On August 15, 2021, the Taliban, midwifed by Pakistan’s then Interior Minister Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar in 1994, majestically drove into Kabul after two decades of American presence in Afghanistan. In November 2001, the terror group was driven out of Kabul by the US-supported ethnic Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance led by Gen Fahim, then successor pro-tem to the assassinated Tajik leader Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Wars are not fought just with weapons, but by strategic minds. A new war has just begun. The great military strategist and philosopher Sun Tzu was Chinese. His The Art of War says, “All warfare is based on deception.”
THE PROPAGANDISTS OF ISLAMABAD
On August 17, a detailed WhatsApp message went out to Afghanistan watchers across the world, describing a huge inventory of fixed wing and rotary winged helicopters of the Afghan Air Force numbering 211 and outrageously valued by the author of that message at $20 billion. The message added that these were “gifted” by US President Joe Biden to the Taliban since the rapid US withdrawal was underway. The message and several follow-ups falsely stated that stealth coatings on the abandoned Black Hawk helicopters could be used to penetrate Indian air space for covert ops from Pakistan in support of terrorists. The aim of the message was to provoke the Indian right wing and media against the Americans. Detailed research revealed that 46 of these aircraft landed at Termez airport in neighbouring Uzbekistan.
A Special Report released on July 29, by the US Congress-created watchdog body called Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), stated that only 167 of the 211 aircraft were usable and 44 were grounded because of a lack of spares. Some fixed and rotary winged helicopters were flown to Farkhor airbase in Tajikistan which was being used by the former Northern Alliance since 1996. Other helicopters were flown to Astaneh in the Panjshir Valley. The balance aircraft numbering 121 minus the indeterminate ones flown to both Farkhor and Astaneh were rendered useless by the 17,000 US private contractors who maintained and flew these aircraft before they left Afghanistan in end July. A video recorded by Elisabeth Bellis on September 1, 2021, for Al Jazeera showed row upon row of immobilised military helicopters parked at Kabul Airport.
Subsequent WhatsApp messages tom-tommed the fact that Afghanistan has $3 trillion worth of rare earth and lithium deposits, which were allegedly never commercially exploited by the Americans and left for the Taliban to exploit. The US Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Survey for 2021 does not corroborate such claims. Afghanistan was neither listed as a producer nor as a source of any significant quantity of either of these minerals. So why was this disinformation campaign propagated in India?
The answer to this question lies in the answer to a related question. Who stands to gain if Indian public opinion turns against America? Both China and Pakistan benefit if Indian public opinion turns against America because the current Indo-US strategic and military alliance manifested in terms of the Quad is a rare combined threat to both Pakistan and China. Without the weight of India, the four-nation Quad comprising the US, Japan and Australia as the other three partners, is meaningless. China fears the combined naval might of the Quad nations as it makes the passage of 90 percent of China’s oil and gas carried in super tankers through the sea lanes of the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, highly vulnerable to interdiction by the Quad navies. Add Seabird, India’s naval base on the Malabar Coast at Karwar, the base at Port Blair, and US island base at Diego Garcia and the alliance will overwhelmingly shift the balance of power in the Indian Ocean, notwithstanding
China’s upcoming naval bases at Hambantota and Colombo in Sri Lanka. Pakistan fears an Indo-US alliance out of both envy and horror because it puts a curb on Pak-sponsored adventurism in Kashmir or elsewhere. So if both Pakistan and China stand to lose significantly in case India aligns with the US, why did the US pull out of Afghanistan leaving the opportunity for Pakistan and China to step in? Further, what do Pakistan and China stand to gain from controlling Afghanistan?
AMERICA’S DARK CRISIS
An important reason why the US pulled out of Afghanistan is rather complex and more than just strategic. It is linked to the current social circumstances in California, the home state of US Vice President Kamala Harris. A total of 803,807 US troops served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. Most of them served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan; 2,448 troops died in service and 20,722 were injured. A little over 200,000 of these troops suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. PTSD is known as the “Hallmark injury” arising from service in Afghanistan. The current US Army suicide rate is the highest in 26 years.
