The BJP has put political tactics over the country's interests

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is "going, going, gone" but the successor government, and here we are going with the popular assumption that it could be led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, is likely to inherit a country in deep crisis.
The irony, however, will be that the BJP, through policies of commission and omission would have been complicit in worsening the situation.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the UPA has mismanaged the economy, failed to deal effectively with Pakistan and China, allowed our relations with the United States to drift, and is responsible for many other shortcomings that afflict the country.
But the uncomfortable fact is that the BJP, has played an unfortunate role in allowing the situation to reach this pass.
We are not referring to its bombardment of the government on account of corruption or incompetence, but the way it has acted in blocking movement even in areas where it has no disagreement with the UPA.
The clash between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Arun Jaitley last Friday is only symptomatic of this.
Singh appealed to the Opposition to create a consensus on the tougher economic reforms that were desperately needed to right the economy.
Jaitley's blunt reply, accurate enough, was that "the government talks about consensus and democratic norms only when it is in distress."
The government can be faulted for not reaching out to the BJP, but equally, the latter can be blamed for allowing its ego to trump common sense.
Hubris
No historian of the contemporary period is likely to ignore the hubris of the Congress party, as it reveled in the high economic growth of the 2005-2011 period and, not only refused to take steps to make that growth sustainable, but actually undermined it by squandering the additional resources that came in.

Instead of creating conditions where the largely rural poor could enter the growing economy in their own right through better education, jobs and healthcare, the Congress party took the easy way out by enhancing subsidies and handouts.
Equally, the historians would not be able to avoid pointing to the perversity and negativism of the BJP Party in this period.
This party refused to even back measures which it had initiated, such as the strategic Indo-US nuclear deal, as well as reforms that it was clearly not opposed to, such as the Goods and Services Tax or the enhancement of the FDI limits for insurance and retail.

 

Intriguingly, having disrupted the parliament for several sessions in a row, the party tamely allowed two significant legislations - the food security and land acquisition bills - to go through, even though it did not quite back them.
The BJP's negativism has come out most sharply in an area where traditionally there ought to be consensus - foreign and security policy.
This was one area which was marked by consensus and continuity when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took over the watch from his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
In all key foreign and security policy areas, the UPA followed the NDA's lead. In the case of Pakistan, it continued along the lines set by the Vajpayee-Musharraf agreement of January 2004, on China, again, Manmohan Singh followed the course set during Vajpayee's 2003 visit to Beijing. 

Unclear
With Pakistan, the BJP wants a hard line policy but what it means is unclear. Another element is visible through Narendra Modi's opposition to any agreement on the Sir Creek dispute.

Opposing it, while in Opposition is one thing, but should Modi become prime minister, his job will also be to resolve the issue.
It is not just a matter of "giving away" land to Pakistan, but also securing its assent in arriving at a maritime boundary between India and Pakistan, something needed by both countries especially in view of the possibility that the massive exclusive economic zones they can thereafter tap could be rich in hydrocarbon resources.
The BJP may be able to wrestle Pakistan to the ground, but what about China? During Modi's 2011 visit to China, he berated Beijing for its activities in POK, but had little to say about its occupation of Indian-claimed territory in Aksai Chin and its claim on the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh.

However, the main goal of his visit was to promote commercial relations between Gujarat and China and he came away as an admirer of the country's economic achievements.
But as prime minister, Modi would have to deal with an entirely different reality. The UPA government has actually concealed just how serious the problem of Chinese transgressions along the Line of Actual Control are.
If Depsang was one shocking manifestation of this in April, in the last months, a 3-day encampment of Chinese forces well inside our conception of the LAC near Chaglagam, a village at the eastern extremity of the country, was another. 

Foresight
Bangladesh is a case by itself. The BJP cannot but be aware of the consequences of the Bangladesh National Party victory in the next general election in Bangladesh.
Yet, it has refused to help the UPA to pass the crucial India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) Bill which will enable a swap of 111 enclaves with an area of 17,160.63 acres to Bangladesh, while 51 enclaves with an area of 7,110.02 acres will be transferred to India as well as enable the demarcation of 6.1 km undefined border.
The Bill is being opposed by the Sangh Parivar on the grounds that it will lead to a loss of 10,000 acres.

