All posts by Aanand Kharde

Afghanistan Antagonists

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Afghan President Hamid Karzai

India has begun maneuvering to fill the potential power vacuum in Afghanistan.

As an earlier post argued, the quickening U.S. disengagement from the Afghan conflict that President Obama signaled four months ago will inevitably spark an intense regional scrimmage for influence as that country’s neighbors scramble to fill the resulting vacuum. The last few weeks have witnessed India making its opening moves in this jockeying by signing a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan and by repairing strained relations with Iran.

The strategic partnership that India and Afghanistan sealed last week – the first of its kind that Kabul has entered into – will significantly enhance New Delhi’s profile in Afghanistan. The arrangement provides for increased cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, as well as for expanded Indian training and equipping of Afghan security forces. It opens the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth (which may be worth nearly $1 trillion) and newly-discovered hydrocarbon resources to Indian companies. New Delhi also pledged to work with Iran to develop trade routes to Afghanistan that bypass Pakistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who signed the agreement during a two-day trip to New Delhi – his second visit this year – praised India as a “steadfast friend and supporter” of his country, while Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised that India would “stand by the people of Afghanistan” even after the 2014 pull-out of U.S. and NATO forces.

Although Karzai insists that the partnership is not directed against Pakistani interests, it coincides with a serious deterioration of relations between Kabul and Islamabad. In the past week, the Afghan government has accused Pakistan of being behind the September 20th assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Karzai’s chief envoy to the fledgling peace negotiations with the Taliban, as well as a foiled plot to kill Karzai himself. Standing in New Delhi, Karzai termed Pakistan a “twin brother” to his own country, but that was hardly enough to disguise the fact that his government was openly spurning Pakistan’s professions of friendship in favor of a wide-ranging covenant with its arch-nemesis.

The partnership underscores that New Delhi, unlike Washington, has no exit strategy in Afghanistan. Since the start of the Afghan conflict ten years ago this month, India has emerged as the country’s largest regional donor. It has invested more than $1 billion in assistance, mainly in infrastructure and development projects, including constructing the new parliament building in Kabul. It has also undertaken small-scale training of the country’s police, army leadership and bureaucrats. Prime Minister Singh traveled to Kabul this past May seeking to broaden India’s engagement. There he unveiled a significant expansion of Indian aid, committing an additional $500 million over the next few years.

Besides shoring up the precarious Karzai government, New Delhi is also moving to patch up strategic ties with Tehran, whose interests in Afghanistan are roughly congruent. India has traditionally relied upon Iran to help blunt Pakistan’s influence in Central Asia and to serve as a bridge to trade and energy opportunities there.  Relations between New Delhi and Tehran have been strained for the past few years as India, at America’s behest, supported several international censures of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Prime Minister Singh turned down a number of invitations for a state visit to Tehran, and his government engaged in a convoluted exercise to avoid having Indian payments for crucial energy imports from Iran run afoul of U.S. sanctions against Tehran.

Yet the prospect of a geopolitical vacuum in Afghanistan is driving the two countries closer again. Singh met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly annual conclave in New York last month and pointedly accepted a renewed invitation to visit Tehran in the near future. The two countries have also established a new payments mechanism for Iranian oil exports and are setting up a joint commission to explore even closer economic and security links.

Pakistan has long considered Afghanistan to be its strategic backyard. With so much of its national security posture driven by an obsessive focus on India, Islamabad is bound to regard New Delhi’s growing involvement there as a grave provocation. Pakistan regularly charges (see here and here) that India is using its large diplomatic presence in Afghanistan to funnel covert support to separatists in the restive province of Baluchistan, and the new India-Afghanistan partnership will be taken as further confirmation that New Delhi is intent on encircling and dissecting the country. Likewise, the renewed coordination between New Delhi and Tehran will be interpreted as a return to the role they played a decade, when their support for the Northern Alliance helped frustrate the Taliban regime. (Indeed, there are increasing signs that the remnants of the old anti-Taliban movement are being reconstituted.)

