Taliban gains bode ill for India, Pak

The fortnight-long blitzkrieg recently launched by the Pakhtun-dominated Taliban, the orthodox Shari’a-inspired rulers of Kabul, against the Abdul Rashid Dostum-led Northern Alliance has allowed for a consolidation of power in their hands. This is a situation unprecedented in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the Soviet Red Army in 1989. More areas of Afghanistan are now under the control of Kabul than since the ignominious Soviet departure across the Oxus river.

In the space of almost fouryears, the Taliban have grown from being a rag-tag bunch of semi-literate students in their first base in Kandahar to an organisation wielding influence over almost the entire Afghanistan. Such speedy expansion is unprecedented in Afghanistan’s annals of internecine warfare. The sole barrier to their complete sweep of the battle-scarred country is the doughty Tadzik in the Panjshir valley, Ahmed Shah Masood.

The Taliban blitzkrieg had as much the presence of the Pakistani soldiers in its fighting ranks to thank as the greased palms in the Northern Alliance. A number of Pakhtun commanders in the alliance defected to their advancing tribal kin, the Taliban. As is the norm in Afghanistan, these defections were not conditioned by a sudden infusion of ideology, but by that medieval lucre.

In this age of economic crises, the source of money in Afghanistan is traced to its only export other than blackmarket weaponry — heroin. 1998 is the year of the best opium crop in a long time, and with heroin making acomeback in the markets of New York, Los Angeles and London, it is only to be expected that the Taliban’s coffers are brimming.

Money is, of course, also coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, with incentives thrown in by a United States oil company.

With China already having contracted its oil needs with the Kazakhs, the only routes of oil export from the Central Asian region are either Iran or Afghanistan.

Although Iran offers the technically and economically better route, American oil companies are still not kosher with that country. Having contracted with the Central Asians, the company has to get the oil out, and fast. But for this to happen, a single source of power in Afghanistan is mandatory, which implies that the Taliban is the best choice; there is a curious silence at the State Department end whenever the word Taliban is mentioned.

India need not, however, be so despondent or helpless as regards its Afghanistan policy. Cultural ties and such other banalities aside, India’sgrowing energy needs require that Central Asian oil be made available without disruption.

Indian goods too should be reaching those countries when they start expanding.

It is in our India’s interest that it reengage itself in Afghan matters, especially since they coalesce ever more closely with those of the Persians, the Russians and the Central Asians.

Historically, every ruler of Kabul has had to befriend India, but keen on rewriting history, the Taliban may not follow that path. New Delhi should be on the lookout for some rational elements in the Taliban, and if they do not exist, induce some rationality in it. Being Pakhtun, there is a limit to the business the Taliban will conduct with a Punjabi Pakistan. It is a rivalry older than the idea of Pakistan.

Should those rational elements not appear, India then has the tricky task of putting a sane pan-Afghanistan policy into the minds of the dejected neighbours of Kabul.

Iran does not want a Saudi-inspired Sunni brand of Islam on its doorstep, andthat rivlary is also more than 1,400 years old. Russia does not want its former Central Asian republics to fall prey to this Sunni resurgence. And while the Uzbek and Tadzhik leadership is anti-Islamic, what they do not have is a well-coordinated approach.

An India which is mindful of its duties to the people of Afghanistan, as also to its interests in the land which has frequently been the source of much nuisance, should now play the role of a catalyst in making this meeting of minds become an active force. History is on its side.

Pakistan has more problems in store from the Taliban than it cares to acknowledge. With the Awami National Party having quit the Nawaz Sharif government over the issue of Pakhtunistan, it is a matter of time before this fever, too, will catch up with the Taliban.

It is also a matter of time before the Taliban ideology recrosses the Khyber Pass, heading southwards.

History declares that the movement of men and materials through the Khyber has always been in the direction ofthe North Indian plains.

New Delhi should now begin to ensure that when the Taliban start recrossing the Khyber, they stop in West Punjab. India can make that happen, but having neglected Afghanistan for so long, it cannot do so by itself.

That has also been historically determined.