https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/911-anniversary-the-global-war-on-terror-has-done-little-to-help-india-tide-over-its-security-issues-7449541.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true

9/11 Anniversary | The global war on terror has done little to help India tide over its security issues

Periodisation of the recent past customarily ends the post-Cold War unipolar moment of United States’ hegemony at 9/11. Though the US response to 9/11 epitomised its power at its zenith, its strategic overreach has turned its strategic trajectory indubitably downwards, not so much in aggregate power but in relative terms to its peer competitors, as also the suitability of its power to the issues of the day. Nothing illustrates this better than the manner of its exit from Kabul last month.

The observance of the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks in the US on September 11 is an appropriate moment to likewise appraise as to where India’s power is poised.

The anniversary finds India hemmed into its regional space, with the two-front challenge feared for more than a decade now a manifest reality. An economy under strain from missteps even prior to the onset of COVID-19 is stretched to find the necessary resources for the corresponding defence outlay.

India is coping by movement doctrinally (integrated battle groups) and structurally (integrated theatre commands), though its efforts to return to equable relations with China continue as a work in progress ever since the Chinese intrusion in Ladakh. Its strained equations with Pakistan are likely to heighten in wake of Pakistan seemingly stealing a march over India with the movement it backed, the Taliban, taking over Kabul in one fell swoop from the India-supported Ashraf Ghani government. The apprehended fallout has India gearing up for instability in Kashmir.

The clock appears to have rewound some 20 years.

Immediately prior to 9/11, India was stocking up for giving Pakistan a sock in the nose for its being unheeding of India’s outreach at the Agra summit and upping of its proxy war in Kashmir, then raging at a higher note since the Kargil War. The plan was called Operation Kabaddi and involved taking a few posts along infiltration prone routes on the Line of Control (LoC). In the event, 9/11 intruded and so rudely did the US into the region with the operation hastily renamed Operation Enduring Freedom from its earlier hubristic moniker Infinite Justice.

The impact of the global war on terror (GWOT) swirling in the close vicinity led to Pakistan’s deft footwork in reacquiring strategic capital from its location as a frontline state a second time round. This enabled it to wiggle out of a tight spot after the coincident terror attack on India’s Parliament. India’s military reaction — slow off the blocks — allowed Pakistan to rely on the US to bail it, then and in the next peak of the twin-peak crisis.

The upshot of the crisis was benign in the two countries able to work their earlier plan of engaging each other on issues of discord. Meetings followed, marked by ceasefire on the LoC and quietude in Kashmir. However, internal politics playing spoil sport, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf was deposed and then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s latitude eclipsed in the aftermath of Mumbai 26/11. In retrospect it is easy to espy a lost opportunity.

Having shot its bolt on peace initiatives, Pakistan turned its attention to its northern neighbour, nursing the Taliban back to insurgent good health while encouraging US President Barack Obama’s peace surge. It withstood US President Donald Trump’s fulminations by delivering the Taliban to the table at Doha. Strategic patience through some 10 rounds of talks since 2018 enabled it to finally see the US pack up and leave Afghanistan last month. A small price to pay for this strategic gamble was in playing down India’s surgical strikes, refraining from proxy war and its reluctant inaction on India’s dilution of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir.

For its part, India snuggled up with the US, starting with the nuclear deal and participating in Obama’s pivot to Asia, that has lately culminated in its co-option into the Quad. It hopes to balance against growing Chinese power, but the effect has arguably spurred China to through its intrusion caution India against proximity with the US, despite personal ministrations of the ties by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in successive summits with China’s Xi Jinping. The Ladakh intrusions, prompted in part by the changed political map of J&K, signify India’s current day strategic predicament.

The US having departed Afghanistan and poised by year end to leave Iraq, the GWOT has run its course. The GWOT in the backdrop did little to help India tide over its security issues that predated 9/11. The lesson is that India must be Atmanirbhar Bharat, a term popularly associated with economic regeneration, but also relevant for strategic autonomy. Self-reliance, interpreted as a return to non-alignment rather than external balancing, must be leitmotif of strategy hereon

 Publications in 2020-21 - 35

Eschewing and not manipulating escalation	Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) 12 May 20
Why India Did Not Go to War with China	EPW Vol. 55, Issue No. 35, 29 Aug, 2020
The India-Pak escalation dynamic	Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 55, Issue No. 9, 29 Feb, 2020
Why India Did Not Go to War with China	EPW Vol. 55, Issue No. 35, 29 Aug, 2020

  30 August 21 - India’s Afghanistan policy explained in regime security terms, thecitizen.in

2.      24 August 21 - Afghanistan Crisis | India must deploy its economic soft power, moneycontrol.com

