CHECKMATE FOR THE US AS IT LOSES THE PLOT IN AFGHANISTAN

 

It has been 15 years since the US-led NATO forces landed in Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban from power, but the situation in the war-torn country is as fragile as it was then.  The western powers are now desperate to leave. But they can’t!  The US’ frustration is writ large as it seeks an early dialogue between Afghanistan government and the very Taliban forces which it ousted. But the Taliban won’t play ball.  In fact, the US-led forces are in for a rude and harsh summer.  The US had banked on Pakistan to cajole the Taliban leadership to come to the negotiating table. But that is not going to happen, at least, very soon.

Since the withdrawal of the bulk of the international troops, the Taliban have notched up considerable gains. It has widened its control to nearly one third of Afghanistan. And with just 13,000 largely non-combatant international troops, the powerful Taliban know that they can easily test and overrun Afghan security forces. The brief capture of the strategic northern city of Kunduz last year was a major embarrassment for the Afghan security forces. They could reclaim the territory only after the US carried out major air strikes. Since then, the Taliban have opened several fronts from Helmand in the south to Jowzjan province in the north, inflicting heavy casualties on Afghan security forces.

Afghanistan is proving to be a political liability for the US. If it stays longer, it faces strong backlash back home and if it withdraws, the country will fall to the Taliban.  It’s a classical case of entering a blind alley but not knowing how to come out of it. Whatever may be its political designs, the US has been sucked badly into a country where exit routes are not easy and not too many.

The US has only two options -- either to go in for a full-scale war to annihilate the Taliban or to find a solution through political means. The US has already exercised its first option and the result is for everybody to see. Already the US has lost 2,300 of its men. And it has cost the US more than 110 billion dollars since its forces first landed in Afghanistan in October 2001. Other than dislodging the Taliban government, the US has not achieved anything other than propping up a weak government as a prized trophy. In fact, the situation is becoming more alarming now.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has claimed that there has been a four percent rise in civilian casualties in 2015 compared to the previous year after the withdrawal of most international troops. At least 3,545 noncombatants died and another 7,457 were injured in fighting last year. Thirty-seven percent of the civilian casualties were caused due to ground engagements whereas another 21 percent people were either killed or injured during roadside bombings. Suicide attacks led to 17 percent civilian casualties. There was a sharp spike of 28 percent casualties to pro-government security forces in last year. And most of the casualties happened in Kunduz and Helmand provinces where the Taliban engaged Afghan security forces. According to the UN, there have been 59,000 civilian deaths and injuries since 2009.

Desperate to leave the killing fields of Afghanistan, which is increasingly becoming a graveyard for its forces, the US has fallen back on Pakistan to influence the Taliban to rejoin the peace talks. By doing so, the US has not only realized its folly but has admitted its defeat. Interestingly, Pakistan, which claims to have “considerable influence” over the Taliban after its admission of playing host to them, has been snubbed by the militant group. Early this month, Pakistan's adviser for foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz made a 180-degree turn by admitting that it can influence the Taliban because its leaders live in the country. This is what the Afghanistan leadership has been crying for the last so many years that the Afghan Taliban enjoys safe sanctuaries in Pakistan, a charge the latter had been denying and the US supposedly believing it. Aziz also claimed credit for pressuring Afghan Taliban leaders to participate in the first direct face-to-face talks with Kabul last year.

But Pakistan has been left embarrassed by the Taliban who have refused to take part in the peace talks. It has set some pre-conditions, hard to be accepted by the western forces, before joining the dialogue. It wants occupation of Afghanistan to end and release of innocent prisoners.  The Taliban has intentionally put tough conditions, knowing well that they will not be met, because the militia is itself in disarray after the announcement of the death of its founder Mullah Mohammed Omar.  Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who has taken over the reign since Omar’s death, is himself battling infighting as several groups are not only opposed to his leadership, but to talks, as well.  Another major hurdle is that there is no Taliban as such. There are several splinter groups which operate separately. Even if some groups may be interested in joining the negotiating table at some stage, there would certainly be some others who would not, and they would continue to wage an armed struggle. The other rival group, headed by Mullah Mohammad Rasoul, and opposed to the leadership of Mansour, has rejected the peace offer. In fact, the two groups have been fighting between themselves for supremacy.