Over 1,000 Afghan veterans annually commit suicide; 100,000 attempt it. Most are repeated cases consumed by trauma and guilt. Eighteen percent of these veterans are unemployed; 25 percent of those who secured employment earned less than $21,840 per year. In the US, the average poverty threshold for a family of four is $20,614. Furthermore, 154,000 veterans out of 800,000 are homeless. The only relief from PTSD and different kinds of pain is opioid addiction; 22 percent of veterans with PTSD have registered substance use disorder. To illustrate an example of substance use disorder, there are six million cocaine addicts in the US. The street price of a 1gm line of cocaine is $120. This adds up to a price of $120 million per tonne. This market criminalises the users and the suppliers, and has eroded the fabric of American society.
The maximum number of veterans affected in one way or the other from their tours of duty in Afghanistan reside in California. Their suffering has deeply affected Harris. It is reported that she could not bear to see the sons of America suffer like this. Sources say that it is her resolve that swung President Biden to completely remove American boots on the ground from Afghanistan.
Successive war games conducted by the Pentagon revealed that the cost of taking the war into the heart of Pakistan to eliminate the Taliban and the ISI’s other terror groups, and neutralise Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal would cause unacceptably high collateral damage.
In all of these war games the conclusion was that China, Pakistan and North Korea would act as one unified force under one command. A global nuclear war would then become a reality. The Frankenstein monster of the Pakistani military combine that the US created to destroy the Soviet Union in the 1980s now has the ability to consume the US. Therefore, the choice was to either deploy at least 50,000 troops in Afghanistan on a permanent basis and see the impact of that tear apart the fabric of US society or to pull out from the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) and move to the Remote Edge of the Battle Area (REBA) and wait, watch and then counter attack. It is not rocket science to infer that the two main beneficiaries from the US withdrawal and the consequent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan are China and Pakistan. So what is up for grabs for these two nations?
CHINA SHIFTS INTO TOP GEAR
China is popularly known as “the world’s factory”. This vast factory badly needs copper. In 2008, the Metallurgical Corporation of China, along with another Chinese company, Jiangxi Copper, were awarded a 30-year contract worth $2.9 billion to extract, smelt and process raw copper at the Mes Aynak copper mine, believed to be the world’s second-largest with an estimated deposit of 5.5 million metric tonnes of high-quality copper ore. However, repeated and sustained attacks on both the personnel and equipment of these two Chinese companies by Uyghur separatists from neighbouring Xinjiang prevented work from proceeding. Fed up with being stuck in the morass and facing tremendous monetary losses, the Chinese secret service (Ministry of State Security) dispatched a crack assassination squad to Kabul in December 2020 to eliminate the Uyghur threat, according to intelligence sources.
Through their friends, the ISI, the Chinese hired the Haqqani Network to provide intel and logistical support for this operation. Unfortunately for them, the Afghan secret service (KHAD) got wind of this combined operation. On December 10, 2020, their agents arrested the Chinese operatives and Haqqani’s men. They were sent to Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi Prison where they remained incarcerated until they were released in mid-August this year after the Haqqanis took control of Kabul. Between August 2020 and August 2021, the price of copper increased by 45 percent from $6,438 to almost $10,000 per tonne. China will now dominate the global copper market.
Secondly, there is the case of “passage rights” through Afghanistan for China. The latter already operates a highway and rail link to Peshawar as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Chinese aim is to first extend this road and rail link to Kabul. Already, Route 606, also known as Delaram-Zaranj Highway or A71, is a 218 km road in the Nimruz province of Afghanistan connecting the Delaram District in Afghanistan to the south near the town of Zaranj, on the border with Iran. It was developed by the Border Roads Organisation of India.
From Delaram, there is direct connectivity to the Kandahar-Herat Highway. From Zaranj, the highway connects to Zabol in Iran and from there to another highway to the Port of Chabahar. By building a highway to Kabul, China gains direct access to the Iranian shore on the Persian Gulf and can even squeeze Pakistan if necessary. Beijing has the choice of creating a neighbourhood option to Gwadar port in Pakistan currently being used by the Chinese. This strategy of creating contiguous ports derives from the 15th century when the Chinese Admiral Zheng He developed both Cochin and Calicut as “tributary ports” and played one against the other. Incidentally, China and Iran signed a 25-year Strategic Security and Cooperation pact in March 2021. Chinese trucks and goods trains will be able to transport oil and gas from Chabahar by land to China providing an alternative land route if the US and India ever blockade the Straits of Hormuz.
