Opinion The great game folio

A day before he arrived in Washington for a fence-mending visit this week,news leaks from the White House said that President Obama has ordered a new set of new rules in the engagement with Karzai. Underlining the new approach,The Washington Post ran an op-ed piece signed by Karzai. As it receives Karzai,who has gone to Washington with 12 of his senior cabinet ministers,the Obama administration is signalling its commitment to a comprehensive and expansive dialogue with Kabul.

Washington’s course correction was long overdue,as the Democrats who swept into power at the turn of 2009 had badly underestimated the survival skills of Afghan leaders and their capacity to surprise their overbearing benefactors.

It is one thing for Obama to make nice to Karzai; it is entirely another to find ways to bridge the growing distance between Washington and Kabul. Beyond the smiles and public embrace of Karzai,news reports from Washington say Obama is expected to be quite tough in his demands that the Afghan president get his act together and address US concerns on corruption and governance.

If Obama is consumed by the belief that good governance is the key to winning the war in Afghanistan,Karzai is quite concerned that Washington will cut and run from Kabul,sooner than later. The two leaders are also deeply divided over the timing and principles that must guide the engagement with the Taliban leadership and its local leaders.

The disagreements between Washington and Kabul are even sharper on the role of Pakistan in the construction of a durable order in and around Afghanistan.

Whether they begin to narrow their differences or merely paper them over this week,both Obama and Karzai know that a new phase in the political evolution of Afghanistan is at hand and that the current status quo can’t hold for much longer. Washington’s decisions taken this week after the meeting with Karzai are bound to have immediate consequences for all those with stakes in the future of Afghanistan — including the Taliban,Pakistan and India.

Paying Pindi

As links between the suspected Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and extremist groups in Pakistan come to light,there are expectations in Delhi that the Obama administration might begin to review its current dalliance with Islamabad and finally crack down hard on the sources of international terrorism and their supporters in Pakistan.

Some of Washington’s warnings to Pakistan — especially from the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — have got much play in India. Sceptics,however,would dismiss any suggestion of a fundamental change in Obama’s Pakistan policy. They insist that the bigger the trouble with Pakistan,the larger will be the cheque that Washington will write for the Pakistan army headquartered in Rawalpindi.

The cynics have a point. For six decades,the relationship between Washington and Rawalpindi has been simple and transactional. (West) Pakistan occupies a strategic space and its army was for geopolitical hire. The bigger the perceived American need,higher the cost — economic and political — of hiring Pindi’s services. This paradigm could surely change some day when the US concludes the arrangement is not working.

The Times Square plot has by no means brought us closer to that moment. In the next few weeks,we will know how many boxes the Obama administration might check in the long list of deliverables that Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani had left behind when he was in Washington leading Pakistan’s strategic dialogue with the United States.

Wooing Tehran

After Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao’s visit to Tehran in February,it is now the turn of the External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna who is heading to Iran this week to participate in yet another meeting of third world leaders.

No one is holding their breath to see what the G-15,long presumed dead until the Islamic Republic chose to revive it,might do. Krishna,however,will get a chance to intensify Delhi’s current political outreach to Tehran.

As Washington’s embrace of Pindi gets tighter,Delhi’s insurance policy now seems to include the search for a stronger partnership with Tehran. What is not clear at this stage is how far India and Iran can satisfy each other’s concerns without affecting their political equities elsewhere.

raja.mohan@expressindia.com