Given the way a large and complex country like India works, it is unlikely that a putative BJP-led government would be able to radically change course over the next couple of years.
Indeed, given the fact that it initiated many of the UPA policies, why should it? But the Indian ship is taking water now, and it will have taken much more by the time the elections bring in a new government.
Foresight would suggest that the BJP help begin the bailing process now. Nothing can alter the UPA's electoral fate, but consensual steps taken in economic and foreign policy today will be of benefit to the next government, as well as the country next year.
 Mail Today September 3, 2013

G for going it alone in Syria

The failure of the G-20 meet at St. Petersburg to effectively address the Syrian crisis indicates that it is now headed for its short-term denouement in the form of an American military attack in the coming days. Leaving aside its allies, the United States’s plan was met with scepticism at St. Petersburg: Russia was openly hostile, with President Putin actually accusing the U.S. Secretary of State of lying to the U.S. Congress.  

The U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, felt compelled to urge the U.S. to seek the approval of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC). The EU’s response was mixed with Britain, France and Germany pulling in different directions. China was against any military strike, and preferred to keep quiet on the issue, while India made it clear that there should be no action without U.N. authorisation.

The division was reflected by a joint statement issued on the margins of the summit by America’s allies who constituted 10 of the 20 members of G-20. In the statement, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. condemned the Syrian government for the chemical weapons attack of August 21, bluntly blaming the Syrian government for breaching “the international norm against the use of chemical weapons.” It demanded a tough response from the world community, observing that the U.N. Security Council “remains paralyzed as it has been for two and a half years.”

At the formal level, the G-20 was set up to deal with economic issues in the wake of the 2008-2009 economic crisis. But like its predecessor, the G-8, it was also expected to be a global high table where the political issues could also be resolved in a collegial manner. Its failure on Syria reveals the persistent failure of the international system to create an effective mechanism for global governance. In such circumstances, we are back to old-fashioned power politics where the rules of the game are set by the global hegemon, in this case, the U.S.

U.S. position

The U.S. plan to attack Syria is rooted in imperial hubris. When you are the sole superpower, you are expected to take the lead. Battered by Afghanistan, befuddled by Egypt and pressed by the rise of China, the U.S. feels that it needs to assert its global leadership. The breaching of a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) taboo is an opportune pretext. This is the time to make an example out of a country, to prevent the next one from crossing the threshold. The subtext is the Iranian nuclear programme which affects key American allies like Israel, the Gulf sheikhdoms and Saudi Arabia. So, President Barack Obama finds himself bound by his own declared red line of August 2012 when he explicitly warned Syria against the use of chemical and biological weapons. There are several problems with the U.S.’s position. First, we know that chemical weapons were used, but it is not at all clear as to who employed them. The U.N. inspectors returned from Syria a week ago, but it will be some more time before their report is made available to the public. However, their mandate is to merely report on whether or not chemical weapons were used; not who employed them or why.

In May in Switzerland, a U.N. human rights investigator, Carla del Ponte, revealed that testimony made available to U.N. investigators in an earlier investigation, had revealed that Syrian rebels had used chemical weapons, specifically the deadly sarin gas. It is no secret that some of the caches of Syrian chemical weapons are under the control of rebel forces. It would be counter-intuitive to suggest that the Syrian government forces used them now, because in recent months the tide of the civil war was turning distinctly in their favour. This is the argument being made by the Russians as well who, insofar as Syria is concerned, also have good intelligence sources there.

Legality

Second, like it or not, the manner in which the U.S. and the U.K. fudged the evidence to wage war against Iraq in 2003 has undermined the credibility of their intelligence services. This was not just a matter of one report being misused or misinterpreted, but a pattern of deception which went all the way up from the bottom to the highest levels of the two governments.

The third and not unimportant issue has to do with legality. Under the U.N. Charter, the use of force against another State in almost all circumstances must be authorised by the UNSC. Given Russia’s stated position on the issue, the U.N. is unlikely to authorise any action against Syria. Another route could be the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) resolution of the U.N. General Assembly of 2005 which enjoins states to protect their populations from mass-killings and ethnic cleansing, but its enforcement mechanism against states who shirk this responsibility rests with the U.N., specifically its Security Council.