3.      16 August 21 - Reform intelligence agencies in the national interest, milligazette.com

4.      11 August 21 – Afghanistan Civil War fallout on Kashmir – thecitizen.in

5.      11 August 21 - What a civil war next door means for us, Kashmir Times

6.      6 August 21 - The Escalatory Risks of India’s Integrated Battle Groups, South Asian Voices, Stimson Center

7.      11 July 21 - A peace strategy for Afghanistan

8.      18 June 21 - Counter insurgency is not a policeman’s job, Kashmir Times

9.      16 June 21 - Cohesion in the army: The battle winning factor, Center for Land Warfare Studies

10.  8 June 21 - An assessment of new ‘strategies’ for Pakistan and China, Kashmir Times

11.  6 July 21 – A case for ceasefire in Kashmir, Kashmir Walla

12.  18 May 21 - Try UN peacekeeping in Afghanistan, Kashmir Times

13.  28 Feb 21 - Securitisation of cultural nationalism, Kashmir Times

14.  7 July 21 - In Kashmir, the GD Bakshi way, Kashmir Walla

15.  5 Jan 21 – A fake encounter yet again?, Kashmir Times

16. 17 August 2020 - Why the déjà vu over the Shopian killings, Kashmir Times

17.  5 Oct 2020- The long-term implications of India’s do-nothing response in Ladakh, Newsclick

18.  19 February 2020https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18337/Whose-Army-is-it-AnywayWhose army is it anyway?

 6 February 2020http://www.kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=98998 Modi must sack those misadvising him on national security

  5 February 2020http://www.milligazette.com/news/16872-what-should-shaheen-bagh-stalwarts-do-now What should Shaheen Bagh stalwarts do now

  27 January 2020http://www.milligazette.com/news/16869-india-the-coming-anarchy India — The coming anarchy

22.  Jan 2020 https://www.indianewsstream.com/a-suggestion-for-india-on-the-afghanistan-peace-talks/ A suggestion for India on the Afghanistan peace talks

 16 January 2020https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18172/The-Crisis-in-the-Indian-Deep-State; http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=98483 20 Jan 2020; The crisis in the Indian deep state

 15 January 2020http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=98358 An Army Day resolution for the new chief

  13 January 2020https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/politics/politics-the-iran-us-spat-has-resonance-for-the-region-4810501.html/amp The Iran-US spat has resonance for the region

26.  8 January 2020https://www.newsclick.in/Many-Chink-India-Nuclear-Chain-Command Many a Chink in India’s Nuclear Chain of Command

27.  7 January 2020https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/gujaratification-as-the-foremost-national-security-threatGujaratification as the foremost national security threat

bBook Reviews 

1.      The Book Review India Volume Xlv Number 6 June 2021 Military Musings: 150 Years Of Indian Military Thought From The Journal Of The United Service Institution Of India Edited by Sqn. Ldr. Rana T.S. Chhina, MBE

2.      Shiraz Sheikh, Democracy and authoritarianism in Pakistan, The Book Review, Dec 2020

3.      TP Sreenivasan, Modiplomacy: Through a Shakespearean Prism, New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2020; pp. 242; Rs. 800; ISBN 978-8193555446.

4.      HS Panag, The Indian Army, New Delhi: Westland, The Book Review, September 2020

B

UNPUBLISHED, REVISED VERSION OF THE PRECEDING POST

India’s Afghanistan policy in regime security terms

Foreign minister Jaishankar informed the recent all-party meeting on the Afghanistan situation that India’s policy is one of ‘wait and watch’. Whereas a policy-in-the-works is justified, a regional power should instead be pushing for an outcome it prefers in Afghanistan.

Diplomatically, it has at the two Security Council meetings joined the international chorus calling for moderation on part of the Taliban and to ensure a broad representativeness in the new government. As incentive, the mid August reference to Taliban among the armed groups has been removed in the late August Council resolution. Sticks to extract good behavior of the Taliban in power remain in the form of diplomatic recognition and sanctions’ lists procedures, on which India will likely fall in line with the Western powers. On the ground, having pulled out its diplomatic staff, it has limited possibilities of influencing the situation. This action willy-nilly acknowledges the preexisting deficit in India’s Afghan policy that resulted in India being kept out of the plethora of forums – the troika plus and quadrilaterals - that have come up as the peace process wound its way over the past two years.