President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and consequent outreach to that country would have reduced the US reliance on using Karachi as a port and Pakistan as a land route to Afghanistan in favour of Iran. This would have given the US greater tactical and strategic leverage over Pakistan. However, President Trump’s short-sighted rhetoric and obsessive anti-Obama policies closed this choice for the US and denied the enjoyment of collateral benefits for India.
The next stage for China would be to extend the road and rail link from Kabul westwards to Ashkhabad in Turkmenistan. The latter holds 33 per cent of the world’s proven natural gas reserves in the Dauletabad and Galkynysh gas fields. This would then enable China’s domination of Central Asia and the part of the Middle East that is not a part of the Arabian Peninsula. Add to this China’s alliance with Russia and Turkey which gives India plenty of reason to worry.
PAKISTAN IS THE HERO NO. 1
The Pakistan military and ISI are the prime beneficiaries, if not the driving forces behind the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s first advantage is security-related. Maharaja Ranjit Singh extended the limits of the Sikh Empire to Peshawar and then on to Kabul. From those days, the various Pashtun tribes began looking for an escape from Punjabi rule. While the British vacated Kabul after they conquered the Punjab in 1847, they retained Peshawar as an important army base. They created a tribal buffer of sorts in the North West Frontier Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
This effectively divided the Pashtun area. The division was manifested as the Durand Line which became the border between British India and Afghanistan. To make matters worse, the British installed a puppet king and attempted to bring the different ethnic nationalities namely the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks and Turkmens together as one political entity. This unnatural union lasted till 1972 when King Zahir Shah was deposed and ethnic nationalism came to the fore in Afghanistan.
The Pashtuns have never accepted the Durand Line and Pakistan has lived in fear of having its border pushed east to the eastern bank of the Indus River. By fathering the Taliban and making it the dominant force in Afghanistan, and further subjugating it to accept Punjabi hegemony, Islamabad has won a creditable victory which may sometime in the future, however, prove to be pyrrhic. The ISI created the Taliban, the Haqqanis, the Hizb-e-Wilayat under Anwar Firdausi and the regional franchise of the Islamic State called the IS Khorasan aka IS-K.
While all of these groups are Deobandis and spiritually follow the philosophy of the Deoband madrassa based in India, they are under the temporal authority of the ISI. This has ensured the backdoor annexation of Afghanistan into the embrace of Pakistan. By suppressing all overt vestiges of resurgent Pashtun nationalism, Pakistan has for now not only secured its borders but has in fact extended their remit. The joker in the pack is the Tajik resistance led by the former Vice President of Afghanistan, Amarullah Saleh, and the Sandhurst-educated Ahmad Massoud, the son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. The Pakistani Army is leading the assault against the Panjshir Valley, which is the traditional and impregnable home of the Tajiks.
The ISI has appointed Lt Gen Shahid Shamshad Mirza, CGS, Pakistan Army, as its Theatre Commander in Afghanistan. Two battalions of the Special Services Group, or SSG, under the command of Maj Gen Adil Rehmani have laid siege to the Panjshir Valley. Helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery have been supplied by 11 Corps based at Peshawar. Parts of the valley may have come under Taliban control, but even the Soviets could not fully establish control in spite of paradropping Spetsnaz. Ahmad Shah Massoud, until he was betrayed and killed by al Qaeda, inflicted heavy losses on them. Taliban’s strategy to pose as a legit government by seeking to join China’s CRPC has been discredited after its Pakistan-brokered government has as ministers, UN-designated terrorists with multimillion bounties on their heads, including the prime minister.
