From Astana to Amritsar

On April 26, Kazakhstan hosted the third Ministerial Conference of neighbours and ‘near-neighbours’ of Afghanistan (somewhat awkwardly designated as the ‘Heart of Asia’ countries) within the framework of the so-called Istanbul Process which was launched at a meeting of the partner countries in the Turkish metropolis in November 2011.

The avowed purpose of this initiative was to contribute to the long-term stability and prosperity of Afghanistan by promoting regional cooperation and building confidence between Afghanistan and its neighbours. The concept of ‘neighbourhood’ was expanded to include India, an aspiring power that does not enjoy territorial contiguity or proximity with Afghanistan but considers that country to be part of its sphere of influence.

While the Istanbul conference gave the formal ownership of the ‘Heart of Asia’ project to the 14 partner countries of the region, it is no secret that Washington was the real author of the proposal and in particular of the lead role assigned in it to India. The proposal had in fact been outlined a few months earlier by Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, in a ground-breaking speech on Washington’s vision of Indo-US partnership in the 21st century. In this speech, delivered in July 2011 in the Indian city of Madras, she called for an expanded Indian role in Asia-Pacific and in south and central Asia and in effect repeated the Bush administration’s pledge to “make India a global power”.

Clinton won the hearts of India’s armchair strategists by declaring that like the US, India also looked both east and west. The US, she said, not only supported India’s Look East policy but encouraged it also to ‘engage East and act East’ and regarded India as a ‘steward’, with the US, of the waterways from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean.

Clinton was even more explicit about Delhi’s role in south and central Asia, saying that India’s ‘leadership’ in these two regions was ‘critically important’. She virtually gave India a policeman’s role in the smaller countries of South Asia. For Afghanistan and Central Asia, she outlined a vision (the ‘new Silk Road’) of a network of highways, railways and energy infrastructure such as the TAPI pipeline, with freedom of transit, to integrate the economies of south and central Asia under India’s leadership.

She also called for an expansion of the US-backed Pakistan-Afghanistan transit trade agreement signed in October 2010 to include ‘two-way trade’ into Central Asia and India, in other words for opening up of Pakistan’s land routes to India for giving it access to Central Asia and Afghanistan.

The ‘new Silk Road’ project of course remains the US policy after Clinton quit as secretary of state at the beginning of the year and is an important part of the US plan to give India ‘leadership’ in south and central Asia. In a series of public speeches and media interviews last month, Robert Blake, the US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, pushed India to ‘look both East and West’, play a leadership role, regionally as well as globally, and assume its ‘global responsibilities’.

With US support, India has been taking a very active part in the Heart of Asia forum as a way to extend its influence to Central Asia. The Istanbul meeting identified more than 40 steps that could be taken to build confidence in the region.

The first follow-up ministerial meeting held in Kabul in June 2012 prioritised six areas: counter-terrorism; counter-narcotics; disaster management; trade, commercial and investment opportunities; regional infrastructure; and education. India has been given chairmanship of the working group for trade, commerce and investment which focuses on the important area of commercial and business relations.

Even without US prodding, India has always regarded itself as the ‘leader’ – more accurately the hegemon – of South Asia and does not need any particular encouragement from Washington. But there is a minor glitch: Pakistan has never accepted these pretensions and, having achieved nuclear parity, is even less likely to do so in future.

In Central Asia as well, the US push for Indian ‘leadership’ faces some obstacles. A major impediment is that India is cut off by Pakistan from the land-locked countries of the region, while Russia and China share common borders with it. Washington has therefore made no secret of the fact that opening up the Pakistani route for India is a major US priority.

In a speech in the Kazakh capital a fortnight ago, Blake said that the New Silk Road vision is not just about Afghanistan. It is “about building opportunities throughout the region from Astana to Amritsar and beyond”. These words make it clear that providing ‘opportunities’ to India in Central Asia is one of the main strategic objectives of the various US diplomatic initiatives for the region. In the new great game that is unfolding in Central Asia, the US and India are evidently acting in tandem.

There are very good reasons why Pakistan should not be part of any such schemes. Ever since independence, India has relentlessly been pursuing the goal of strategic encirclement of Pakistan. For this purpose, it has built up a heavy presence in Afghanistan and has been using the country as a base for the export of subversion and terrorism to Pakistan. Unless India kicks this habit – and there are no signs that it is inclined to do so – it would be folly for Pakistan to provide India with the opportunity for further mischief.

The US is fully aware of the Indian shenanigans but has chosen to close its eyes to them. As Chuck Hagel, now US defence secretary, said in a speech in 2011 more than a year before taking up his current post, India has always used assistance to Afghanistan as a ‘second front’ in its confrontation with Pakistan. “India”, he said further, “has over the years financed problems for Pakistan on that side of the border. And you can carry that into many dimensions.” As defence secretary, Hagel has probably gained some further insights into India’s covert and not so covert machinations against Pakistan from Afghan soil but now he has to keep silent on the issue.

Pakistan has naturally been compelled to take steps to counter the Indian moves in Afghanistan, but with mixed results. In his speech at the Almaty meeting last month, the Indian foreign minister attempted indirectly to put the blame for Afghanistan’s problems on Pakistan. Afghanistan, he said, will experience lasting peace only if short-sighted perceptions of competition and ‘strategic depth’ are replaced by collaboration and economic investment in Afghanistan by countries of the region.

The phrase ‘strategic depth’ was popularised some time back by a few of our retired generals but it has since been officially discarded. Nevertheless, the term continues to provide a tempting target for Indian officials and commentators trying to cover up their own attempts to use Afghan soil to destabilise Pakistan.

For more unbiased observers, the threat to Afghanistan’s stability and prosperity actually comes from India’s treatment of Afghanistan as its strategic backyard from which to threaten Pakistan’s stability. India is very unlikely to give up this policy because for New Delhi Pakistan’s instability is a much higher priority than Afghanistan’s stability. But it is to be hoped that the Afghan leadership will see through the Indian game and stop acting as its cat’s paw.

Till that happens, Pakistan must stand firm in keeping its transit routes ‘from Astana to Amritsar’ shut for Indian goods. But we cannot be very sure that our political leadership has the capacity to stand up to the US pressure. During its five years in power, the PPP-led government often pretended to be defying US demands in public while quietly conceding them in private. A government led by the PML-N might be somewhat different. The party’s manifesto already makes a commitment to give India overland access to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Iran.

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service. Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com