Given the region’s geopolitical dynamics, India has strong strategic interests in ensuring that any government in Kabul is capable enough to be a bulwark against Pakistan. And so India’s maneuvers are predictable enough. Inevitable, too, is the blowback from Islamabad. The nascent thaw in bilateral relations that has developed in the wake of the mid-July visit to New Delhi by Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar is now in jeopardy. Also expect increased attacks by Pakistan-based jihadis targeting Indian interests in Afghanistan, like the bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 that killed 58 people, including the Indian defense attaché, and in October 2009 that left 17 Afghans dead.

US-Pakistan Relations: The More Things Change …

After the fusillade of accusations and denials between Washington and Islamabad, things remain pretty much the same as before.

Precisely a decade after the 9/11 attacks, US-Pakistani relations appeared for a moment to have come full circle. As the ruins of the World Trade Center smoldered, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage read Pakistan the riot act, threatening war if Islamabad did not turn against its Taliban allies in Afghanistan. In his memoirs, Pervez Musharraf describes how Armitage crudely warned that failure to comply with Washington’s demands meant that Pakistan would be bombed “back to the Stone Age.”

The uncharacteristically blunt charges leveled two weeks ago by Admiral Mike Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, do not reach the rhetorical standard set by Armitage. But they are startling enough given how assiduously he had worked to maintain good relations with the Pakistani military establishment, especially the powerful chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Mullen’s statement sparked a fierce war of words between Washington and Islamabad, prompting policy experts to debate whether their epically dysfunctional relationship was this time actually at the point of rupture, and leading some Pakistanis to conclude that the United States was on the warpath with their country.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mullen asserted that “the government of Pakistan and most especially the Pakistani army” along with its Inter-Services Intelligence agency have chosen “to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy” in an effort to exert strategic influence in Afghanistan. In particular, he charged that the Haqqani network, the brutal mafia enterprise/militia group that has emerged as the most formidable insurgent force in Afghanistan, operates as “a strategic arm” of ISI. He further stated that the network, acting “with ISI support,” was responsible for a series of recent high-profile attacks, including the June 28th assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, the September 10th truck bombing at a U.S. base in nearby Wardak province that wounded 77 NATO troops, and the September 13th day-long strike on the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul.

Of course, Mullen was only giving voice to what had long been obvious: Pakistan has been an egregiously duplicitous ally in Afghanistan, serving as a vital logistical conduit for U.S. forces fighting there all the while supporting the insurgent groups that have killed and maimed hundreds of these very same soldiers.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama took heat for saying that he would be prepared to order unilateral military action in Pakistan if that country failed to act on its own against Islamic militants. And just a week before Obama’s inauguration, Vice President-elect Joe Biden visited Pakistan and pointedly asked Kayani whether the two countries even “had the same enemy as we move forward.”

But once the administration took office, it has preferred to express its mounting frustrations with Islamabad in private. Just this past March, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton officially certified to Congress that Pakistan was showing a “sustained commitment” to fighting terrorism, a declaration that was necessary to release the next tranche of military aid to Islamabad.

Mullen, more than anyone else in Washington, labored mightily to implement this behind-the-scenes preference. He calls himself “Pakistan’s best friend,” and has met with Kayani dozens of times in recent years, including hosting in August 2008 an unusual summit abroad the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as it cruised the Indian Ocean. So, his public calling-out was a sharp departure from administration practice. And to reinforce his point, reports surfaced a few days after his testimony – almost certainly from Pentagon sources – alleging that Pakistani border guards had deliberately assaulted a group of U.S. military officers in May 2007 and that Kayani has personally assured the new NATO commander in Afghanistan that he would interdict the plot to attack the base in Wardak.

