Goa to Amritsar

After the October 2016 Brics summit, another multilateral forum to which India has played host has provided the occasion to discredit and isolate Pakistan. At the Heart of Asia ministerial conference held in Amritsar on December 4, Pakistan ran the gauntlet for the continuing instability in Afghanistan at the hands of the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani himself.

Making no bones about his perception of Pakistan’s role in the upsurge of violence in Afghanistan in recent months, Ghani at the inaugural session of the Heart of Asia moot said, “Afghanistan suffered the highest number of casualties last year. This is unacceptable....Some [countries] still provide sanctuary to terrorists. A Taliban figure recently said that if they had no sanctuary in Pakistan, they wouldn’t last a month.”

The strongly worded remarks should leave no one in doubt that the Afghan leadership trusts even its chief antagonist, the Taliban, more than Pakistan, which on its part denies providing safe havens to the militants. Perhaps for Kabul, the chief adversary is not the Taliban but their alleged master – Islamabad.

In the same speech, the Afghan president turned down Pakistan’s offer of $500 assistance to support development efforts in his country. Afghanistan, he said tersely, “needs aid to fight terrorism.”

Since censuring Pakistan is not as impactful as when it is done alongside praising India, Ghani in his speech described the Indo-Afghan relationship to be rooted in shared values and beliefs and averred that New Delhi’s assistance to his country had no strings attached.

When an otherwise suave Ashraf Ghani was in such an aggressive mood, the Indian Prime Minister Modi, known for going all out against his adversaries, could not let the opportunity of vilifying his country’s arch rival slip. In his inaugural remarks at the Heart of Asia moot he said, “We must counter terrorists and their masters. We must demonstrate strong collective will to defeat the terror network that causes bloodshed and spreads fear….Silence and inaction on terror in Afghanistan and the region will only embolden terrorists and their masters and those who fund them.”

Pakistan’s response to the Indo-Afghan tirade was curt. Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, who represented Pakistan at the conference, described the allegations as baseless. “It is simplistic to blame only one country for the recent upsurge in [Afghan] violence. We need to have an objective and holistic view,” he said.

With an oblique reference to the Kashmir issue he added, “Peaceful resolution to all the longstanding issues is the only way forward for regional cooperation and connectivity.”

Islamabad, as evident through the opening session of the Amritsar ministerial moot, is seen by both New Delhi and Kabul as the most potent irritant to stability and prosperity in the region, particularly in Afghanistan. The Afghan government has accused Pakistan from time to time of supporting the militants on their side of the Durand Line. There’s an element of truth in such allegations. Regarding Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth, Pakistan propped up the student militia, the Taliban, and facilitated their rise to power in 1996. Five years later, Pakistan was instrumental in the ouster of the same Taliban regime.

At the same time, India has had strategic designs on Afghanistan as well. The notable difference is that New Delhi put its money on a different horse. In the 1990s, it was the Persian-speaking Northern Alliance. During the last one decade, it has been the ruling coterie in Kabul, representing a hotchpotch of Persian and Pashto-speaking leadership. Not surprisingly, the post-Taliban regime in Kabul has looked at Pakistan as an enemy – and by contrast New Delhi and Tehran as friends.

Besides, Pakistan has not been the only bad guy. If Islamabad supported the Afghan Taliban, Kabul has backed the Pakistani Taliban. On the onset of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the top Taliban leadership, including their chief Mullah Fazlullah, crossed over to Afghanistan, where they continue to have sanctuaries and plan their clandestine activities in Pakistan.

During Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Pakistan after his election in 2014, the two countries agreed not to allow their territories to be used for cross-border terrorism. Subsequently, however, each side has accused the other of not sticking to their word. The people at the helm in Kabul want Islamabad to force the Afghan Taliban to join the talks. At the same time, they would like Islamabad to crush the militants in case they are reluctant to become part of the peace process. Whether Pakistan has a limited or an extensive influence on the Afghan Taliban is anybody’s guess. But such an approach, as Pakistan’s own case bears out, is contradictory and is not likely to bear fruit.

Then there is the matter of enhanced regional connectivity. Afghanistan, being a land-locked country, has remained dependent on Pakistan for its overseas trade. The problem, however, is that transit trade is a conduit for smuggling. The reason? The import tariffs in Afghanistan are much lower than those in Pakistan because there’s no domestic industry in the former that is worth mentioning to protect. This is a source of friction between the two countries since Afghanistan wants less regulation of the transit trade than Pakistan deems necessary.

A related and graver issue is allowing Indian exports access to Afghanistan via the land route. Pakistan allows Afghan exports to India through the Wagah border but it doesn’t extend the same facility to Indian exports going to Afghanistan. Pakistan itself has restricted trade with India and even fewer Indian exports are allowed through the Wagah border.

Not only that, Afghanistan is among the largest export markets for Pakistan. Free transit to Indian exports is likely to result in Pakistan losing an important market. Besides, Afghan trade is a source of substantial commercial activity in Balochistan and KP – economic opportunities in both provinces are otherwise meagre.

India has sought to get over this problem by assisting in the construction of the Chabahar Port in south-east Iran and connecting infrastructure in Afghanistan, and using that to export merchandise to Afghanistan and to Central Asia. Overall, New Delhi is a major contributor to Afghan reconstruction. On the eve of the Heart of Asia meeting, India and Afghanistan announced that they will start an air cargo service to scale up their bilateral trade.

The attempts by India and Afghanistan to use the Heart of Asia forum to denigrate and isolate Pakistan overshadowed not only the deliberations made at the Amritsar ministerial meeting earlier but also the envisaged role of the forum.

Also known as the Istanbul Process, the Heart of Asia represents an attempt to shore up regional cooperation for a strong and stable Afghanistan. The objective is to be achieved through a two-track approach comprising political consultations involving Afghanistan and its next-door and extended neighbours to address issues and challenges of common regional concern and by promoting cooperation through confidence building measures in diverse areas such as disaster management, counter-terrorism, narcotics control, trade and investment, infrastructure, and education.

 

The writer is a freelance countributor.

Email: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com