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Afghanistan – caught in new Great Game

 

By Lt. General P.C. Katoch (Retd) Former Director General of Information Systems, Indian Army

 

Ashraf Ghani, President of Afghanistan

President Ashraf Ghani is likely realizing his folly for throwing his lot with Pakistan. Why Ghani believed Pakistan would bring Taliban to the negotiating table when the US failed to do so is intriguing, especially when the Taliban oppose democracy and the Afghan Constitution? But what must have completely shocked Ashraf Ghani is his own National Directorate of Security (NDS) of Afghanistan confirmed that the June 22 attack on Afghan Parliament was conceived in Peshawar, Pakistan, by the Haqqani Network and more significantly, an officer named ‘Bilal’ of the Pakistani ISI aided the attack, with Mawlawi Sheerin, chief of Haqqani Network's military arm masterminding the attack. As per intelligence reports, the ISI provided 7.5 million Pakistani rupees to the Haqqanis through Bilal.

The Taliban claimed responsibility but that was perhaps a ruse as Haqqani Network is part of Al Qaeda, not Taliban. Both the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban are hand in glove though Al Qaeda supports Afghan Taliban whereas the TTP has aligned with ISIS. Duped by false Pakistani assurances Ghani apparently ignored Afghan intelligence reports that during 2013-2014 Pakistan had trained some 20 Mujahid Battalions to operate as, and in conjunction Taliban. So while Pakistan’s ISI is striving hard to facilitate the AQIS into India, she simultaneously has inducted thousands of cadres of Mujahid battalions into Afghanistan in the garb of refugees fleeing from military operations in North Waziristan.

But that is not all the problems that Ghani faces with political instability, weak economy, poverty and insecurity. Zahir Tanin, Afghan Ambassador to UN says, “Afghanistan is under attack from ‘an unprecedented convergence’ of Taliban insurgents, more than 7,000 foreign fighters, and other violent groups including the Islamic State. His government estimates there may be hundreds or thousands of people operating under the black flag of the ISIS including some extreme-oriented Taliban”. More significantly according to Nicholas Haysom, UN envoy to Afghanistan, "Increasingly, Afghanistan is finding itself in the forefront of dealing with terrorists whose origins are the neighbors, and possibly whose eventual destination are its neighbors." Pakistan obviously heads the list of these so called friendly neighbors. But what triggered the new Great Game is Chinese attempts to reach out to the Indian Ocean through land. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor connecting China with Gwadar is not the only strategic move that China is making through POK’s Gilgit-Baltistan region.

China has been assiduously working on a second route through POK’s Northern Areas via Afghanistan and Iran connecting with the Persian Gulf and the strategic Straits of Hormuz on one end with Tibet on the other, completely bypassing Pakistan. It is for the latter that China annexed Xinjiang and is building communications through the Wakhan Corridor to Afghanistan. With the global centre of gravity shifting to the Indian Ocean, it requires no guessing that these Chinese moves will be contested by the West. It is no secret that the ISIS was raised by the US and its allies that has led to the present situation in Syria and Iraq. It is generally believed that the ISIS was created to help unseat Bashar Assad, to counter Al Qaeda and pose a strategic challenge to Iran’s global Shia leadership. But then the ISIS is gaining ground steadily in Af-Pak.

The strategic conflict between the US and China at the sub-conventional level has already begun in Af-Pak region; China’s proxy Afghan Taliban on one side and US proxy ISIS aided by TTP, Jundallah and IMU (Uzbekistan) on the other side. US attacks on ISIS in Syria-Iraq and Baghdadi injured are irrelevant; Osama was killed, Al Qaeda attacked but yet US used Al Qaeda in Libya, Iraq and elsewhere. That is why in September last year, an ISIS delegation visited Balochistan on behest of the Jundallah and in November 2015 an ISIS-Jundallah meeting was held in Saudi Arabia, with ISIS leaders from both Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia in attendance. That is why the increased attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the IMU. Afghanistan is caught amidst the Great Game and Pakistan will cook in its own stew since Robert Gates, former US Defence Secretary writes Pakistan is no US ally and would not give up its policy of supporting terror.