There are no easy solutions to the crisis muddled by several powers. Afghanistan views Pakistan with suspicion as it is convinced of its role in fomenting trouble and creating instability there. Pakistan’s recent admission of hosting the Taliban leadership confirms Afghanistan’s fears that its neighbour has been planning and launching attacks from its soil. Pakistan pleases the US leadership by launching on-and-off operations against Taliban forces in its territory, which are inimical to the western interests in Afghanistan.

Why Afghanistan will continue to bleed is that nobody is interested in finding a reasonable solution. Half of the problem can be solved if Pakistan either launches a major offensive against the Taliban sheltered in its territory or drives them away to Afghanistan. But can Pakistan afford to do it? Pakistan risks inviting trouble for itself if it turns against the Taliban! Therefore, it has no option but to play cat and mouse game in Afghanistan.

The US has a limited role as far as pushing Pakistan is concerned. Pakistan was a major conduit between the US and the Mujahedeen in driving away Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Today, the Taliban has become Frankenstein's own monster. Its checkmate for the US in Afghanistan!

F-16 SWEETENER! SUSPICIOUS US FLIRTS WITH PAKISTAN AGAIN

The United States’ policy towards Pakistan is quite enigmatic. Over the years, the US has been found vacillating in its approach towards Pakistan. The US’ public posturing does not match with its actions. Its decision to sell $700 million F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan has not only riled India but divided members of the US’ Congress as well.  The lame duck President Barack Obama administration’s decision to go ahead with the proposed sale despite lawmakers’ concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation programme and its not-so-convincing commitment against the war on terrorism defies all logic. President Obama alone can’t be faulted as his predecessors also followed the same ambivalent and ambiguous policies towards Pakistan. Slam Pakistan to please India and then pamper it with billions of dollars in cash and military equipment is how one can sum up the policy of Washington.

On December 22, 2008, the then Pakistani National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani was summoned to Washington and was told tersely that its “shifty and shifting position on the Mumbai attacks” was unacceptable. And just a week before Durrani got the dressing down, the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations said “you (Pakistan) need to deal with the terrorism problem. And it’s not enough to say these are non-state actors. If they’re operating from Pakistan, then they have to be dealt with,” referring to Pakistan’s failure to arrest those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

Has Pakistan dealt with the problem of terrorism? Has it withdrawn its support to the non-state actors? On the contrary, the so-called non-state actors have carried out several daring attacks on India and Afghanistan with active support from Pakistan’s military and its intelligence agency.  Pakistan itself has brazenly admitted its support to militant groups fighting its proxy war in Kashmir.

In October 2010, former Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf told the German magazine, “Der Spiegel,” that his forces trained militant groups to fight in Indian- administered Kashmir. This was the first time such a senior figure in Pakistan admitted to something which India had been crowing for the last several decades. But Indian concerns were not taken note of as Pakistan was being considered an important ally of the US for its’ supposedly fight against terror groups in Afghanistan. But senior US officials had altogether different take on Pakistan’s dubious role in Afghanistan.

On September 22, 2011, the outgoing joint chiefs chairman Mike Mullen accused Pakistan's intelligence agency of supporting a Taliban-linked insurgent group which had carried out an audacious attack on the American embassy in Kabul which happened a week ago. He had then commented that “Pakistani duplicity puts in jeopardy not only the frayed US-Pakistani partnership against terrorism, but also the outcome to the decade-old war in Afghanistan.” In the words of the then defense secretary Leon Panetta, “Pakistani intelligence is using the Haqqanis and other extremist groups as its proxies inside Afghanistan.”

Next year, Obama administration decided to withhold more than one-third of all military assistance to Pakistan worth some $800 million. It included funding for military equipment and $300 million for counter-insurgency programmes.

