Opinion Unquiet on the western front
The case for India to send troops to Afghanistan....
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The British, scholar-diplomat K.M. Panikkar noted,did not wait for enemies to penetrate as far as Panipat before taking countermeasures as the Indian rulers of the Gangetic Valley had been accustomed to do…The emergence of a powerful state in the Kabul area,whether in the time of Kanishka,Mahmud of Ghazni or Ahmed Shah Durrani,profoundly influenced events within India; and yet,so far as the great states of the India-Gangetic Valley were concerned,they continued to remain ignorant of these developments and therefore,were unable to take the necessary steps to safeguard their independence.
Had he lived through the 1990s,Panikkar would most certainly have added Mullah Omar to that list. It was not a coincidence that the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir peaked when Afghanistan was under Taliban rule: it enabled the Pakistani military-jihadi complex to direct its resources against India. If infiltration and violence fell in Kashmir over the last few years it was as much due to the intensification of the conflict in Afghanistan as it was to international pressure on General Pervez Musharraf. If the United States withdraws from the region,leaving Kabul to the Taliban and without dismantling the military-jihadi complex,there is a risk that India will once again become the primary target.
A direct military retaliation against Pakistan in response to a future terrorist attack is risky and limited in scope. It is also politically unsound,because nothing serves the interests of the military-jihadi complex more than an old-fashioned war with India. Does this mean India has no option but to patiently wait for the day the Pakistani people overthrow their military overlords and somehow demobilise the hundreds of thousands of practically uneducated,radicalised and violent militants?
Well,it has. It involves ensuring that the US troops dismantle the military-jihadi complex,or at least severely damage it,before they withdraw from the region. India can shape this outcome by sending its own troops to areas in western and northern Afghanistan,so that the bulk of the US military capacity in Afghanistan can focus on the regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The government of President Hamid Karzai and members of the erstwhile Northern Alliance have long argued for India to scale up its involvement in Afghanistan. Iran and Russia,both of whom share an interest in keeping the Taliban out of power,are far more likely to be comfortable and co-operative with Indian troops in Afghanistans western and northern provinces than with US troops. Over time,a co-operative arrangement between India,Iran and Russia could form the bedrock of a regional solution to a stable Afghanistan.
Unfortunately,the very mention of an overseas military deployment runs into a dogmatic wall of domestic opposition. First,the bad experience of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s is brought up as if that episode should cause India to for forever foreswear the use of its armed forces beyond its borders. Apart from the significant differences in context,the Indian army has accumulated two decades of counter-insurgency experience in Kashmir and elsewhere that makes it a qualitatively different force from what it was before the Sri Lankan intervention.
Second,it is argued that sending Indian troops to Afghanistan will be seen as anti-Muslim. On the contrary,it is ordinary Afghans,a vast majority of who are Muslims,who will be the biggest beneficiaries of an Indian intervention. How can supporting the legitimate government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan be anti-Muslim? The idea that fighting the Taliban is a war against Islam is a misleading canard that only benefits the likes of Osama bin Laden and the Pakistani military-jihadi complex.
Third,it is not true that the Afghan people are uniformly hostile to foreign troops as it is frequently made out to be. Western troops were generally welcomed as deliverers when they expelled the Taliban regime in 2002,and recent surveys indicate that a majority of the Afghan people still support their presence. The notion that Afghans resent all foreigners is borne out of colonial romance and modern ignorance ground realities suggest that Afghans seek security and good governance,like anyone else in their situation.
But can India afford to station troops abroad? Some critics of the idea estimate that it costs Rs 1 crore a day to maintain a brigade in Afghanistan. Lets put this in context: last year,the defence ministry returned Rs 7000 crore of its budget due to its inability to spend it enough for 19 brigades. We cite this to suggest that financial considerations do not rule out the option of foreign troop deployments.
India must continue providing long-term development assistance. India must ramp up training Afghan security forces. But successes from these will be ephemeral unless India deploys combat troops to Afghanistan. As the nuclear deal has shown,the Indian electorate does reward those willing to take risks in pursuit of the national interest. As US troops mobilise for a decisive year in Afghanistan,India has a unique opportunity to shape the future of the Hindu Kush and,in doing so,open the doors to peace in the subcontinent.
The writers work at Pragati The Indian National Interest Review,a publication on strategic affairs,public policy and governance
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