The second advantage for Pakistan is that it now has unimpeded control over both the cultivation and distribution of opium grown in Afghanistan. According to the United Nations, the conservative market value of Afghan opium in 2020 was over $30 billion on the basis of North American street prices of $50,000 per kg. All of this is now secure under ISI supervision and control. Going by past trends, the money will not only enrich the coterie of Pakistani generals but also pay for a whole range of ISI adventures soon to be launched against India.
INDIA NEEDS A DIVERSIFIED COUNTER PLAN
What are India’s options? When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited India in July, he is said to have shared US plans with its ally. What happened to Indian intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan and the consulates all over the country? Not just the White House, but India was also caught napping as usual. Experts who do not wish to be named say that India needs to do a Bangladesh on Afghanistan and create a separate Tajik Desh. India has access to the airbases at Farkhor and Ayni in Tajikistan and could use them to pump food, medicines, arms and ammunition to the Panjshir resistance to keep it alive and assist its transformation into an insurgency.
Secondly, the units of the former Afghan Army in Takhar, Badakhshan and Kunduz who mutinied against their Tajik officers and declared themselves with the Taliban could be persuaded by any means by India to re-defect to the National Resistance Front (NRF). This will open a corridor from the northern end of Panjshir to Tajikistan. But Indian Intelligence has not been up to the mark. Thirdly, India needs to get Gen Rashid Dostum, Ismail Khan and the leadership of the Hazaras into joining the NRF.
Fourthly, New Delhi needs to broker a rapprochement between Iran and the US and capitalise on the tactical benefits this understanding will provide. Fifthly, there is no need to talk to the Taliban. Talk to their masters in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Send ex-Army Punjabi interlocutors. Sixthly, India needs to strengthen its ties to the Quad and also consider joining NATO. Finally, India’s ultimate weapon lies in using the Deoband Madrassa to create a schism between Pakistan and its Taliban puppets. But this could entail a return to the divisive internal politics being pursued domestically in India for the last several years.
The US has left behind a new and lethal flashpoint in South Asia. Pakistan was the only serious anti-India player in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan until 2001. Now the temperature has shot up. With powerful global and domestic interests at play in the incestuous and internecine battleground that is Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, the Taliban, other terror groups, Iran and the presently passive Russia, India can do more than play Scrabble with diplomatic rhetoric.
India: The ‘coincidental’ visit of CIA chief William Burns and Russia’s NSA Nikolay Patrushev to Delhi could be the sign of a new strategic, though limited, alliance
PROS
✥ Indo-US relations have strengthened to counter a mutual enemy
✥ India heads the UN Sanctions Committee for a year and a half more. It could use sanctions as leverage against Kabul if terrorists use Afghan soil to attack India.
✥ Indian investments in the Chabahar port in Iran could give the Modi government limited leverage over Taliban, which for now enjoys a degree of Iranian support
CONS
✥ India can expect an upsurge in terror attacks through Afghan border
✥ Pakistan and ISI effectively control the Taliban
✥ Radical Indian Muslims could be emboldened and home-grown terror modules could make a comeback
✥ Aggressive Hindu nationalist groups will foment more communal tension before elections
✥ Pakistan military will have more bases to attack India in case of war
✥ UN reports have stated that Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are operating alongside the Taliban. The new regime will actively aid them to establish more training facilities and terror launch pads.
The Us: The biggest loser of global credibility and confidence of allies, its domestic compulsions propelled its hasty withdrawal
PROS
✥ None
CONS
✥ With al Qaeda, IS, Haqqanis and other groups united against the US, Afghanistan could become a launching pad again for terror attacks on Americans and America. A UN report says Taliban and al-Qaeda “remain closely aligned and show no indication of breaking ties.” China’s support to the Taliban in the region is a serious threat to the US which expects trouble for allies Taiwan and South Korea.
✥ Drug traffic to the US will increase exponentially since the American supervision is over
✥ Most Taliban ministers have UN bounties on their heads—a humiliation for Washington
✥ Taliban victory is a US foreign policy setback
Pakistan: The puppet master of the Taliban has scored a decisive goal against India but could soon be the target of the very terrorist government it created and supports
PROS
✥ Indian influence in Afghanistan has all but ended
✥ After brokering government formation, its agent is the prime minister
✥ More trade routes with other countries in the region will open up. Cross-border trade is already up by over 50 percent.