The relations between the two countries nosedived after the US raided Osama bin Laden's secret compound inside Pakistan in May 2011 without even bothering to inform Pakistani authorities. It could not have been more humiliating than this for any sovereign country. But the US suspected that some elements in Pakistan could thwart its attempts to get Laden either alive or dead.  In fact, in his first interview to “60 Minutes” days after the killing of Laden, President Obama said his administration thought that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden. "But we don't know who or what that support network was," Obama added.  The comments reflected the US’ frustration with Pakistan.

Surprisingly, the US aid resumed two years later in 2013 when it quietly decided to release more than $1.6 billion in military and economic assistance to Pakistan. One fails to understand what happened in those two years that the US again turned to its so-called ally! Was it because Pakistan had started moving closer to China? Interestingly, officials and congressional aides said ties have improved enough to allow the money to flow again. Even if one were to believe that ties had improved, then what made the US to slam Pakistan again within a year for using militant proxies against India?

In its November 2014 report on “Progress Towards Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” tabled in the U.S. Congress, the Pentagon said, “Afghan and India - focused militants continue to operate from Pakistan territory to the detriment of Afghan and regional stability. Pakistan uses these proxy forces to hedge against the loss of influence in Afghanistan and to counter India's superior military.”

The Pentagon report certainly was at variance with the Obama administration’s new-found love for Pakistan. The Pentagon’s critical report came in a year when Narendra Modi swept to power and the Obama administration began viewing Indo-US relationship as “one of the defining partnerships of the century”.

As the bonhomie between Modi and Obama grew, the US President once again bracketed Pakistan with Afghanistan and the Middle East and warned that these countries could become safe havens for new terrorist networks. In his final State of the Union address on January 13 this year, Obama said : “For even without IS, instability will continue for decades in many parts of the world -- in the Middle East, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in parts of Central America, Africa and Asia. Some of these places may become safe havens for new terrorist networks.”

And President Obama followed it again after the terror attack on Pathankot air base early this January. Describing the terror attack on the IAF base in Pathankot as "another example of the inexcusable terrorism that India has endured for too long", President Obama told Pakistan that it "can and must" take more effective action against terrorist groups operating from its soil by "delegitimising, disrupting and dismantling" terror networks there. A very hard-hitting statement, indeed!

Are President Obama and his administration now convinced that Pakistan has delegitimized, disrupted and dismantled terror networks operating there? Has Pakistan, according to President Obama, taken effective action against terrorist groups to qualify for the renewed military assistance?

What is hard to digest is the US’ defence over sale of F16 fighter jets to Pakistan. The US State Department spokesperson Helaena W. White said:  “We support the proposed sale of eight F-16s to Pakistan to assist Pakistan’s counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations. Pakistan’s current F-16s have proven critical to the success of these operations to date.”

Who the US is trying to fool with such inane justification? It has been providing F-16 fighters to Pakistan since the 80s. Had Pakistan been using these fighter planes against militant groups, terrorism would have been on its last legs. In fact, these planes are being used against separatist insurgents in the restive province of Baluchistan, in Pakistan's North Waziristan regions. At a time when both India and the US are intensely engaged in fighting the scourge of terrorism, this decision will not go down well with New Delhi, which has rightly registered its strongest protest with Washington.

DO-OR-DIE BATTLE FOR BJP AND CONGRESS IN ASSAM

 

Election bugle has been sounded for four states and a union territory and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces a daunting task after its two back-to-back humiliating defeats in Delhi and Bihar.  The party can fancy its chances in Assam only where Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is battling anti-incumbency after staying in power for 15 years.  In the remaining states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and union territory of Puducherry, it has very negligible presence.

The BJP is desperate to expand its footprint in the remote northeastern part of the country after its astonishing performance in Assam in the last general elections where it bagged seven out of the 14 seats. This time, the BJP has stitched together a formidable alliance by netting its off-an-on ally Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), a former ally of the Congress – Bodoland People’s Front – and dissident Congress leaders. The BJP’s state chief Sarbananda Sonowal, who has been declared as a chief ministerial candidate, was a long time associate of AGP before he joined hands with the saffron party.  It also embraced 10 Congress MLAs led by Himanta Biswa Sarma, an influential minister in the Gogoi cabinet, after their defections. The BJP will be banking heavily on the experience of Sarma, who oversaw the last assembly elections and engineered the Congress’ astounding victory when political pundits were writing the obituary of the grand old party in the state. The Congress triumphed in 79 of the 126 seats.

