Pakistan thus weakened, bulk of Indian Forces gets freed from Indo Pak border which could be employed against China.

The Indians are pursuing this strategy from within Afghanistan right under the nose of the US and NATO Forces. Indians have ringed the Pak Afghan border with strategically placed Consulates to support terrorism in Pakistan under the garb of diplomatic legitimacy. In the cover of so called Development Support, Indians have established a number of Compounds elsewhere in Afghanistan supposedly for their construction teams made up of serving and retired intelligence professionals who are training terrorists and providing them logistic and financial support for terrorist activities in Pakistan.  Pakistan has tangible evidence of Indian involvement in promoting terrorist activities, Pakistani Forces have recently hauled truck full of Indian weapons, ammunition and communication equipment from the Taliban.

Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and other terrorist groups are all intertwined. When India helps Pakistani Taliban, it automatically extends supports to the Afghan Taliban. The US and NATO Allies are spending Billions of dollars and have sacrificed hundreds of their soldiers to stabilise Afghanistan. In settling scores with Pakistan by helping Taliban, the Indians are actually undermining the US and NATO operations in Afghanistan. The latest suicide attack on the CIA base in Khost Province of Afghanistan has shaken the CIA and US hierarchy. Hakimullah Mahsud, the man behind this attack was a known Indian protégé. Partially due to Indian support, today the Taliban are on the roll, running parallel governments in 32 out of 33 Provinces of Afghanistan with their own shadow Governors. President Obama’s so called AF PAK policy is in tatters, even with the induction of 30,000 fresh US troops, they can’t reverse the decline unless India is prevented from bleeding the US and NATO mission.

The recent British sponsored conference on Afghanistan in London last week was apparently held with a view to evolving an international architecture for coordinating global efforts for peace, stability and development in Afghanistan.  The apparent outcome of the meeting hardly reflected on the announced objective and was rather vague and not upto international expectations. The British, US and some other ISAF component countries appeared extremely keen to create a prime role in the Afghan Affair for India. Holbrooke in fact rushed to India immediately after concluding his pre conference visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Negating the Western stance, during a trilateral Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan Foreign Minister’s meeting in Islamabad on 16th Jan, the three sides in their joint declaration clearly opposed the idea of including any country other than Afghanistan’s geographically contagious neighbours China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan to join the regional arrangements. The lack of transparency in Indian activities in Afghanistan has obviously disturbed even its Afghan ally and Iran.

The West continues to accuse Pakistani intelligence for links to the Afghan Terror networks but fails to notice Indian linkages to terror groups wreaking havoc in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Therefore, the Western and US keenness to include India in any regional forum designed to stabilise Afghanistan appears absolutely illogical to conventional thought process. One is forced to think if the US, British and their allies approve of Indian meddling and if destabilised Afghanistan and Pakistan somehow fit into their scheme of things !!!!!. Security analyst and conspiracy theorist believe that the chaos and anarchic conditions engulfing Pakistan appear too synchronized not to be orchestrated and coordinated by outside forces. The plausible aim is to establish to the global community that unstable Pakistan is incapable of securely maintaining its Nuclear Weapon Systems which could fall in the hands of extremists. Pakistani Nuclear weapons should therefore be taken out under an international regime. Is this what the bloodletting in Afghanistan and Pakistan all about !!!.

Conspiracy theories aside, if the US and its allies are serious about stabilising Afghanistan, India must be marginalised in the Afghan context. Alternatively, the US is doomed to the fate that the Russians suffered in the 80’s and the British a long ago in Afghanistan.