Across Afghanistan, hundreds of Indian workers and engineers are repairing disintegrated roads and constructing highways. India is building the country's new parliament building. It is running medical missions and training Afghan police officers, diplomats and civil servants, part of a hearts-and-minds offensive to strengthen old ties in a rough neighborhood.
Like archrival Pakistan, India sees Afghanistan as a strategic prize, but its efforts to establish a big footprint there have been set back twice in 15 months by suicide bombings aimed at its widening presence.
In some ways, India and Pakistan have been waging a quiet battle inside Afghanistan, and experts say the latest attack, on Thursday outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, is bound to intensify that rivalry.
Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has long had deep ties with elements inside Afghanistan, but large numbers of Indian intelligence operatives are also in Afghanistan to counter Pakistan's influence and to act as a check on Taliban militants.
Intelligence agencies blame the Inter-Services Intelligence, better known as the ISI, for a 2008 blast at the Indian Embassy that killed 58 people, including the defense attache. Pakistan denied the assertions.
India's active opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan dates to the 1990s, when the New Delhi government joined Iran and Russia in supporting the Northern Alliance against the Islamist movement. Now, India is spending $1.2 billion in health-care, food and infrastructure aid to Afghanistan, its largest foreign assistance program.
The bombing comes as hostilities between India and Pakistan have intensified after a November terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people and brought India's financial capital to a three-day standstill. Indian authorities said all 10 attackers were from Pakistan. The Mumbai siege rolled back at least five years of diplomatic progress between the two countries.
The Kabul embassy blast, which left 17 dead, came a day after Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that relations between India and Pakistan were thawing and that they could be getting ready to resume peace talks. A Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility for the attack, saying the embassy was the intended target. India has not yet assigned blame.
Experts say there is a growing rift between Pakistan's civilian government and its military, and between the military and the ISI. Those apparent rifts are not lost on Indian diplomats, who realize the limits of Pakistan's government to see through diplomatic promises.
Many in India note that Pakistan's government has been seeking some cooperation with New Delhi, leaving Pakistan's military services and the ISI outside of that diplomacy.
India and Afghanistan appear to be deepening their ties. More than 4,000 Indians work in Afghanistan. There are six Indian consulates there. The main immigration office in New Delhi has a special section for Afghans seeking residency or asylum in India. By helping rebuild Afghanistan, India sees itself as promoting regional stability as well as balancing Pakistan's influence in Kabul.
In recent years, Pakistan's government has been increasingly wary of India's influence in Afghanistan, including New Delhi's close ties to the government of President Hamid Karzai, who studied in India, as did most of Afghanistan's leadership.
An Indian air base in Tajikistan, the first one outside the country, also has increased Pakistan's worries about India's growing strategic reach in the region. The air base is a transit point for security forces and material to Afghanistan.
In the past few years, India has sent mountain-trained paramilitary forces to protect its workers in Afghanistan from kidnappings and attacks. About 500 Indian police officers are deployed there.
India has opened consulates in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif; it also reopened two in Jalalabad and Kandahar that had been shut since 1979. In January, India completed the Zaranj-Delaram highway near the Iranian border. In May, an Indian-made power transmission line brought 24-hour electricity to Kabul, the capital.
The bombings against the Indian Embassy in Kabul will be logged in the Indian mind beside the Mumbai attacks. All this is accumulating in the Indian mind and could lead to some kind of eventual retaliation.
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Monday, October 12
Way out from Af-Pak Strategy
THE KEY to getting out of Afghanistan without turning Kabul over to the Taliban lies in replacing the failed US “Af-Pak’’ strategy with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China - all opposed to a Taliban takeover - join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.
The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
Read more!
The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.
Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.
Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.
Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.
“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’
To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:
First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.
Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.
Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.
A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.
If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.
Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy
Read more!
Thursday, October 8
The Baltic Blues
The patient emerges from intensive care, hurls the medicine at the doctors and bites his blood donor. That may be an unfair characterisation of the recent news from crisis-stricken Latvia, but it is pretty much how outsiders see it. The prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, is refusing to make the spending cuts mandated by international lenders and has floated a new law that would partially expropriate foreign banks’ loan books.
It would be worrying enough if the European Union’s weakest economy defaults, devalues or implodes. But what scares outsiders more is the effect of Latvia’s latest wobble on other ex-communist economies, which until this week seemed to be surviving the financial crisis with less trouble than some had feared.
In recent weeks, the news from Latvia had seemed mildly encouraging, after a year during which the country has been kept afloat thanks to an $11.1 billion international bail-out. The breakneck decline has slowed: the economy is expected to contract by 17.5% this year, but by only 3% in 2010 and to return to growth in 2011, according to a forecast by SEB, a Swedish bank (and big lender to Latvia). The current account, which showed a yawning deficit of 1.42 billion lats ($3 billion) in the first seven months of last year has been transformed to show a 581m lats surplus in the same period of 2009.
The main outstanding issue is next year’s budget deficit. International lenders had softened the target to a mere 8.5% of GDP; the government still had to push through spending cuts of 500m lats to meet this.