To be sure, Mullen did not issue a direct ultimatum in the way Armitage did, and it is very unlikely that one was delivered behind the scenes. Still, at the very least, his comments seem to portend a further ratcheting-up of U.S. military activities inside Pakistan. Speaking alongside Mullen at the Senate hearing, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta emphasized that “We’ve made clear that we are going to do everything we have to do to defend our forces.”

Indeed, the trend toward greater unilateral action has been visible for some time now.  Afghan militias, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, have carried out covert missions in Pakistan’s tribal areas for several years. The Raymond Davis affair earlier this year showed that the CIA, frustrated with the quality of information provided by the Pakistani security services, has started to forge its own intelligence-gathering networks in the country. And the lightning commando raid in Abbottabad, undertaken without Kayani’s coordination or even consent, was definitive confirmation of Washington’s increasing willingness to do without Pakistani cooperation and conduct military operations on its own.

Some predict that Washington will now resort to sending special-forces teams into the badlands of North Warizistan, where the Haqqani leadership is ensconced. But it is more likely that the Obama administration will extend its preferred strategy of drone warfare in dealing with militant groups that are resident on Pakistani territory. Until this point, Miranshah, the main town in North Warizistan, has been off limits to drone attacks due to the close proximity of Haqqani fighters with the civilian populace and Pakistani security forces. This restriction is likely to be relaxed.

Pressure is building on Capitol Hill for even further action. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, have called for placing the Haqqani network on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. This action, which is being considered by the administration, may help alleviate the clamor to also declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism, something that the White House is desperate to avoid since it would entail a complete collapse in relations. But blacklisting the Haqqani network will have little practical effect since the organization’s top leadership has already been designated as terrorists.

A growing chorus of legislators is also demanding drastic cuts in U.S. military and economic assistance to Pakistan and that funding be made specifically conditional on Islamabad’s reining in of the Haqqani clan. Senator James Risch (R-ID) speaks for many when he says “I think Americans are getting tired of it as far as shoveling money in there at people who just flat out don’t like us.” In the House of Representatives, Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX) calls Pakistan “disloyal, deceptive and a danger to the United States,” and is championing legislation that would freeze aid to the country.

But there are sharp limits on Washington’s room to maneuver, starting with the fact that the long supply lines running through Pakistan are pivotal to the on-going conduct of military operations in Afghanistan and that Islamabad is key to the conflict’s political endgame. The White House’s efforts this week to temper Mullen’s remarks (here and here) demonstrate the force of these constraints. A Pakistani newspaper has quoted a US diplomat in Islamabad as saying that “the worst is over” and that both countries continue to agree that a breakdown in ties “is not an option.” And the Obama administration has even reportedly reassured Pakistan that it would not send ground forces into North Warizistan.

Further complicating U.S. action is the dense fog surrounding Pakistan’s exact relationship with the legion of militants that operate from its territory. It’s clear that ISI relies on Haqqani operatives to safeguard Pakistani interests in Afghanistan. But there are major questions as to whether the group is simply a pliable proxy, essentially responsive to ISI’s command and control, or whether it is a fundamentally independent outfit that Islamabad occasionally supports but is also too afraid to confront directly. Mullen has alluded to these uncertainties and in an interview a few days ago Obama conceded that “the intelligence is not as clear as we might like in terms of what exactly that relationship is.”

With the Haqqani leadership close allies of Al Qaeda, the September 13th siege of the U.S. embassy and NATO headquarters could very well have been pay-back for bin Laden’s death, timed for the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and aided by Pakistani elements wanting to avenge the embarrassment of Abbottabad. But this action also runs counter to Islamabad’s efforts in recent months to mend relations with Washington. Pakistan has a habit of delivering up militant leaders – including, most famously, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad – in order to appease bouts of U.S. anger. A month after the Abbottabad raid, Ilyas Kashmiri, whom the United States last year labeled a “specially designated global terrorist,” was killed by a drone strike in South Warizistan. According to one media source, the targeting information may have come from the ISI.