While India’s intelligence moves are not known, these can be expected to include an outreach to the Afghan resistance shaping up at Panjshir holdout. By reassuring the resistance leadership of India’s continuing support, India can strengthen their hand. At the table currently with the Talban, they have the confidence to wrest their due in terms of representation in the new Taliban-led dispensation. If the Taliban’s ongoing tactics of coercion-with-talks fail to persuade their challengers at Panjshir, it provides India a leverage it could exploit depending on how the situation pans out.

An intelligence dominant Afghanistan policy

It is likely that the intelligence prong of strategy, even if invisible, is more active than its diplomatic one, since India’s Afghanistan policy has been intelligence-led. There have been multiple exchanges between the intelligence establishments of India and the former regime, especially since mid 2017, when President Trump decided to wind down the American commitment in Afghanistan. India’s Afghanistan policy is entwined with its Pakistan and Kashmir policies, making it a subset of its national security policy and therefore, the domain of the national security adviser.

However, despite this privileging of the intelligence prong of strategy - and perhaps because of this - not unlike most other states, India was unable to gauge the rapidity of collapse of the Ghani regime. Limiting its outreach to the Taliban eventuated in India being marginalized. Consequently, India surveys uncertain national security prospects in case the Taliban return to power. The threat is not so much from the Taliban, as much as from the unreformed and triumphalist Pakistan, that would be able to return its attention to its traditional preoccupation, Kashmir.

Kashmir returns as a conflict trigger

In Kashmir, it appears to be lull before the storm. There is enough tinder in Kashmir only waiting for the proverbial match stick. The recent outreach of the prime minister to the mainstream parties has not resulted in a breakthrough. Absent a promise of return to statehood prior to the elections, this remains unlikely. Such as reversion to statehood, albeit minus the earlier autonomy, would likely only be in case the elections are won by the ruling party at the Center. Consequently, the developments in the neighbourhood have potential for instability for national security, if and when the Pakistani state and non-state elements currently absorbed in returning the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, turn their attention to Kashmir.

In case unrest revives in Kashmir and presence of battle hardened Pakistani mercenaries resets the insurgency back to terrorism, India is liable to take harsh actions in Kashmir, besides being militarily firm with Pakistan. The current hiatus of relative stability, such as the Line of Control ceasefire reiteration in February, will likely unravel.

Prospects of wider insecurity

The fallout may not be limited to Kashmir. From the overdrive of the pro-right wing media on contrived linkages between Indian Muslims, Pakistan and Taliban is evident that already-frayed social harmony is set to suffer. Resulting polarization can be taken political advantage of by the right wing. ‘False flag’ terror operations implicating Muslims as perpetrators- as was the case in several terror incidents in the 2000s - shall heighten the political dividend from insecurity for the right wing.

It is by now well known that electoral advantage is sought by the ruling dispensation from India’s security showing. This remains true for how India will view its Afghanistan policy.

Since Kashmir remains delicate and a potential site for resumption of proxy war, India would perhaps prefer a like handle on the other side of Pakistan, not only to deter it but to get back at Pakistan in case of proxy war revival. Therefore, India may not be averse to instability continuing in Afghanistan. This explains lack of energy and dexterity in its diplomacy – exemplified by the term ‘wait and watch’ - in working for the presumed preferable outcome of returning stability and security to Afghanistan over the uncertainty of civil war.

The regime security calculus

In other words, not only has an intelligence-led Afghanistan policy failed India already, but is set to fail India once again in an impending unraveling of its Kashmir policy. That this has domestic political advantage for its political masters makes for ambiguity as to whether this is at all seen as a failure. On the contrary the powers-that-be may see an intelligence success through their parochial-political lens. Contending externally with the Taliban and its supposed sponsors, Pakistan, has internal political dividend in keeping up polarization. With the crucial Uttar Pradesh elections due soon, and their outcome’s implications for national elections in 2024, they primary prism for gauging national security policy is how any such policies influence political fortunes.

When national interest is defined as perpetuation of the right wing electoral majority for sustaining the Hindutva project in the unmaking of India as we know it, national interest articulation in traditional and conventional terms is futile. India is thus poised to move from being a free-rider to a spoiler for regime security and at the cost of national security.

---

 https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/20835/Indias-Afghanistan-Policy---Wait-and-Watch-With-An-Eye-on-Pakistan

India’s Afghanistan policy explained in regime security terms

UNEDITED VERSION

Foreign minister Jaishankar informed the recent all-party meeting on the Afghanistan situation that India’s policy is one of ‘wait and watch’. It is an admittance of a policy in the works, depending on how the situation turns out in Afghanistan when the ongoing evacuation by the international community from Kabul airport ceases on 31 August and the Talitan installs itself in power soon thereafter. The complexion of the new regime – essentially whether and to what extent it is inclusive - will presumably determine India’s next steps.

