Prime Minster Gilani, President Ahmadinejad, and President Karzai met in Tehran, alone, then in Turkey with all of Afghanistan’s neighbors (sans India) and finally in Lond with 61 other countries (where Delhi got what the Times of India called a second row seat). Pakistan’s Chief of Army staff visited Kabul last week. Mr. Karzai is visiting Islamabad this week. President Ahmadinejad is visiting Kabul and then Islamabad. A lot of traffic back and forth suggests a precursor to the American withdrawal out of Afghanistan.
- General Patraeus still harping on old tune about Quetta Shura
- Strategic Depth: Strength of Pakistan lies in a secure Afghanistan
- Why are Pakistani peace deals considered capitulation and US peace deals in…
- “But it also has an interest that is somewhat different than ours, and that is their strategic depth and always has been for a country that’s very narrow and has its historic enemy to its east. So again, we just have to appreciate this”. General Petraeus
- “This is not unique, of course, just to Afghanistan and Pakistan and throughout the world. We have interests, they have interests. What we want to do is find the conversion interest, understand where they are divergent and try to make progress together,” General Petraeus.
- No extradition, Karzai told. Pakistan owns Afghan reconciliation
- Why was Karzai sent to Islamabad?
- Green Flag over mountain cauldron
Bharat is chagrined at being left out. The Bharati media is up in arms af the colossal failure of Delhi’s foreign policy. Shukla, and others have written long diatribes on how Bharat can engage with different segments of Afghan society so that it can keep a toe hold in Afghanistan. Bharat has rubbed Iran the wrong way by stabbing it at the IAEA and by launching Iran-specific satellites for Israel. Bharat is expected to playing a role in US-led sanctions against Iran. Delhi is also building the Salma Dam in Afghanistan which stops water from flowing into Iran. This is a huge bone of contention for Teheran. Pursuing a Pro-Tel Aviv policy with bring Delhi man blow-back and backlash from the region. Pakistan has traded in Jundallah for Iranian quid pro quo Iranian support in Afghanistan.
A Proxy war in Afghanistan is playing out in Afghanistan. Strategic depth vs Strategic clout is being fought in the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. Why Iran won’t sell gas to India or allow it to explore its oilfields
New Delhi has been working assiduously to realize its strategic objectives in Afghanistan–namely the destabilization of Pakistan. According to Raghav Sharma of the ICPS in New Delhi “India’s primary interests in Afghanistan include the following: negating Taliban’s influence, securing a road and energy corridor to Central Asia and preventing the spread of drug and weapons proliferation.”
The latest developments in Tehran, and Istanbul, culminating in London seem to suggest that Delhi has failed in achieving those objectives. The London conference repudiated Delhi’s intransigence in rejecting overtures to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai was mandated in forming a government of national consensus. He is now traveling to Pakistan to ask for Islamabad’s help in brining peace to Afghanistan by working with the Taliban. Pakistani COAS General Kiyani had traveled to Kabul to propose training the Pakistani Army and Police. This is expected to be accepted by President Karzai who desperately needs Islamabad’s blessings. Resisting Indian hegemony by all neighbors:-Afghan cauldron
Ahmadinejad’s Kabul trip takes place at a time when trilateral Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan talks have produced a tangible dividend, mainly because Islamabad’s recent cooperation with Iran in the arrest of Abdulmalik Rigi, the notorious head of the Jundallah terrorist group, seems to show Pakistan has shifted strategy to make cooperation with Iran an arm of its anti-India policy in Afghanistan
…There is a consensus in Tehran that Rigi’s arrest would not have been possible without the cooperation of Pakistani intelligence, which has recently arrested a number of high-ranking Taliban leaders. Asia Times. Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD.Ahmadinejad hunkers down with Karzai
The US recently published a Afghanistan Stabilization strategy.
this Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy is just another “do as we say, not as we do” policy strategy in a long laundry list of duplicitous and insidious drivel that has been pervading and emanating from our nation’s capital for some time. Real success in Afghanistan doesn’t involve such complex nation-building, central planning, socialist, or imperialist pursuits. Just ask the Soviets, Brits, Mongols, Macedonians, and countless others that have preceded us in invading this region. The people of this region reject strong central governments as well as any heavy-handed involvement from external powers. They seek and love freedom as much as many Americans. And please spare the retort that this time is different simply because it is us, the United States, who happens to be bringing “freedom,” “justice,” “rule of law,” blah, blah, blah! Those aforementioned empires and their citizens suffered from the same misguided idealism. Josef Storm [send him mail] has been an aid worker in Afghanistan, and understands the futility of chasing ghosts.Lew Rockwell
The US Pakistani relationship has overcome the hindrances placed between them by Bharat and other countries. Post London Pakistan-American Strategic symbiosis leaves Delhi in the cold. There is a new dynamic developing in South Asia. The old “build-Bharat-up-as-a-counterweight-to China” has been dumped in favor of a building dialogue, discussion and cooperation with China. Gen. Petraeus accepts Pakistan’s strategic depth in Afghanistan. The biggest strategic Indo-US project is the 123 Nuclear deal. However the nuclear cooperation is in cold storage and President Obama has not operationalized it. This new Islamabad-Washington cooperation has manifested itself in Delhi being disinvited from the regional conference in Turkey, and Delhi being given what the Times of India calls a 2nd row seat in the London conference on Afghanistan. Shocked by the snub from the US, Russia, China, and the UK in London–Delhi was even more chagrined when the US announced the “gift” of half a dozen frigates, choppers, laser bombs and other arms to Pakistan. India jittery about US arms for Pakistan. To put salt on the wounds, the US has announced a larger aid package to Pakistan in 2010. This on top of the EU proposal to pay Pakistan war reparations to the tune of $45 billion. War Reparations: Pakistan asks for $45 billion from EU
The US is being coaxed to expedite the ROZ, a FTA, and free access to US markets. Washington is also assisting Pakistan in electrical and energy projects.
These events and the huge failure of Delhi’s foreign policy in Afghanistan brought Delhi back to the peace talks. However the peace talks are just a ruse to let the world know that Bharat wants to talk. The so called peace talks are “talks for the sake of talks”–a way to delay and dilly dally. Delhi thinks that by procrastinating the problems will go away. Neither Kashmir, nor Hyderabad, nor Junagarh, and Manvadar have gone away. They fester as a wound. Desperate for an angle into Afghanistan, Mr. Manmohan Singh went to Riyadh–and came back empty handed. What did India get in Riyadh? It is obvious that Delhi’s Mumbai card has run out of steam. After the fiasco of Mumbai– Mumbai 2 (Pune) was not even tried.
This is what Kanwal Sibal says in the Hindustan Times.
Western overtures to the Taliban constitute a significant diplomatic success for Pakistan. Its grit in resisting US pressure to act against the Afghan Taliban has been rewarded. With US Central Command Chief, General David Petraeus, now averse to Pakistan stirring up any more ‘hornets nests’ in the border areas, a self-confident Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is offering to mediate between the US-Nato and the Taliban. His only condition being that Pakistan’s need for a soft strategic depth in Afghanistan is recognised as an insurance against the Indian threat and limits are put on India’s presence in Afghanistan. Kayani’s stature in Pakistan has risen and Pakistan’s attitude towards India has hardened, as was evident during the recent foreign secretary-level talks in New Delhi last week.
India would need to rethink its options in Afghanistan. We cannot count on President Karzai as before. Our local popularity is a fragile base for retaining our long-term influence, unless we can affect power equations within the country. Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan need stronger backing by Russia, the Central Asian countries, Iran and India. The US is disregarding India’s long-term strategic interests in the region; it is yielding to Pakistan’s disruptive ambitions in Afghanistan.
Muhammad Saleh Zaafir has written a prodigious article in the News and Kanwal Sibal has mirrored those same thoughts from an Indian perspective. Both articles portray a sense of dismay and disappointment in Delhi–and a sense of appointment and energy in Islamabad.
The Pakistani military wants to ensure that it gets a central role in the end game in Afghanistan, in particular in any negotiations with the Taliban. The Americans seem to have agreed to this–provided Pakistan produce the desired Taliban heads. General Kiyani’s visit to Kabul and Mr. Karzai’s return visit will ensure that there are no glitches in this.
