Opinion The great Game Folio

underscored by three recent developments.

The first is Pakistan’s flat refusal to take on the Afghan Taliban,despite the American pressures to do so. The Pak Army has reportedly conveyed explicitly to the US defence Secretary Robert Gates who was visiting the region last week that it will not confront the Afghan Taliban any time soon.

Second,there is a new urgency in Washington to engage the Afghan Taliban,with or without the additional support from Islamabad. The US had hoped that its military surge and simultaneous pressure from Pakistan would create better conditions for what were seen as inevitable future negotiations with the insurgents. With Pakistan’s refusal to turn the heat on,the US appears to have chosen to engage the Taliban under less favourable conditions.

The commander of the US and international forces in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChrystal has emphasised this week the importance of reconciling with moderate elements of the Taliban and suggested they might even be welcome to join the government in Kabul.

Third,Hamid Karzai,who was re-elected as President of Afghanistan last year,has been calling for a dialogue with the Taliban for more than a year and has reached out to anyone who could facilitate a dialogue with the Taliban. Karzai now hopes that the London Conference will put up some big money to attract the Taliban to the negotiating table.

One does not have to be a political genius to see that those who are winning on the battlefield have no incentive to talk. What can be predicted,however,is that the Taliban will raise the price for reconciliation very high,further divide the

international coalition,and weaken its resolve.

Meaningless mantra

One of the first tasks of the new National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon,will be to review and reframe India’s approach towards Afghanistan. Delhi no longer has the luxury of repeating the old mantras.

Proclamations in Delhi that there is no such thing as “moderate Taliban” or the argument that the United States should forever fight the Taliban underscore the enduring Indian tradition of emphasising a principle even when it has no connection with reality.

What India needs instead is a recast of its own assumptions about Afghanistan. Rather than argue that there is no difference between the “good Taliban and the bad”,Delhi must significantly expand its outreach to the Pashtuns.

India must come to terms with the fact that all Taliban are Pashtun while not all Pashtun belong to the Taliban. India cannot forever cede the Pashtuns to Pakistani influence in the name of a ‘principled position’ against the Taliban. Unlike in the 1980s and 1990s when India put itself against the Pashtun sentiment,this time Delhi must focus on building bridges with the Pashtuns.

India also cannot expect that President Barack Obama will continue to spend American blood and treasure in Afghanistan in fighting the Taliban. Which elected leader in a large democracy would want to fight a costly war that has rapidly declining domestic political support?

Indian reboot

Any rewrite of the Indian mantra on Afghanistan must also deal with the fact that its refusal to talk to Pakistan after the outrageous terror attack on Mumbai in November 2008 has severely limited Delhi’s room for manoeuvre in the region.

The longer Delhi takes to get out of its post-Mumbai sulk,the stronger it makes the anti-India forces in Pakistan. Meanwhile

the Pakistan Army is betting that the world needs its help more than ever to find a reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban. Rawalpindi’s price for such cooperation would be international pressure for a reduction of Indian influence in Afghanistan,concessions on Kashmir,and a nuclear deal similar to the one that Delhi has had with Washington.

With such high stakes in the Great Game,one wonders why Delhi finds it so hard to inject a measure of flexibility into its

Pakistan policy.

The writer is Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and

International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington DC