Even if the current stance is dubbed ‘wait and watch’, the government should be pushing for an outcome it prefers in Afghanistan. Diplomatically, it has at the two Security Council meetings joined the international chorus calling for moderation on part of the Taliban and to ensure a broad representativeness in the new government. On the ground, having pulled out its diplomatic staff, it has limited possibilities of influencing the situation. This action willy-nilly acknowledges the preexisting deficit in India’s Afghan policy that resulted in India being kept out of the plethora of forums that have come up as the peace process wound out over the past two years.

While India’s intelligence moves are not known, these can be expected to include an outreach to the Afghan resistance shaping up at Panjshir holdout. By reassuring the resistance leadership shaping up of India’s continuing support, India can strengthen the hand of the challengers. At the table currently with the Talban, they can have the confidence to wrest due representation in the awaited dispensation. In case they are unsuccessful, then India can create leverage through continuing support that it can exploit against its traditional rival, Pakistan, depending on how things pan out.

An intelligence dominant Afghanistan policy

It is likely that the intelligence prong of strategy, even if invisible, is more active than its diplomatic one, since India’s Afghanistan policy over the recent past has been intelligence-led. There have been multiple exchanges between the intelligence establishments of India and the former regime, especially since mid 2017, when President Trump decided to wind down the American commitment in Afghanistan. Its Afghanistan policy is entwined with its Pakistan and Kashmir policies, making it a subset of its national security policy and therefore, the domain of the national security adviser.

However, despite this privileging of the intelligence prong of strategy - and perhaps because of this - not unlike most other states, India was unable to gauge the rapidity of collapse of the Ghani regime. Limiting its outreach to the Taliban eventuated in India being marginalized. Consequently, India surveys uncertain national security prospects in case the Taliban return to power. The threat is not so much from the Taliban, as much as from the unreformed and triumphalist Pakistan, that would be able to return its attention to its traditional preoccupation, Kashmir.

Kashmir returns as a conflict trigger

Rattled by President Trump’s 2017 focus on Afghanistan in order to bring the troops back by end of his presidency, India had appointed special interlocutor to seek a way forward in Kashmir. It upped the then ongoing Operation All Out so as to take advantage of Pakistan turning its attention to the end game in Afghanistan and dwindling down infiltration to negligible numbers. Emboldened by the earlier surgical strikes on land, India also launched aerial surgical strikes on Pakistan to drive home the point that it was now a New India and would be militarily proactive in its response to terror strikes of the magnitude as conducted at Pulwama. This contributed to the electoral fortunes of the ruling party at the Center, enabling its control of parliament to levels that made the constitutional reengineering on Kashmir’s special status possible. As of now, the statistics spell an insurgency at an ebb and infiltration at ‘zero’.

Even so, this appears to be lull before the storm. There is enough tinder in Kashmir only waiting for the proverbial match stick. The recent outreach of the prime minister to the mainstream parties has not resulted in a breakthrough. Absent a promise of return to statehood prior to the elections, this remains unlikely. Such as reversion to statehood, albeit minus the earlier autonomy, would likely only be in case the elections are won by the ruling party, and, therefore, are unlikely to change the political complexion soon. Consequently, the developments in the neighbourhood have potential for instability for national security, if and when the Pakistani elements – both state and non-state - currently absorbed in returning the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, turn their attention to Kashmir, which can be as early as the traditional last minute infiltration push before snows set in.

In case unrest revives in Kashmir and presence of battle hardened Pakistani mercenaries resets the insurgency to becoming terrorism, India is liable to take harsh actions in Kashmir, besides being militarily firm with Pakistan. The current hiatus of relative stability, such as the Line of Control ceasefire reiteration in February, will likely unravel.

The fallout may not be limited to Kashmir. From the overdrive of the pro-right wing media on contrived linkages between Indian Muslims, Pakistan and Taliban is evident that already-frayed social harmony is set to suffer. Resulting polarization can be taken political advantage of by the right wing. ‘False flag’ terror operations attributable to Muslims, as was the case in several terror incidents in the 2000s, shall heighten the political dividend from insecurity for the right wing.

It is by now well known that electoral advantage is sought by the ruling dispensation from India’s security showing. This remains true for how India will view its Afghanistan policy. Whereas its ‘wait and watch’ policy is good optics, it hides what is to follow. Since Kashmir remains delicate and a potential site for resumption of proxy war, India would perhaps prefer a like handle on the other side of Pakistan, not only to deter it but to get back at Pakistan in case of proxy war revival. Therefore, India may not be averse to instability continuing in Afghanistan. This explains lack of energy and dexterity in its diplomacy – exemplified by the term ‘wait and watch’ - in working for the presumed preferable outcome of returning stability and security to Afghanistan over the uncertainty of civil war over the remainder of the decade.

