As President Obama is getting ready for a midcourse correction to his AfPak policy, he and his advisors must come to grips with the very basic features of the policy that has brought a new nightmare to the Americans. The policy has come to resemble nothing but a policy to blindly appease Pakistan regardless of its consequences in Afghanistan and India. The al-Qaeda and Taliban Islamist insurgents have had no problem to mount attacks on foreign troops in Afghanistan from their safe hideouts in Northern Pakistan.
There are two aspects of AfPak policy that are being spoken in muffled tones in Washington at the moment but in due course may well become louder and louder: ‘Press India to reduce its presence in Afghanistan in deference to Pakistan’s concerns. No questions are being raised whether the Pak concerns are illogical or contrived. The second is the unrestricted and ever increasing flow of high-tech military equipment and cash flow to Pakistan, disproportionate to its legitimate requirements in the so-called fight against terror.
The new US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal in a 66-page report to Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, is believed to have said, if India’s ‘rising influence’ in Afghanistan is not checked it would invite ‘counter-measures’ (euphemism for stepped up Pakistani acts of terrorism in India) from Pakistan. What the American General is saying is that the US Afghan strategy will collapse if India’s ‘influence’ is not checked.
The General is unable to explain his theory with any conviction. He acknowledges that India’s more than $1 billion financial and development aid to Afghanistan has been for the good of that country. Afghanistan needs many more billions in aid if the aim is to rebuild the nation. The Afghans have often bemoaned the lack of adequate aid. Even the amounts pledged by donors in the West have not materialised.
Asking India to curtail its ‘activities’ is to go against the avowed objectives in Afghanistan. Stranger is the American reason for seeking restricted Indian aid flow to Afghanistan: the so-called Pakistani concerns. Pakistan’s protest against India’s aid programme is petty-minded. It reflects a traditional anti-India mindset and fear over the loss of its foothold in the land mass that is its gate-way to Central Asia. Instead of bemoaning the soaring India’s popularity, Pakistan should out do, if not match, the Indian effort in rebuilding the war ravaged country. This is easier said than done. Pakistan is itself dependent heavily on foreign alms. Should Afghanistan be made to see its development undermined and made to suffer because it receives generous help from India, the country Pakistanis like to address as ‘the enemy?’
It is often overlooked that despite being today the largest recipient of American aid, both in terms of cash and military equipment, Pakistan remains a begging bowl case. The Americans have been too indulgent towards the Pakistanis by not asking them why they need constant doses of financial, military and development aid that include help for building such basic infrastructure as roads, schools and hospitals. Does Pakistan need more money in aid than Afghanistan or Iraq, for that matter?
Interestingly, despite all the money and materials that the US sends to Pakistan, there is widespread dislike for the US in that country? This should be reason enough for President Obama to worry. Yet, the Americans show an inexplicable unconcern to why they have become the hate objects in the land they befriend the most in the Muslim world.
The White House, State Department and the Pentagon, not necessarily in that order though, have turned a cold eye to the stark fact that much of the aid money goes into lining the pockets of members of the Pakistan establishment and some of it goes into buying latest equipment to fight India. Arms received to fight terror are rejigged to carry out aggressive designs against India. Not even a noteverbale that little money reaches the people.
President Obama may like to follow the three -monkey act- not to see, not to speak and not hear vis-à-vis the indiscretions and abuses by Pakistan. He will have to confront the question that is being heard in Kabul loudly - why the Americans, pretending to be keen to upgrade ties with India, go on bolstering Pakistan’s fighting capacity against India and then have the temerity to tell India not to get ‘too friendly’ with Afghanistan. The cornerstone of the AfPak policy is pleasing Pakistan at all costs while devising ways to rebuild Afghanistan, a country destroyed in the 1990s by forces created by Pakistan?
Unless the inherent contradiction is corrected, the one-eyed Afghan Lord of Terrorism, Mullah Omar, has every reason to celebrate smug with the thought that the ‘colonial troops’ are once again heading for ‘unequivocal defeat’ in Afghanistan. And Gen Stanley McChrystal has reasons to worry that the war in Afghanistan could be lost with or without commitment of additional troops for Kabul duty.
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