Opinion The GREAT GAME Folio
The great game was largely about promoting,and preventing,the integration of inner Asia with the Eurasian rim lands.
Orient Express
The great game was largely about promoting,and preventing,the integration of inner Asia with the Eurasian rim lands. If the European powers sought to push road and rail links into Central Asia,many states in the region feared that connectivity meant colonisation.
Afghanistan,for example,sought to preserve its political independence by deliberately foregoing the modernisation of internal transport links and prohibiting them with the outside world. Since the end of the Cold War,expanding the road and rail network in Afghanistan and Central Asia and building oil and natural gas pipelines have become a major international and regional objective. China,Russia,the United States,and the European Union have all tried to shape the new transport and energy corridors. Although progress on the ground has not matched the hype on the energy and transport corridors,last weeks launch of a trial run of the train link from Pakistan to Turkey through Iran may turn out to be consequential.
The train is moving 20 containers on its maiden journey from Islamabad,and will deliver 14 to Tehran and six to Istanbul. Its journey will end a fortnight after it was flagged off in Pakistan as an epic event. During the first trial run railway experts from the three countries are expected to assess the performance and problems along the 6500 km route.
As the second largest economy located at the cross roads of Asia,India could benefit from and boost the productivity of the new Asian transport corridors that aim to link Singapore and Vietnam with Western Europe through the inner regions of China,Russia and Eurasia.
India,however,will find itself excluded from the unfolding transport revolution in Asia,if its borders with Bangladesh and Pakistan remain big barriers to the movement of goods and people. Although both Dr. Manmohan Singh and his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee have talked of connecting South Asia within itself and with the rest of Asia,it remains a massive and unfinished agenda.
As it strives to lift the post-Partition barriers to overland road and rail links in the Subcontinent,India must offer Turkey,Iran and Pakistan on our Western frontiers full overland transit rights to Bangladesh,Burma and Southeast Asia and the same privilege to Dhaka and our ASEAN partners to move goods the other way.
Af-Pak review
Two important events in the next few days are likely to shape the political and military evolution of our north-western neighbourhood.
While the public focus is on the Afghan elections this week,the real driver of change could be the much anticipated review of American military strategy expected shortly after the elections.
The CENTCOM Chief Gen. David Petraeus,who turned the war around in Iraq and the new commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan,Gen. Stanley McChrystal are expected to bring about a real change in the conduct of the American war in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Besides their highly valued professional competence,the two generals are known for their ability to relate the battle field goals to the political dynamic in Washington. Maintaining the American public support and Congressional backing,they know,hold the key to winning the war in Afghanistan.
Buying Taliban
Money may not buy love; but it is supposed to win loyalty of a certain kind in Afghanistan. Washington is now said to be debating the more traditional way of winning friends and influencing people cash and carry. As recently as the 1990s,the Taliban came to power in Kabul not by winning too many battles but buying out the rival factions.
According to the latest issue of Time Magazine,if the US opted to pay all Taliban fighters $20 a day double what they get now – to stop fighting,that would amount to a $300,000 daily bill. This amount is said to be one-fifth of 1 per cent of the wars current cost to the US taxpayers of $133 million a day. The monthly cost of buying off the Taliban rank and file would be $9 million,less than the price of an Apache helicopter.
Although it cant win the war in Afghanistan by cash disbursal which in itself is a very complex process on the ground the US could generate some valuable time and space for itself if it moves away from hunting the Taliban to paying some of them.
The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies,Nanyang Technological University,Singapore.
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