But this week Mr Dombrovskis startled outsiders by saying that cuts of only 225m lats would be necessary. He has pencilled in a further 100m lats in better tax revenues—counting, apparently, on a faster economic recovery than anyone expects. The hesitation has brought stern warnings. Sweden’s finance minister, Anders Borg, said outsiders’ patience was “limited”—his country is due to provide SKr10 billion ($1.45 billion) in a loan tranche in early 2010. The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, has publicly rebuked the government too. Mr Dombrovskis has now backtracked, saying that if the cuts are necessary, they will be made.
But doubts remain. Mr Dombrovskis lacks the authority to push tough measures through parliament and his public wobble could be seen as an attempt to summon up another burst of international pressure on the government to do the right thing. If so, it is risky.
The same could be said about another of Mr Dombrovskis’s moves—calling for a draft law that would restructure domestic liabilities of foreign banks. Lenders would be liable only for the collateral value of their loan (eg, a house bought with a mortgage) rather than the whole amount. Banks would also be unable to evict defaulters from their homes without rehousing them. A fall in property prices of over 50% has sent Latvia’s private-sector debts to foreigners ballooning. They will need restructuring eventually. But this proposal looks unworkable, clumsy and damaging. Shares in Nordic banks, which have been the biggest private-sector lenders to Latvia, dipped on the news.
If Latvia fails, with a strike by international lenders prompting a debt crisis or a bank run, the spotlight then turns to the neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania. They are not in the same political mess, but both have also pegged their currencies to the euro and are facing huge and painful adjustments. Some wonder if the EU might accelerate its recognition of Estonia’s impressive progress in sorting out public finances by giving it early approval of its plans to join the euro in 2011. But where would that leave Lithuania, which is nowhere near balancing its books and borrowing expensively from private lenders instead of turning to the IMF?
An even bigger question involves the future co-operation between the IMF and EU. They worked together closely during the emergency rescue of Latvia in December. Now ties are strained: the IMF thinks Latvia should devalue its currency. EU officials are determined that it should not, for fear of the wider effect on ex-communist countries that are trying to join the euro zone. That has led the EU to squeeze the IMF into accepting softer conditions on Latvia than it would have wished for. For all those involved, in Brussels, Washington, DC, and Riga, patience is running out.
Read more!
It would be worrying enough if the European Union’s weakest economy defaults, devalues or implodes. But what scares outsiders more is the effect of Latvia’s latest wobble on other ex-communist economies, which until this week seemed to be surviving the financial crisis with less trouble than some had feared.
In recent weeks, the news from Latvia had seemed mildly encouraging, after a year during which the country has been kept afloat thanks to an $11.1 billion international bail-out. The breakneck decline has slowed: the economy is expected to contract by 17.5% this year, but by only 3% in 2010 and to return to growth in 2011, according to a forecast by SEB, a Swedish bank (and big lender to Latvia). The current account, which showed a yawning deficit of 1.42 billion lats ($3 billion) in the first seven months of last year has been transformed to show a 581m lats surplus in the same period of 2009.
The main outstanding issue is next year’s budget deficit. International lenders had softened the target to a mere 8.5% of GDP; the government still had to push through spending cuts of 500m lats to meet this.
But this week Mr Dombrovskis startled outsiders by saying that cuts of only 225m lats would be necessary. He has pencilled in a further 100m lats in better tax revenues—counting, apparently, on a faster economic recovery than anyone expects. The hesitation has brought stern warnings. Sweden’s finance minister, Anders Borg, said outsiders’ patience was “limited”—his country is due to provide SKr10 billion ($1.45 billion) in a loan tranche in early 2010. The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, has publicly rebuked the government too. Mr Dombrovskis has now backtracked, saying that if the cuts are necessary, they will be made.
But doubts remain. Mr Dombrovskis lacks the authority to push tough measures through parliament and his public wobble could be seen as an attempt to summon up another burst of international pressure on the government to do the right thing. If so, it is risky.
The same could be said about another of Mr Dombrovskis’s moves—calling for a draft law that would restructure domestic liabilities of foreign banks. Lenders would be liable only for the collateral value of their loan (eg, a house bought with a mortgage) rather than the whole amount. Banks would also be unable to evict defaulters from their homes without rehousing them. A fall in property prices of over 50% has sent Latvia’s private-sector debts to foreigners ballooning. They will need restructuring eventually. But this proposal looks unworkable, clumsy and damaging. Shares in Nordic banks, which have been the biggest private-sector lenders to Latvia, dipped on the news.
If Latvia fails, with a strike by international lenders prompting a debt crisis or a bank run, the spotlight then turns to the neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania. They are not in the same political mess, but both have also pegged their currencies to the euro and are facing huge and painful adjustments. Some wonder if the EU might accelerate its recognition of Estonia’s impressive progress in sorting out public finances by giving it early approval of its plans to join the euro in 2011. But where would that leave Lithuania, which is nowhere near balancing its books and borrowing expensively from private lenders instead of turning to the IMF?
An even bigger question involves the future co-operation between the IMF and EU. They worked together closely during the emergency rescue of Latvia in December. Now ties are strained: the IMF thinks Latvia should devalue its currency. EU officials are determined that it should not, for fear of the wider effect on ex-communist countries that are trying to join the euro zone. That has led the EU to squeeze the IMF into accepting softer conditions on Latvia than it would have wished for. For all those involved, in Brussels, Washington, DC, and Riga, patience is running out.
Read more!
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