✥ A major Taliban leadership council (shura) is based and operates in Quetta, Pakistan
CONS
✥ Pakistan was not fully able to get its way in government formation. The Taliban want to keep Islamabad at arms length while enjoying its support based on Indophobia.
✥ The Deobandi Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), whose aim is to overthrow the Pakistani state, has regrouped in South and North Waziristan. Expect a growth and expansion of home-grown terror groups. The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) has launched several violent terror attacks in Pakistan.
✥ Pashtun fighters in TTP want to establish an Islamic Emirate in Pakistan
✥ The refugee influx across the frontier has begun
✥ Pariah status in the West has gone up a notch
Russia: With one foot in Kabul, its main concern is regional stability and an upcoming narcotic wave in its cities and ally nations
PROS
✥ The Taliban is a counter to US influence in the region
✥ Russia has been reportedly arming the Taliban. Moscow expects gratitude. Russia not pulling its ambassador in Kabul shows de facto recognition of the Taliban government.
CONS
✥ Instability on its borders with Central Asian allies
✥ The narcotic flow from Afghanistan to Moscow’s regionally allied countries will grow and also exacerbate Russia’s growing teenage drug problem
✥ A refugee exodus could re-occur if Afghanistan slides back into chaos
✥ Terrorist factions are operating in northern and eastern Afghanistan, including IS veterans from Syria who are fervently anti-Russia. The Russia NAS’s visit to New Delhi could be a sign of better
coordination against terror.
China: The biggest gainer whose economic plans to encircle, dominate and connect Central Asia got a fillip but is wary of an Islamist terror upsurge in Xinjiang
PROS
✥ Pakistan and the Taliban are China’s proxies in the region which use terror as an effective means to enforce its writ
✥ The Taliban’s request to join China’s CPEC shows it is seeking a long-term economic relationship with Beijing which China could protect against future invasions
✥ China wishes to extract Afghanistan’s mineral deposits
✥ It could fill the power vacuum created by regional perceptions about the American ability to deliver on its commitments
✥ After the US has cold-shouldered Pakistan, China has drawn Islamabad tighter in its web
CONS
✥ The various factions the Taliban support do not have a unified command. Terror groups can spill over the border to support Uighur Islamists and fuel the insurgency in Xinjiang.
✥ The Taliban can cause regional unrest which will threaten CPEC
✥ The Pakistani Taliban is targeting Chinese interests in Pakistan; a bomb attack in July killed nine Chinese nationals working on a CPEC hydropower project
India and Taliban: Terror Trauma
Sept 1996 The Taliban captures Kabul. India refuses to derecognise the Burhanuddin Rabbani government and recalls its diplomatic staff in October. External Affairs Minister IK Gujral expresses ‘shock’ and ‘outrage’ over the public execution of former President Najibullah.
Nov 1996 Moving to get the Taliban’s opponents back in power, India maintains its diplomatic pressure and invites Rabbani’s officials to attend NAM meeting in New Delhi in April 1997. The Taliban cautions India.
May 1997 India terms the Taliban’s victory over Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan’s internal affairs
Dec 1999 Indian Airlines flight IC-814 with 160 passengers on board is hijacked to Kandahar, demanding release of Masood Azhar and 35 other terrorists from Indian jails. The Taliban offer to play mediator between the hijackers and India.
2001 The Taliban’s diktat for Afghan Hindus to wear identification patches is criticised by India
After the overthrow of the Taliban, India establishes diplomatic relations with the newly established democratic government, provides aid and participates in the reconstruction efforts
July 2008 A suicide car bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul kills 58 people, including two top Indian officials, and injures over 140. An Afghan government probe later finds Pak ISI’s hand behind it which was working with al Qaida, the Taliban, the Haqqanis, and Pakistani groups such as LeT
2009 Qatar-based Egyptian cleric and a key patron of the Taliban, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, issues a fatwa to support jihad against India
June 2021 Months after the US announces a complete troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, India reportedly establishes informal contacts with the Taliban’s political leaders in Doha