Syria is a party to the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibiting the use of poison gases, but the treaty is relevant to interstate conflict, and does not expressly prohibit their use during civil war. There is another treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which bars the stockpiling, production and use of chemical weapons; 189 countries have signed the CWC, but Syria, along with Angola, North Korea, Egypt and South Sudan, has not signed it. The prominent Arab holdouts — Egypt and Syria — argue that they have signed the NPT as non-nuclear states, but Israel has not and is believed to possess nuclear weapons. So, they would not sign up to the CWC.

Therefore, from the legal point of view, the U.S. cupboard is bare. It could have, as in the case of 9/11 invoked the doctrine of self-defence as in the case of Afghanistan, but it would be a tough sell to claim that it has been attacked by Syria. Even in Afghanistan, the U.S. did get U.N. authorisation two months after it launched Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001.

For India

As far as India is concerned there are several issues that we need to take into account. Legality is certainly one of them, though we need not get our knickers in a twist over them. When push comes to shove, regional powers like India have shown little inclination to heed the U.N. India has intervened in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, without U.N. authorisation. On the other hand though, paradoxically, as a weak global actor, it is in India’s interest to emphasise the importance of the U.N. when it comes to the use of military force internationally.

As a global actor it is in our interest to prevent the use of WMD by any party against anyone. But in this case, there seems to be a genuine problem as to whether the issue can be untangled from the geopolitics of the region. Equally important for India are worries that the conflict could spiral out of control and disrupt oil supply lines from the Persian Gulf. This is a serious matter as it could have a devastating impact on our economy which is already reeling from the effects of an economic slowdown.

The one big lesson of every war is that it is easy to start it, but very difficult to predict the course or consequences. But the main lesson from the sorry events in Syria is that the taboo against the use of weapons of mass destruction was breached, and the world community has been found wanting in providing a tough, but legal response to it.

The Hindu September 10, 2013

Can China and India now press the reset button?

During his visit to the United States earlier this year, Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping gave the call for "a new type of great power relationship" with Washington. Originally the concept was aimed at relations between the Chinese and American militaries, but now it seems to be a catch-word for a reset in Sino-US relations. More interestingly, it could well have become a touchstone for a reset of Chinese relations with India as well.
On Monday, a delegation of the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi had occasion to talk with a cross-section of Chinese think tanks, under the auspices of the Central Foreign Affairs University (CFAU), Beijng. This is the school that not only trains Chinese diplomats, but helps diplomats from various countries, including India, learn the Chinese language.

Power

New Delhi is not a "Great Power", no matter what the mandarins in South Block believe, but the ever-pragmatic Chinese appear to be creating room for resetting their relations with India by bringing it under the rubric of a "new type of big power relations". Note, of course, India is seen as a "big" rather than "great" power.

The IAF's display at Daulat Beg Oldi comes at a time when India needs to rejig its relationship with China

The official Indian interaction with the new leadership group in China has been short, but intense. It began with the meetings between Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Durban, at the sidelines of the BRICS summit. It took a curious turn when a small squad of the People's Liberation Army pitched tents on what was disputed territory on the Line of Actual Control at Depsang in Ladakh in April.
Subsequently, this team pulled up its tents and enabled a visit by the new Premier of China, Li Keqiang. Thereafter the two countries met for the 16th round of the Special Representatives Dialogue in Beijing and this was followed by a visit of the Indian Defence Minister to China.
Besides the curious occupation in Depsang, which was ended as mysteriously as it began, the interaction has been remarkably positive. Shortly after meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Durban on March 27 Xi Jinping declared that "China and India should improve and make good use of the mechanism of special representatives to strive for a fair, rational solution framework acceptable to both sides as soon as possible." This was a departure from the past when the Chinese seemed to suggest that a border settlement was a problem leftover from history and would be resolved over an unspecified period of time.