On the paper, the BJP looks set to upset the applecart of the Congress, which failed to strike a pre-poll alliance with Badruddin Ajmal-led All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Their common vote bank – the Muslim vote – is likely to be split as both the parties derive maximum political strength from Muslim-dominated areas. The AIUDF doubled its strength from 9 to 18 in the last assembly elections contesting on 77 seats.

The BJP has improved its vote share between the 2011 assembly election and 2014 general elections incredibly. From 11.5 percent, the BJP’s vote share jumped more than three-fold to 36.5 percent in the last parliamentary elections. In contrast, the Congress’ vote share fell down from 39.9 percent in 2011 to 29.9 percent in the general elections, a massive erosion of 10 percent in its vote share. It remains to be seen whether the BJP will succeed in repeating or improving its 2014 performance because the saffron party was helped largely by a massive wave in favour of Modi then. Much water has flown down the Brahmaputra since then. There has been dip in the popularity of Modi as he has struggled to implement any of his much flaunted promises. To make matters worse, the economy is not doing as well as one expected.

The BJP in Assam represents a rainbow party with members largely drawn from other parties. It has recruited Congress dissidents, members of the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU), the student wing of the AGP, and surrendered cadres of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) which waged an armed struggle against the state. Even its face in the state, Sonowal, was president of AASU. It will be interesting to watch how this rag-tag bunch of politicians stays together as everybody will be demanding its pound of flesh.

As of now, it is advantage BJP as it has tied up with AGP and Bodoland People’s Front (BPF). All the three parties have a common cause as far as their opposition to the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is concerned. But its decision to take the Congress dissidents in its fold, with complete different political ideology, will be tested in the polls. This is a major irritant in otherwise a perfect combo to take on the veteran Gogoi who will find the going tough this time. The AGP’s decision to flirt again with the Hindu party after burning bridges with it in the past underlines its desperation as its fortunes have been constantly on the downslide and is losing political space in the state. In fact, the BJP’s growth story in Assam has been largely at the expense of the AGP. Interestingly, both the parties have fared badly whenever they entered into an alliance in the past. Their first attempt to come together ended in a catastrophe in 2001 as the then ruling AGP was unseated by the Congress. In that election, the AGP managed just 20 seats whereas the BJP bagged eight seats. The two parties against decided to kiss and make up in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The decision boomeranged on the AGP which won just one seat whereas the BJP triumphed in four seats. In the last assembly elections, both the BJP and AGP went separately.  The AGP bettered BJP as it netted 10 seats out of 104 seats on which it contested whereas the BJP managed just five out of 120 seats on which it went to polls.

If one tallies the 2011 vote share of all the three parties which contested the elections separately – the BJP, AGP and BPF -- it was 33 percent, which was about six percent short of the Congress. The permutation this time favours the BJP-led alliance as Gogoi has been incapacitated due to defection by Sarma, considered to be the master strategist and architect of Congress victory in the last elections.  But predicting elections is not an easy task in India as several pollsters have burned their hands in the past with their prognosis going wayward.

Assam election is a do-or-die battle for both the Congress and BJP. Both the parties need to win this high stake election. The Congress has not won a single state election after its disastrous performance in the 2014 general elections, though it took some solace in last year’s victory in Bihar being part of the Grand Alliance.  Riding on the wave of Modi’s popularity in general elections, the BJP snatched some big wins in Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and formed the government in Kashmir as a junior partner.  But it began with a disastrous note in the next year as it was annihilated completely first in Delhi by the rookie Aam Aadmi Party and then by the RJD-JDU-Congress alliance in Bihar.

The results in Delhi and Bihar are a big question mark on the popularity of the BJP whose career graph is on the downhill as the Modi magic has started fading. Therefore, both the parties will go for the kill in Assam to recover the lost ground. But will they be able to pull off an outright victory? I have my doubts. My bets are on a hung legislative assembly with no political party or group in a position to form the government.