The Tomahawk tutorial

Similarly now, we are getting the message of the Tomahawks all wrong.Smugness is no substitute for policy though that is one thing completelylacking in the manner we have looked at post-Najib Afghanistan. The messagefrom Washington is that the Great Game is still on. Except that the Russianchallenge has been replaced by the right-wing, Wahabi Islam, over which theAmericans have limited control, and tribalism which they think is manageablethrough bribery and deceit.

There has to be a reason why our establishment has traditionally been sobereft of ideas on a region so close to our borders. Even in our history, noIndian ruler with the exception of Maharaja Ranjit Singh has understoodthe strategic importance of a piece of land that seemed to produce nothingbut bloodthirsty, marauding hordes. In post-Mughal days, the British foughtfor control over the Afghan and central Asian highlands with the Russians,thereby also looking after India8217;s western flank. If they did not do it toosuccessfully in the end, that too suited us fine. After independence, aSoviet satellite in our neighbourhood and west of Pakistan was a pretty goodsight for us. We were once again backing a player 8212; now the Soviets 8211;instead of playing the game ourselves. Mrs Gandhi showed a shrewdunderstanding of what a Kabul hostile to Pakistan meant for India and builta very Indian constituency in the land-locked country with which wetechnically share a border through the narrow Wakhan corridor inPakistan-occupied Kashmir. She maintained a high level and frequency ofcontact with Kabul, invested in development and welfare there and cultivatedits military and social elites. But the Soviet invasion confused her. Shemade a real error of judgment in not following the advice of those whoreasoned for a slightly more equidistant policy rather than acting like astooge. But that is perhaps also because Mrs Gandhi was the quintessentialCold Warrior. She understood India8217;s vulnerability only in that context.Also, this was the peak of the Brezhnev era so no one quite believed theSoviet Union would turn out to be so fragile, so soon.

Rajiv Gandhi did not quite have the comprehension to handle a region ascomplex as this. And by the time India acquired a leader who did, it wasalready in the era of weak minority governments. Narasimha Rao understoodthe threat as well as the opportunity. That is why he chose Vijay Nambiar,one of his most committed foreign-service officers, as ambassador to Kabul.But by this time India had weakened a great deal. A post-Soviet Indiandoctrine for Afghanistan had never been formulated. The Pakistanis, fullybacked by the Americans, were walking all over the place. The Taliban werebeing groomed in scores of madrassas and, most important of all, we wereconstantly on the defensive domestically and internationally, on Kashmir.Under the Rao doctrine, in those years of vulnerability the first prioritywas to build bridges with the US.

He understood the leverage Washington had acquired vis-a-vis India becauseof the Kashmiri insurrection. His solution was a policy of engagement. Itworked, but in that limited context. The Americans stopped making humanrights noises, the Robin Raphels of the Washington establishment stoppedrepeating the quot;Kashmir-is-disputed-territoryquot; theme and Rao, in the process,succeeded in de-Pakistanising his foreign policy to a large extent. On hisWashington visit in 1994 he almost never mentioned Pakistan or Kashmir andWashington played ball. In the midst of such a complex shift from the past,it wasn8217;t possible for him to worry about Afghanistan. It was widelybelieved now, and Gujral continued with that belief subsequently, that bothChina and the US were concerned about the rise of pan-Islamic militancy andwould ultimately quot;fixquot; the Afghan problem. Once again, therefore, we hadleft the Great Game on our borders to outside powers.

The latest US action underlines why we cannot afford to do it any longer.One is the more obvious threat in Kashmir from the graduates churned out bythe Afghan/ISI University of jehad, with Osama bin Laden replacing GulbuddinHekmatyar as its new dean. We may be jubilated for the moment that theAmericans have vindicated us by raining Tomahawks in Afghanistan. But theydid it because Americans were attacked. They won8217;t do any of this if Osama8217;sboys shifted attention to Kashmir instead. The Americans do not have such aproblem with right-wing Islamists. It was through them that they were hopingto cleanse and control Afghanistan. Their problem is with quot;roguequot;fundamentalists and once that is sorted out life will be back to normal.

What we are witnessing is the unfolding of a new phase in the Great Game. Ifin the past it was about denying the Russians access to warm-water ports,now it is about securing the Afghan landmass so the enormous oil and gasfinds in Central Asia can be pumped through new pipelines into south andsouth-east Asia. The oil MNCs desperately need that business. The Asiancountries China, Japan, even India and Pakistan need that energy evenmore desperately. It is not going to reach any of them unless somebody putssome method in the Afghan madness. This is how high the stakes are. Can wethen afford to merely sit on the sidelines and applaud American fireworks?