Subsequently, the 16th round of talks of the Special Representatives took place in Beijing at the end of June. Speaking about the meeting, Shivshankar Menon, the Indian SR, said that things were going well, considering that the two sides were in the most complex phase of their negotiations. Yang Jiechi, the former Foreign Minister of China who is now a State Councillor and the new Special Representative, said that he was ready to "break new ground" and "strive for the settlement of the China- India boundary question… in a new period".
Further impetus to the normalisation occurred after Chinese defence minister Liang Guanglie visited India in September 2012 and this was followed by a return visit by Indian defence minister A.K. Antony in July this year and held talks with his counterpart Gen Chang Wanquan.
Following the visit, the two sides restored the India-China military to military relationship and set the stage for deeper ties between them. Besides agreeing to take up high-level military exchanges, the two sides said that they would resume joint exercises and conclude a border defence cooperation agreement (BDCA) at the earliest. This BDCA would strengthen the regime of confidence building measures that had been in place since 1993.
Now the two sides are building up to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit, which is likely to take place in October. In addition to the BDCA, the two sides are likely to look at the latest menu being offered by the Chinese which come under three heads, or principles.

Principles

1. That India and China continue to maintain and, indeed, deepen, their dialogue so as to promote strategic trust and communication through high level meetings and exchanges between them.
2. That the two sides deepen their cooperation through joint projects, such as the Bangladesh, India, China and Myanmar (BICM) corridor, that seeks to link the four countries in a web of infrastructural links which will promote commerce and energy interdependence.
3. The two countries accept each other's interests in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, with the proviso that New Delhi steer clear from taking any sides in the disputes in the East and South China Seas.
Unstated is China's belief that it has done so in our region by taking a neutral position in the India-Pakistan dispute on Kashmir.

Realism

At one level the talk of new model relationships, whether with great or big powers can be seen as the fad that accompanies a new leader. But they also reflect a new realism where the Chinese are replacing their formal idealism of treating all sovereign countries as equals and creating special conditions to deal with their more difficult and important relationships.
At another level it reflects the increasing confidence of the Chinese leadership and a realpolitik awareness that they are living in an interdependent world in which the words "victory" and "defeat" are not absolute.
It also reflects an understanding of a world where the US remains the hegemon, but where its relative power has devolved to other "big" actors amongst whom, is India.
Finally, it points to the need for China to cooperate with not just the hegemon, but the other rising poles of the world system.
Essentially, the Chinese, ever pragmatic - and ever dynamic - are looking at their problems and working on them and willing to shift established positions if the situation so demands. This is much more than what could be said about us. We, on the other hand, seem to be trapped in the verities of the past and are unable to move beyond tired slogans and nostrums.
Mail Today August 21, 2013

India's Navy offers bright spots in a sea of failure

The news may be gloomy from all across the country, but, for the Indian Navy, things are looking good.
In this past week, they have crossed two significant milestones. First, the nuclear reactor in the Arihant nuclear ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) went critical and the boat is now ready for sea trials. Second, India's first home-designed aircraft carrier, Vikrant, was launched at the Cochin Shipyard, Kochi.
Both are some years away from being commissioned and receiving the appellation "Indian Naval Ship", or INS, but they are well on their way. And, as a bonus, in a couple of months from now, the INS Vikramaditya (ex-Gorshkov) will join the fleet.

A first for India: Tugboats guide the indigenously-built aircraft carrier INS Vikrant as it leaves the Cochin Shipyard after its launch ceremony

Indigenous

The real achievement here is not the launch of these ships, but that two of them have been indigenously designed and built. Well, the Arihant has been built to a Russian design, but the special requirements of fabrication, welding and construction have all been met by Indian companies, public and private.
Of the three services, the Navy has reached the furthest with indigenisation. The Vikrant is entirely Indian designed, as are the Kolkata and its predecessor Delhi class destroyers. Indeed, when it comes to surface ships, the navy can design them all.
The reason it has been forced to buy the Talwar class frigates from Russia is because the public sector shipyards used to insist on making all the warships, even if they would be delayed. The Navy's order of battle was so depleted that it was forced to go to the Russians.
As far as submarines go, the Indian effort to learn its design foundered on domestic politics, when V.P. Singh scrapped the HDW Class 209 submarine deal because the arrangement involved payment to some agents. Now with the Scorpene class, the learning process has begun again.