In other words, not only has an intelligence-led Afghanistan policy failed India already, but is set to fail India once again in an impending unraveling of its Kashmir policy. That this has domestic political advantage for its political masters makes for ambiguity as to whether this is at all seen as a failure. On the contrary the powers-that-be may see an intelligence success through their parochial-political lens. When national interest is defined as perpetuation of the right wing electoral majority for sustaining the Hindutva project in the unmaking of India as we know it, national interest articulation in traditional and conventional terms is futile. India is thus poised to move from being a free-rider to a spoiler for regime security and at the cost of national security.

 

Indian soft power as the missing ingredient in returning peace to Afghanistan

A LONGER, UNPUBLISHED VERSION OF THE ARTICLE IN THE PREVIOUS POST

While at the beginning of this month, apprehensions of civil war were extant, President Ashraf Ghani’s throwing in of the towel at a great reputational cost, appears to have averted the contingency for now. However, even though Taliban is now in control of Kabul and Afghanistan, prospects of instability persist.

At this delicate juncture with regional security poised to go either way, India, the gentle regional giant, can play a critical role in averting insecurity by moderating the Taliban through exercise of growing economy-based soft power. 

Dangers of continuing military tryst in Afghanistan stem from the traditional holdout at Panjshir being revived by the former regime’s deputy, Amrullah Saleh, tying up with the son of the former Lion of Panjshir, Ahmed Shah Masood. Panjshir held out in the Soviet era and in the subsequent Taliban 1.0. Consequently, it’s reversion to a hold out status serves today to pressure the Taliban to be magnanimous in victory.

The call by Saleh that he will fight on can potentially attract the thousands of well trained Afghan National Army forces who were seemingly let down by their political and military leaderships. The Taliban have also been faced with spirited protests in multiple cities. As Taliban depredations increase the gap between their words and deeds, the resistance is set to acquire momentum.

Currently, all players await the outcome of peace making deals on at the presidential palace, Arg, between the incoming Taliban, buoyant from their sudden victory, and an ad hoc coordination council of the former regime heavyweights. International pressures are for an inclusive interim government, even if under Taliban over-lordship.

How accommodative Taliban prove will determine the levels of support from the international community and the legitimacy of the arrangement in eyes of Afghans. The Taliban may settle for such an arrangement if it enables access to funds for development by way of which they can legitimize their taking over Kabul in a military victory. The former regimes accounts – frozen for now by the West – can be unlocked by Taliban good behavior.

The Taliban’s uninspiring record so far lends pause to any guesses as to how the situation will pan out. Having won a seemingly decisive victory and deliriant from downing a superpower, hubris might get in the way and they may encash their cheque too soon. Triumphalism in Pakistan, their major backer, might also derail their applecart since Pakistan has consistently demonstrated a deficit in strategic good sense.

Being strategic at this juncture implies acknowledging limitations by the Taliban in running a modern state and their need for assistance. Reconciling to the gains of the last 20 years and keeping their promises on good behavior in relation to women and minorities can stabilize them in power. The Taliban have made the right noise so far and an outreach to employees of the former regime to run the government.

They have already made a believable promise to keep Afghanistan free of presences of international terrorism. In fact, it is not impossible to imagine that since it is the Taliban that alone had the ability to rid Afghanistan of international terrorists of various hues – Al Qaeda, Islamic State and those bedeviling neighbours the Stans, Russia and China – the US may have played a strategic, if covert, game in midwifing the return of the Taliban to Kabul.

While a tall order in itself, now that the Taliban has been strengthened by the war material left behind by the West and acquired from the Afghan National Army, it can with characteristic ruthlessness deliver on this promise. They have invited back the Afghan air force members – who have not fled to the Stans with their planes – so that the vaunted air force can be revived.

The Taliban has the potential backing of China, Russia and Iran. Should it play its cards well, even the US will fall in along-side. The UN in situ is already on standby to lend a hand with the peacebuilding to follow. Pakistan is well aware that it does not have the heft to sustain an Afghanistan that is not at peace with itself.

Therefore it is not inevitable that Afghanistan will end up in another civil war, as succeeded the fall of the Najibullah regime. This best case scenario can be made a self-fulfilling prophecy if one key player, India, steps up and lends a hand, but by extracting, in collaboration with its international partners, a quid pro quo in the Taliban moderating itself and more self-centeredly also going after anti-India terror elements in its campaign against international terror outfits.