Nor is it clear why the Pakistani military establishment would connive at such a brazen provocation, especially when the U.S. exit from Afghanistan is already in progress. President Obama has just reiterated his commitment to withdraw some 40,000 troops by next summer, and so time is clearly on Islamabad’s side in terms of shaping the future dispensation in Kabul. The date of the September 13th attacks is also problematic considering that General Kayani was scheduled to participate in a NATO conference in Spain just days afterwards. Pakistani officials must have known that Admiral Mullen, also in attendance, would use the occasion to confront Kayani in person (see also photo above).

Mullen’s public statements have elicited indignant denials and defiant warnings from Pakistan. But Islamabad’s options are sharply limited as well. Even if American forces are on the way out of Afghanistan, Washington is still in a strong position to make things difficult for the cash-strapped Pakistanis. Responding to Congressional demands, the Obama administration could withhold additional aid flows, like it did in July when it suspended $800 million in military assistance. It could also block the International Monetary Fund loans that Islamabad says it does not need this year but will almost certainly require in 2012.

Pakistan could always try to ward off U.S. coercion by threatening to cut off the routes that supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but this is a diminishing option as Washington increasingly expands its logistics network through Russia and Central Asia.  It would also mean hurting army-linked businesses that profit from the heavy traffic along these lines.

Pakistani elites talk bravely – and even bizarrely – about further cementing strategic links with China. Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani waxes lyrically about ties with Beijing being “higher than mountains, deeper than oceans, stronger than steel and sweeter than honey.” After the Abbottabad mission, Islamabad sought a formal military pact with Beijing and crowed about offering the Chinese navy use of the Gwadar port, only to be rebuffed on both counts. As if on cue, China’s public secretary minister, Meng Jianzhu, showed up in Islamabad earlier this week, with Rehman Malik, his Pakistani counterpart, declaring that “China is always there for us in the most difficult of times.” Tellingly however, the Chinese media was more focused on the inaugural session of the China-India economic dialogue than on Meng’s trip. Beijing’s concern about the activities in Xinjiang of Pakistan-based Islamic militants have dampened Islamabad’s appeal as a strategic partner, as has the news – announced just after Meng’s visit – that a Chinese mining company is abandoning what was to be Pakistan’s largest foreign-investment project due to security concerns.

And for all of Islamabad’s harsh rhetoric, it is significant that ISI’s chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, told a gathering of Pakistan’s politicians the other day that relations with Washington must not be allowed to breakdown.

So, after days of sound and fury in both capitals, where do things stand? Pretty much the same as before. Despite growing frustration and exasperation, the Obama administration has little choice but to carry on with its engagement of Pakistan. Indeed, for all of his exasperation, Mullen himself made this same point in his Senate testimony, noting that “despite deep personal disappointments in the decisions of the Pakistani military and government, I still believe that we must stay engaged.”

As he and others in Washington realize, the words that then-US ambassador in Islamabad Anne W. Patterson wrote in early 2009 still apply:

“The relationship is one of co-dependency we grudgingly admit – Pakistan knows the U.S. cannot afford to walk away; the U.S. knows Pakistan cannot survive without our support.”

Also true is the cliché that Gilani glibly employed last week to describe the American predicament: “They can’t live with us. They can’t live without us.” With the United States beginning its pull-out from Afghanistan, Islamabad will have every incentive to continue relying on its jihadi allies to fill the resulting vacuum, while Washington will remain dependent upon Pakistani influence to secure a minimally-acceptable political settlement.