 

The Navy is still dependent on imports for weapons and some sensors. They are already making, with Russian help and to a largely Russian design, the Brahmos supersonic anti-ship missile. But an effort to make surface-to-air missiles was aborted when the DRDO failed to deliver the Trishul.
Having learnt its lesson, the DRDO has now tied up with Israel, to design what is called the Barak 8 Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LRSAM) which will be ready for induction in a year or two. In the meanwhile some of our newer ships will have no SAM cover.
The contrast with the IAF is quite evident. The LCA Tejas is still some years from induction, even though a vast amount of money has been spent on developing it. Indeed, the Air Force's plight has been evident from the fact that it has had to import the basic training aircraft for its rookie pilots, a little over half a century, yes 52 years after the first flight of the indigenous HF-24 Marut, which was albeit designed by a team led by Dr Kurt Tank for the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL). 

Stately: INS Vikramaditya recently passed its sea trials with flying colours

Delays

It is not as if everything is hunky dory for the Navy. For example, INS Kolakata, the first of its class of destroyers, which was expected to be commissioned in 2010 has now been delayed till 2014 and its sister ships are likely to come even later. The Scorpene submarine project remains plagued by delays and recently, a news report said that it would be delayed an additional year and the first boat would only be commissioned by 2016, instead of 2012 as was initially envisaged.
There are delays plaguing other programmes of the Navy as well, such as the decision to make another class of conventional submarines.
Behind the Navy's success is project management. Notice, the managing directors of all the key shipyard are retired navy officers - Rear Admiral R.K. Sharawat in Mazgaon Dock Ltd Mumbai, Rear Admiral N.K. Mishra at Hindustan Shipyard, Vizag, Rear Admiral A.K Verma, Garden Reach Shipbuilders, Kolkata, Rear Admiral Vineet Bakshi at the Goa Shipyard and Commodore K Subramaniam at the Cochin Shipyard, Kochi.
Some, but not all of these officers are engineers. Indeed, it is not their engineering skills that matter in the job they are doing, but their managerial abilities. Having served the Navy for a long time, they have considerable knowledge of the user's requirements, as well as the ability to manage large work teams.

HAL

Contrast this with what has happened in HAL. It used to be managed by senior Air Force officers at several levels from the 1950s till the 1980s. Indeed, four of its Managing Directors-A.M. Engineer, P.C. Lal, Laxman Katre and OP Mehra went on to become the chief of the Air Force. These were the years when the HAL produced the HF-24, India, if not Asia's first supersonic fighter, the HJT-16 Kiran jet trainer, the HPT 32 basic trainer which retired some years ago after 25 years of service. It was in this era, that the successful Mig 21, Avro 748 and the Jaguar licence assembly programmes were initiated.
Since the 1990s, the HAL has decided to have non-Air Force managers. They are well-qualified people, but somehow not quite up to their job. The story of the LCA is well known, the intermediate jet trainer programme remains in a limbo and the IAF has refused to accept the HAL's basic trainer offer because it is not sure when it will be delivered.
A measure of its continuing failure is the report that the HAL is surrendering anywhere between 30 to 50 per cent of its workshare of the fifth generation fighter development programme to the Russians because it has not been able to manage its manpower. India is going to spend tens of billions of dollars on this, and yet gain little by way of design experience.
Last year, the Indian Air Force made an effort to convince the government to accept one of its most distinguished air marshals as the Chairman and Managing Director of the HAL, but it was turned down. These are lessons for everyone to see, but somehow the system - our "see nothing and learn nothing" bureaucracy and political leaders cannot learn them.
Mail Today August 14, 2013

Ignore the chicken hawks, stick to engagement

A.K. Antony may not be the best Defence Minister this country has had, but he was needlessly pilloried for his statement on Tuesday that the ambush that killed five Indian soldiers on the Line of Control (LoC) “was carried out by approximately 20 armed terrorists along with persons dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms.”

On Thursday he modified the statement to say: “It is now clear that specialist troops of [the] Pakistan Army were involved in the attack.” The Minister added: “nothing happens from [the] Pakistan side of the Line of Control without support, assistance, facilitation and often, direct involvement of the Pakistan Army.”

The incident was tragic and unfortunate, but hardly unexpected in a region where clashes and cross-LoC incidents are not uncommon and have become the most lethal they have been in the past decade since January this year. 

Politicisation

A greater misfortune is that they have happened as the country has moved into election mode. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s shrill campaign against Mr. Antony, which led to his modified statement on Thursday, is a result of this; large sections of the media and a community of professional chicken hawks have played a role in amplifying the noise. A measure of the BJP’s politicisation of the incident is evident from reports that suggest that it has specially deputed senior leaders to attend the funerals of the soldiers killed.