Having temporarily pulled out its diplomats from Afghanistan on the basis of security concerns, India is sensibly in a wait-and-watch mode. Even so, India is warily trying to keep Pakistan from prematurely anticipating gaining of strategic depth and turning back the tide towards normalcy in Kashmir. It has been tough in the Security Council, of which it has the presidency this month, by keeping Pakistan out of the two deliberations this month at that high forum, even though procedurally it could have obliged Pakistan – being a stakeholder in the region and developments – to be invited to make its pitch.

India can hold out a plausible threat that it will reciprocate Pakistani proxy war resumption in Kashmir with support of resistance forces in Afghanistan, thereby denying any gains Pakistan sought in supporting the Taliban’s return. That Pakistan will find this believable is evident from its vociferous objections over the last two decades to the presence of Indian consulates in Afghanistan.

Since the worst case is not in India’s interest either – since it returns instability to Kashmir and perhaps   in the mainland – it is a scenario best avoided. So instead of a wait and watch approach at this critical juncture, India could instead diplomatically step up to the table with an offer neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can afford to ignore.

It can incentivize its outreach to the Taliban by offering market access by Afghanistan, economic upturn being an indispensible factor in post-conflict peacebuilding. Connectivity through Pakistan can be negotiated since Pakistan also stands to make geo-economic gains, its army chief having dropped hints early this year. While the meager land trade in dry fruits on between India and Afghanistan through Pakistan is stalled for now, it can be magnified several times over when it resumes.

An Indian peace offensive can preserve India’s interests in Afghanistan and make good its sentiment in regard to the plight of the Afghan people. It will preserve Kashmir from the feared blow-back if Afghanistan dissolves into civil war and becomes a site of proxy war. It can turn the breeze of a peace outbreak, witnessed early this year on the Line of Control, into a gale. This will not only allow India a breather from its two-front predicament, but ease arriving at a fresh arrangement with China on the Line of Actual Control, since the two – India and China – will be collaborators in returning peace to Afghanistan.

In this option, Afghanistan can be seen as an opportunity. Politics being the art of the possible, so is external politics. Collaborating with its two neighbours with whom India has strained bilateral relations over a non-bilateral issue has potential to inject eddies of cooperation into the bilateral relationship. Needless to add that diplomats will need to work in some simultaneity between India easing up on Afghanistan to enable Pakistan and China take their pickings, while the two oblige by easing up likewise on Kashmir and in Ladakh. Pakistan must be held to zero infiltration and China to settle for an agreement on the other frictions points in Ladakh.

Consequently, instead of hard power that finds mention in the commentary on its options, India must instead seriously consider staking out its interests by deploying its economy-based soft power. An emerging great power cannot be a free-rider indefinitely. Wait-and-watch is a policy for those without options and cards, which does not behoove a regional power.

The case for proactivism made, a word on its feasibility. That this soft-power option has not found mention so far bespeaks less of the commentariat being stupefied by developments than aware that the option will not find traction with the right wing Indian political leadership. India’s strategic minders have ceased to assert national interest in face of the regime’s parochial self-interest of self-perpetuation in power and furthering the Hindutva political project. These twin goals require India to be at odds with its Muslim neighbours, so that the resulting media-induced polarization within polity can be used for electoral purposes. Coming as it does the Afghan crisis in the run up to crucial polls, it is not national interest that will determine India’s response, but which option is best for electoral dividend. Even so, it is important here to place the option ‘out there’ in order that if it is a road not taken and India’s security predicament deepens, we know where the responsibility squarely lies. 

 https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/opinion/afghanistan-crisis-india-must-deploy-its-economic-soft-power-7379771.html

Afghanistan Crisis | India must deploy its economic soft power

While at the beginning of this month, apprehensions of civil war were extant, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani’s throwing in of the towel at a great reputational cost appears to have averted the contingency for now. However, even though the Taliban is now in control of Kabul, and Afghanistan, prospects of instability persist.

At this delicate juncture with regional security poised to go either way, India, the gentle regional giant, can play a critical role in averting insecurity by moderating the Taliban through an exercise of its growing economy-based soft power.

The dangers of a continuing military tryst in Afghanistan stem from the traditional holdout at Panjshir being revived by the former regime’s deputy, Amrullah Saleh, tying up with the son of the former Lion of Panjshir, Ahmad Shah Massoud.

