US-Afghan pact at impasse?

The Indian Ocean region will now inherit the tensions and contradictions of the new cold war

by John Holmes
Every cloud has a silver lining. When it seemed that the US-Afghan pact is all but wrapped up on Washington’s terms and nothing can now stop its signing before the end of the year — the Obama administration has even begun briefing lawmakers on Capitol Hill regarding the provisions of the pact — a glitch seems to pop up from nowhere. 

The BBC has flagged, here, that the deal is “at impasse” ahead of the Loya Jirga meeting in Kabul next week because of disagreement over a key provision concerning the prerogative of the US forces’ operational freedom to enter Afghan homes. 

Kabul apparently feels “very strongly about this,” while the American side wants to continue the practice of entering Afghan properties. The quarrel may seem a storm in a tea cup but it isn’t really, since the Afghan opinion strongly militates against the manner in which foreigners invaded the privacy of their homes. 

Yet, this could also be a clever PR ploy by President Hamid Karzai after having caved in to meet the American demands on the key provisions of the pact. Karzai is brilliant in grandstanding and he probably hopes to present himself as an honest broker in front of the 3000 tribal leaders who assemble for the jirga in Kabul. 

He’s reason to be nervous that he is ramming down the throat of the Afghan nation a deal that formalises the open-ended foreign occupation of his country — and, there are already bad omens. Having said that, it is tempting to hope that the BBC report is for real and the US-Afghan difference would prove a deal-breaker. 

I held the view consistently since 2001 that the US invasion of Afghanistan was doomed to fail — although the NDA government thought otherwise. And I hold the view that the establishment of the US military bases in Afghanistan will be an unmitigated disaster for regional security and stability. I cite three reasons. 

First, the long term occupation of their country will be deeply resented by the Afghans. Karzai is an American puppet and is nobody to barter away his country’s independence and sovereignty. 

Put differently, we are about to see the planting of the germane seeds of a new Afghan insurgency. If you’re in any doubt, try to get hold of Washington Post contributing editor Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s brilliant book Little America: The War within the War for Afghanistan — by far the best book I’ve read on the Afghan war. 

Second, although the self-styled regional powers — Russia, China, Iran, India and Pakistan — have all fallen silent for reasons of expediency, the fact remains that the US-NATO military presence in Afghanistan becomes part of the Obama administration’s rebalance strategy. 

Let there be no doubt that like the Asia-Pacific already, our region will also get destabilized once the big-power rivalries begin over the deployment of the US missile defence system in Afghanistan, which is a matter of time, and the mad scramble for ‘influence’ in Central Asia ensues — and, of course, the militarization of the entire region that will inevitably happen in the downstream. 

In sum, if ‘jihadism’ was the legacy of the US’ last great involvement in the Hindu Kush in the 1980s, the Indian Ocean region will now inherit the tensions and contradictions of the new cold war. Interestingly, the US has just decided not to buy anymore Russian helicopters for the use of the Afghan armed forces.  

Third, the situation in Pakistan will never stabilize as long as the American troop presence continues in Afghanistan. It cannot be overlooked that there is a disconnect here between the Pakistani political elites and the public opinion. The Pakistani elites cannot do without the American partnership but the vast majority of the public opinion detests anything and everything about America. 

On the other hand, the military bases in Afghanistan become unsustainable without full access to the Pakistani transit routes (which the USAID is rehabilitating at the moment with American funding) and Islamabad fervently hopes that there is nothing like free lunch. 

But in this case, it also means that the US would have no option but to take an excessive interest in the power structure in Pakistan, as has been the tragic history since the early 1950s — with predictable results for the security in the South Asian region as well as for Pakistan’s jaundiced political economy.  

It’s a horrible mistake that India is keeping its head below the parapet on the issue of the US-NATO military bases coming up in Afghanistan. Conceivably, the Mandarins are chuckling with pleasure, ‘After all, this is about China’s containment, isn’t it?’ What naivety to subsist on dreams of ‘absolute security’!