Mr. Antony’s original statement was factual and pragmatic. There was just one survivor of the ambush, who would hardly have been in a position to determine whether the attackers were jihadis in Pakistan Army uniforms, or Pakistani soldiers themselves. It was also realistic, because it gave New Delhi the space to continue with the recent warming trend in relations with Pakistan. This is not a one-way street; though much weaker, there is a Pakistani constituency which seeks peace. Now with political parties and the media inflaming the situation, we are reaching a point where India and Pakistan are matching each other in adopting belligerent postures.

Among the major achievements of the Vajpayee-Musharraf détente was the ceasefire that Pakistan announced in November 2003. Though there has been a heating up along the LoC in recent months, the ceasefire has largely held.

Today, because of the Pakistan Army’s commitments in the country’s mountainous western border, the ceasefire is useful for Pakistan, but it is, perhaps, more useful for us. Both India and Pakistan benefit from the reduced casualties there, though India alone benefits from the fact that it has denied jihadis the invaluable and irreplaceable benefit of covering fire. Recall that in 2000, as many as 114 security personnel and 36 civilians died in border firing; in 2001 it was 36 and 17; in 2002 it was 81 and 74, and 2003, 29 and 38. Thereafter, for the next couple of years it went down to zero.

In the last few years, it is evident that the military threat from Pakistan is declining. The country is descending into chaos, and its security forces are hard-pressed to contain the challenge from within. They are trying to externalise the challenge by pushing jihadis at India, but any balanced analysis will show that it is the jihadi threat to Pakistan itself which is growing apace, rather than the one to India.

On the other hand, China is in the ascendant. With its massive economic growth, its military power has shown commensurate increase. Chicken hawks will welcome battle on all fronts, but prudent calculation requires us to adopt a different course. India’s grand strategy must be to reduce, if it can, both threats, or to lessen at least one of them. Above all, India needs to prevent a two-front situation in which it can only come out the loser. In this endeavour, you have to have a set of strategy and tactics to achieve your goal. India does not have a published national security strategy but connecting the dots of government policy since 1990, the beginning of the Kashmir insurgency, does reveal a strategy with regard to our more pernicious problem — Pakistan. 

Seeking peace

All governments, the Congress, BJP or United Front, have followed a policy that notwithstanding Islamabad’s support for terrorist actions in India, New Delhi will continue to seek ways of making peace with it. Indeed, the BJP government, of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has played a heroic role in this, persisting on the peace track with Musharraf, despite Agra and Kargil, as well as assorted cross-LoC massacres — of Sikhs at Chittisinghpura and Hindus at Pahalgam (2000), Kishtwar (2001), the Raghunath temple (2002) and Nandimarg (2003), to name but a few.

In this goal, we have adopted a mix of tactics that have varied from the brutal counter-bombardment at the LoC in the late 1990s and 2000s, and a tough approach in Agra in 2002, to accepting a ceasefire in 2003 and seeking accommodation with Islamabad in 2004. And make no mistake. Across the LoC, India has given as hard, if not harder, as it has got. Indeed, it was India that initiated the stage of cross-LoC attacks, beginning in 1993, to stem the jihadi influx. This tactic demanded, and demands, plausible deniability. But what our TV channels seem to want are public performances that will boost their TRPs.

The insistent demands today that India adopt an inflexible and hard policy will only undermine this larger strategy. Were an alternative strategy and tactical mix on offer, it would be something worth considering, but the only items on the menu offered by the chicken hawks are jingoistic slogans and war cries. 

The Hindu August 9, 2013

We must prepare for calamity in Afghanistan

The failed attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad last Saturday, and the conspiracy to attack the Indian ambassador in Afghanistan, reported in Mail Today the day before that, are indications that we need to plan for the worsening scenario in Afghanistan, rather than for an optimistic one.
Ever since it was known that the US and its allies would withdraw their combat troops from the country by 2014, speculation about Afghanistan's future has veered from the optimistic to the catastrophic.