The call by Saleh that he will fight on can potentially attract the thousands of well-trained Afghan National Army personnel who were seemingly let down by their political and military leaderships. The Taliban have also been faced with spirited protests in multiple cities. As the Taliban depredations increase the gap between their words and deeds, the resistance may acquire momentum.

Currently all players await the outcome of peace-making deals on at the presidential palace, Arg, between the incoming Taliban, buoyant from their sudden victory, and an ad hoc co-ordination council of the former regime. International pressures are for an inclusive interim government, even if under the Taliban over-lordship.

The Taliban’s uninspiring record so far lends pause to any guesses as to how the situation will pan out. Having won a seemingly decisive victory and delirium from downing a superpower, hubris might get in the way and they may encash their cheque too soon. Triumphalism in Pakistan, their major backer, might also derail their applecart.How accommodative the Taliban prove will determine the levels of support from the international community and the legitimacy of the arrangement in the eyes of the Afghans.

Strategic good sense at this juncture involves acknowledging their limitations in running a modern State and their need for assistance. Reconciling to the gains of the last 20 years and keeping their promises on good behaviour in relation to women and minorities can stabilise them in power.

As it contemplates its decision, the Taliban has the potential backing of China, Russia and Iran. Should it play its cards well, even the United States will fall in along-side. The UN in situ is already on standby to lend a hand with the peacebuilding to follow. Pakistan is well aware that it does not have the heft to sustain an Afghanistan that is not at peace with itself.

Therefore, it is not inevitable that Afghanistan will revert to war. This best-case scenario can be made a self-fulfilling prophecy if one key player — India — steps up and lends a hand, but by extracting in collaboration with its international partners a quid pro quo: Taliban moderating itself.

Having temporarily pulled out its diplomats from Afghanistan on the basis of security concerns, India is sensibly in a wait-and-watch mode even as it speedily evacuates stranded Indians and Afghans wanting an Indian refuge. Even so, India is warily trying to keep Pakistan from prematurely anticipating gaining of strategic depth and turning back the tide towards normalcy in Kashmir by stubbing out Pakistani hopes of a UN Security Council appearance in the two discussions on Afghanistan this month with India in the chair. India could go further and if push comes to shove reciprocate Pakistani proxy war resumption with support of resistance forces in Afghanistan.

India would do well to avoid this worst-case scenario by stepping up to the table with an offer neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan can afford to ignore. It can incentivise its outreach to the Taliban by offering market access by Afghanistan, economic upturn being an indispensable factor in post-conflict peacebuilding. Connectivity through Pakistan can be negotiated since Islamabad also stands to make geo-economic gains, its army chief having dropped hints early this year.

An Indian peace offensive can preserve India’s interests in Afghanistan and make good its sentiment in regard to the plight of the Afghan people. It will preserve Kashmir from the feared blow-back if Afghanistan dissolves into civil war and becomes a site of proxy war. It can turn the breeze of a peace outbreak, witnessed early this year on the Line of Control, into a gale. This will not only allow India a breather from its two-front predicament, but ease arriving at a fresh arrangement with China on the Line of Actual Control, collaboration elsewhere easing bilateral ties.

Instead of hard power that finds mention in the commentary on its options, India must instead seriously consider staking out its interests by deploying its economic soft power.

 https://www.milligazette.com/news/Opinions/33905-india-should-reform-intelligence-agencies-in-national-interest/

Reform intelligence agencies in the national interest

Reprising an earlier argument made on these web pages occasionally over the past ten years is apt in light of a new book shedding light on India’s intelligence agencies. The case made earlier was that India’s largest minority, its Muslims, have been saddled with responsibility for the terror threat by its intelligence agencies for no fault or doing of their own. Over the last two decades the terror threat in India was, firstly, hyped up through intelligence operations, and, secondly, pumped up through ‘black operations’, involving terror acts by non-Muslims passed off as Muslim perpetrated. A recently released book, Spy Stories: Inside the Secret World of the RAW and the ISI, by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark, provides testimony for the argument.  

The authors make the case that the setback at a Kandahar over the turn of the millennium - in which India exchanged a few Pakistani terrorists in its custody for the passengers of a hijacked plane - resulted in a boost for operations of intelligence agencies. Intelligence agencies operations had apparently been curbed somewhat at the late 90s when India was contemplating expanding an outreach to Pakistan through a composite dialogue. The Kandahar episode – that followed close on the heels of the Kargil War - upended any thought of dialogue with Pakistan. Instead, it resulted in the intelligence agencies being allowed to reactivate offensive operations, along with painting Pakistan black by winning the war of narratives.