Blowing hot and cold

As many news reports noted, the past week was significant just for the numbers of Indian ministers in the United States at a given point in time. However, the more did not necessarily make the merrier.

cdn.wn.comNo less than nine members of the Indian Council of Ministers were in the US, including the primus inter pares, PM Manmohan Singh. The PM was in the  U.S. to address a session of the UN General Assembly and  his speech was notable, as one commentator put it, for its reference to “old ideological positions and  old constitutencies,” meant to signal his “disappointment with the West.” The PM seemed to emphasise the point by having a bilateral meeting with an old foe of the West, Iranian President Ahmedinajad, an event described by another commentator as a virtual affront to the United States. What India has to be disappointed about is unclear, and whether the disappointment will be followed up with distancing remains to be seen. Whether that is the most appropriate strategy is also moot in the rapidly changing global scenario.

Many of the Ministers, from Commerce to Power, to Finance were in the U.S. to drum up investment for mega- infrastructure projects back home. There were the usual assortment of think tank reports and seminars that usually coincide with such ministerial visits, but increasingly, they offer only new wine in old bottles, reflecting the current stalemate, if not slump, in relations.  An address by the recently promoted Deputy Secretary William J Burns at the Brookings Institution was even titled “Is there a Future for the US-India Partnership?

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma made a valiant effort to break the logjam on the Totalization Agreement issue but came a cropper. This issue has been attacked from various angles, having earlier being piloted by the Minister of Overseas Indian Affairs. Mr Sharma made the point to his interlocutors that there was no reason not to sign an agreement with India pleading incompatibility between social security systems since India had signed totalisation agreements with many European countries  with which the U.S. had an agreement but this argument cut no ice.  This was not surprising since Under Secretary Blake had made it clear in his last read-out on US-India relations that the U.S. was in no mood to transfer over a billion dollars to India in the current economic mess it found itself in. There was also talk of progress made on a Bilateral Investment Treaty, even though it is almost as if when one side blows hot, the other side blows cold.

The other legs of the relationship, business and the diaspora, can, at best only play a supporting role, and are to an extent affected by the buffeting winds of the strategic relationship. The India-US CEOs forum also held its annual meeting in Washington this past week, but has increasingly less to show for being such a high-powered gathering. While India has a ready-made constituency in the U.S. in the form of the Indian Diaspora, Hillary Clinton’s public diplomacy initiatives are beginning to show results at least in India, with U.S. embassies and missions making all out efforts to engage with the average Indian through all the resources available from   social media to innovative meetups titled Charcha, Chai aur Coffee. The American Center in Delhi even provides a venue for Startup Saturday, a forum for young entrepreneurs to come together to share and learn from each other.

The blow hot, blow cold phase of the relationship into which we have entered seems set to continue into the foreseeable future with, as William Burns himself admitted in his speech, both governments distracted and pulled in different direction by a combination of domestic and external issues.

Red Lines and Reversed Roles

The South China Sea controversy demonstrates how Beijing’s actions will inevitably draw Washington and New Delhi closer together.

The respective security roles that the United States and India traditionally play in East Asia seemed to switch last week. By deciding not to supply Taiwan with the new fighter aircraft it has requested, the U.S. appeared to defer to China, which had cautioned that the sale was a “red line” that must not be crossed. In contrast, New Delhi’s determined sally into the South China Sea, in defiance of Beijing’s explicit warnings, exemplified the strategic assertion that the Obama administration has been urging on India. The dichotomy offers a glimpse of the shifting power dynamics now underway in Asia and, perhaps, a preview of what the regional security order might look like beyond the horizon.

america20xy.comThe U.S. decision to refurbish Taiwan’s aging F-16 fleet rather than provide it with more sophisticated versions of the aircraft is taken by some in Asia as the latest sign of China’s ascent and America’s subsidence in the western Pacific, an area long thought of as a U.S. lake. The Associated Press reported that Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin sees the decision primarily as a function of Beijing’s growing financial leverage vis-à-vis Washington. “It has a large debt and if China will try to apply pressure, the U.S. can end up in trouble,” he said. “The U.S. has to temper its relations with Taiwan for China.” The report also quoted a South Korean defense analyst as saying that some in that country have reached the conclusion that it would be better to bandwagon with China than continue to adhere to the decades-old security alliance with the United States.