Attacks

There are reports that the Afghan elite are voting with their feet and leaving the country in large numbers. However, for the bulk of the people that is not an option, and so they are hunkering down for what could be a turbulent period that could see near civil war conditions and a great deal of more bloodshed.
Already, the brunt of the violence is being borne by the Afghan National Security Forces who are losing personnel at the rate of over 400 per month.

Grim: An Afghan Army soldier shows a diffused bomb used at the scene of a suicide bomb attack on the Indian consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Formally, Islamabad condemned the attack on the Indian consulate. Its foreign office spokesman, Aizaz Chaudhry, expressed the condemnation declaring that "collective endeavours would help effectively combat this scourge [terrorism]."
But most people in India believe that the Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was fully involved in the suicide attack that took the lives of 12 Afghan nationals, most of them children studying in a local madarsa.
The Mail Today report was more specific. It spoke of intercepts that indicated that the ISI had given a 'supari' of Rs 5 lakhs to the Haqqani network for the life of the Indian ambassador Amar Sinha. Remember, the ISI and the Haqqani network were involved in the devastating July 2008 and October 2009 attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

In 2008, a car bomb killed 58 persons, including the Indian military adviser at the embassy and the 2009 attack by a suicide bomber led to 17 deaths. In the case of the 2008 attack, the US took the unprecedented step of publicly pointing to the complicity of the ISI and the Haqqani network.
The aim of the ISI at that time was to try and contain India's rising influence in Afghanistan, based on its successful development programmes. However, New Delhi did not back off and instead strengthened its security systems and continued with projects, which have been acclaimed by the aid community.
At the time, Pakistan also conducted a shrill campaign against the Indian consulates in the country, alleging that they were being used to aid militants operating in Pakistan. However, these claims were firmly rejected by all unbiased observers, including the US and NATO officials who would have certainly known better.

Strategy

But the context of the current attacks is different. They come at a time when details of the US withdrawal are sketchy and Pakistan has resumed its central role in the American calculations by emerging as the principal facilitator of the dialogue between the US and the Taliban.
The attacks are a signal that Islamabad is going for its maximalist goal in the country - to establish a post 2014 political order which will remove all traces of Indian influence in Afghanistan.
Ostensibly, Islamabad claims that it is merely a facilitator of a regional effort to contain the Afghan problem and promote reconciliation in the country. To this end, it has engaged the US in dialogue and permitted key Taliban personalities to participate in the Doha process. But it is also clearly underscoring the price of its endeavours - the driver's seat in the post-2014 situation.

 

A great deal of the outcome of this power play depends on Islamabad and Washington DC. American signals have been mixed. On one hand, they have been indicating that they are desperate to get out of Afghanistan and will play along with Islamabad's goals.
In his visit to Islamabad last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly told his Pakistani interlocutors that the US was not going to leave Afghanistan in a hurry and that the US was hoping that it could sign an agreement with the Karzai government about the size and nature of the residual forces that would remain after 2014.

Power

US Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly told Pakistan that the US is not going to leave Afghanistan in a hurry

So far the US has dithered in providing a clear figure relating to the size of its residual forces. Various numbers have been thrown around, from 22,000 to 15,000 and even the "zero" option, but there has been no official communication.
If the US wants to live up to its goal of leaving a stable and peaceful Afghanistan after its military campaign, it needs to spell out some of these numbers now, along with details of the ways in which it will support the ANSF and the Afghan state. Only this would provide an incentive for Islamabad to behave well.
Any indication that the Americans were desperate to leave would encourage the hawks of the ISI to step up their actions, as they have been doing.
Like it or not, India's future in Afghanistan is linked to that of the American camp. Our successful development efforts there functioned under the larger US-NATO security umbrella. Geography prevents us from playing the kind of role that Pakistan, or for that matter Iran and Russia can play in the country. And India does not have the kind of money that China has to bankroll its influence across the country, should it choose to do things that way.
In the short run, then, Indian policy has to push the United States to spell out its post 2014 commitments, as well as pursue an active role in regional efforts to shore up the Afghan government. This may or may not involve the idea of a reconciliation of the present Afghan government with the Taliban.
This project, in any case, does not look too viable. The Taliban's behaviour in Doha, where they sought to project themselves as the Afghan Emirate, is a signal that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.
Mail Today August 5 2013