As per the book, intelligence agencies consequently launched information operations - buttressed by diplomats - highlighting Pakistani interference in India’s domestic affairs through proxy war in Kashmir and also by supporting Muslim extremists and criminals in the hinterland. While the book does not go into any detail, it hints that, in addition, they also conducted ‘black operations’ in order to further implicate Pakistan as a terror sponsor state. In his review of the book, Sushant Singh, the fearless scribe on strategic affairs, lets on that the book has clues that even as significant an incident as the parliament attack has traces of a false-flag operation. He refers to the insufficiently probed role of the rogue cop, Davinder Singh, who allegedly was a player in that episode. Since the authors rely on intelligence sources, they portray that the terror attack was handiwork of Pakistan, white washing the career gains the rogue cop made over the next decade and half. Unbelievably the cop turned up in the Pulwama episode too. That he continues to be on the loose, having been discharged from service without a probe ‘in the national interest’, should ring bells.

Readers of this publication need no elaboration on the other terror attacks attributed to Muslims.  The book brings out that at least 16 major terror attacks across the country were of dubious origin. Some involved at least one army officer and one sitting member of the current parliament. The army officer, Purohit, has been let off, since he supposedly kept his hierarchy informed of his penetration of the saffronite cell that was behind the bombings such as in Malegaon and in Hyderabad. This only serves to reinforce the suspicion all along that the bombings were by saffronite extremists, but brings to fore the covert support of intelligence agencies with the ostensible rationale of a build-up of a case against Pakistan as a terror sponsor for strategic and foreign policy purposes.

However, that rationale is self-serving, dressing up intelligence agencies’ doings in plausible national security terms. What is concerning is the saffronisation of the intelligence agencies – and elements of other security services - brought out in the book. Such saffronisation must be placed in the context of Hindutva politics being played out over the period. At the time, the right wing party was out of power and was in search of a key to Delhi. The intelligence agency-overseen bombings thus provided the ballast for the campaign of right wing forces. The bombings generated polarization and marginalized the minority. On the back of the resulting manufactured ‘wave’, the current ruling dispensation came to power mid-last decade.

This brings to fore the political role of the intelligence agencies, which clearly calls for closer executive and parliamentary supervision. This is easier said than done. While parliamentary oversight does not exist – there being no parliamentary standing committee charged with this – there is little evidence of executive oversight either. Recall, the bombings averred to here were in the period of the United Progressive Alliance ten years sway. Its national security advisors and home ministers were unable or unwilling to clean up the intelligence agencies’ stables. It can be inferred that their inability and unwillingness owed to their knowledge that the rot was rather deep. Besides, findings of an Indian non-Muslim hand behind the bombings would have revealed Indian foreign policy offensive against Pakistan sterile and rendered vacuous its backing for initiatives as the convention on international terrorism. Now, intelligence agencies variously report to the two right hand men of the prime minister, Amit Shah and Ajit Doval. Since the ruling dispensation has been the gainer from actions of intelligence agencies, it is hardly likely to trip itself up.

That a continuing series of intelligence failures not having prompted a clean-up so far, it is hardly likely that the finding here matters that intelligence agencies were acting outside their mandate by creating the political conditions for electoral triumph of the right wing. Not only was India found flat-footed at Kargil, but so has been the case - if the official narrative is to be believed - with the terror attacks from parliament to Pulwama. More recently, the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh escaped the intelligence agencies. Worse, the Pegasus affair - ‘Snoopgate’ - has also not evoked introspection and course correction. The fall of India’s ally, the Ghani government in Kabul, will also unlikely stir matters. Their hard-sell that with Article 370 gone, Kashmir will mend, has not quite worked out and the chickens are readying to come home to roost. A system that plants incriminating evidence remotely in computers and then makes arrests using the planted evidence as evidence of conspiracy as has been the case with the BK16 or charges victims of communal carnage as has been done in the case of the one-sided political violence in North East Delhi can neither self-regulate nor autocorrect.

Therefore, to carry any expectations of fair play or rule of law is to be naïve. The intelligence agencies have Chanakya as their mascot. Kautilyan thought informs the working of this regime. Regime survival is the primary morality in Chanakyagiri and intelligence agencies have pride of place in its scheme. It misses national security minders that Chanakya wrote in and of a period when India was a space for contesting principalities. Principles and values cannot be imported from two millennia back to inform workings of a parliamentary democracy today. To the extent intelligence hands subscribe to Hindutva, to them Hindutva legitimizes their distancing from the professional ideal. This accounts for the authoritarian and illiberal democracy India has become in its 75^th year. A rollback to the constitutional framework implies first a reform of intelligence agencies in the national interest.