By striking coincidence, a similar storyline was being replicated last week in another part of the world in which Washington has long exercised sway. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner put in an unprecedented appearance at a gathering of European finance officials called to address the region’s burgeoning debt crisis. His presence was intended to signal U.S. concern about the spillover potential of Europe’s financial woes. But some in the audience did not take kindly to his telling them what to do.  Both the Austrian and Belgian finance ministers tartly questioned how the Americans could presume to dispense advice when their own fiscal house is in such visible disarray. One media commentator observed the proceedings underscore that “in the wake of the debt-ceiling debacle, Geithner has lost a significant amount of international heft.” The Europeans, on the other, are much more interested these days in China’s views. With Beijing sitting on top of the world’s largest pile of foreign exchange, regional leaders have started to look to it as a potential financial savior.

India’s actions last week, in contrast, were the very definition of foreign policy steadfastness. On a visit to Vietnam, Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna announced that the overseas arm of India’s state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) would proceed with hydrocarbon exploration activities in the South China Sea, an energy-rich area that in claimed in almost its entirety by Beijing. China has been increasingly brusque in asserting its claim of “indisputable sovereignty” over the waters, which it last year elevated to a “core national interest.” The marker Krishna laid down comes two months after Beijing warned New Delhi against involving itself in the area and after an unusual incident between the INS Airavat, an amphibious warfare vessel, and the Chinese navy off the coast of Vietnam.

New Delhi’s temerity sparked a passionate reaction in the China Times, a nationalist tabloid affiliated with the Communist Party. It lashed out in a lead editorial that India was engaged in “a serious political provocation” that constitutes a major challenge to China’s national resolve. It urged the Chinese leadership to use “every means possible” to reverse Indian actions. And in what seemed to be a retaliatory move, Beijing quickly announced that it would expand seabed explorations in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

Media commentary in India saw things differently. A Times of India editorial averred that “India has done well to hold its ground” and termed the ONGC move as a befitting response to the infrastructure projects China is conducting in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In a similar vein, Harsh V. Pant, a well-known foreign policy expert, noted that if “China wants to expand its presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, New Delhi’s thinking goes, India can do the same thing in East Asia.” And M.K. Bhadrakumar, a former Indian diplomat, called India’s actions “a historic move,” arguing that “India’s ‘Look East’ policy acquires swagger.  The Sino-Indian geostrategic rivalry is not going to be the same again.”

Observing the train of events, Time magazine’s “Global Spin” blog asked “Is This How Wars Start?” Of course, a booming bilateral economic relationship gives New Delhi and Beijing strong reason to moderate impulses toward outright military conflict. But as both countries continue simultaneously to rise in power and prestige, dynamics of competition and one-upmanship will inevitability deepen. This pattern is already evident in their Himalayan border area, in Burma and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean region and as far afield as Africa. And as last week’s events demonstrate, the South China Sea is now emerging as a new arena for strategic rivalry.

Pundits in Washington who doubt the prospects for the United States and India conjoining in a coalition directed against China should take note. The meteoric rise of Beijing’s power and the assertiveness in which it is exercised will ineluctably draw Washington and New Delhi even closer together. As a former U.S. official once predicted, “we don’t need to talk about the containment of China. It will take care of itself as India rises.”

Ambassador Blues

Maneuvers surrounding the appointment of a new U.S. ambassador in New Delhi cast light on Washington’s outlook on India.

There are two ways to look at the quixotic, widely derided campaign by Brad Sherman, a Democratic member of the U.S. Congress from the Los Angeles area, to have Cruz Bustamante, a former lieutenant governor of California, appointed the next U.S. ambassador in New Delhi. Both approaches capture a slice of reality and yet are mutually contradictory. Taken together, however, they form a good picture of Washington’s current outlook on India.

Continue reading Ambassador Blues