Afghan Worries

During the recent visit to New Delhi of Richard Halbrooke, president Obama’s special AfPak envoy, India raised a pointed question: which is the more important thrust of Obama’s new Afghan strategy---the surge of 30,000 more troops or the beginning of the pull out from Afghanistan in 2011? The Indian interlocutor, M.K. Narayan wanted to know if the pullout would depend on success of the surge? Whetter the surge or the pullout was the more important escutcheon of Obama’s Afghan strategy. Halbrooke avoided a straight answer. Indeed, the meeting, coming after a fairly long time since his previous one, was seen in New Delhi as typical of the several dilemmas of Obama’s AfPak strategy. Obama apparently wants to draw the curtains on George Bush’s two wars --- the Irak and Afghan wars---before he seeks a second term in the White House in November 2012. If he can put an end of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he will be the first American president since World War II without an American war somewhere in the globe, aptly described by an American author as ‘war in the time of peace.’ New Delhi keeps a sharp vigil on the operational unfolding of Obama’s AfPak strategy. The president has recognized that without the active and willing cooperation of Pakistan, his own war in Afghanistan cannot open up paths of peace in Afghanistan. He will now recognize the refusal of the Pakistan Army to wage war on militant Islam within Pakistan at a more-than perfunctory level. The Pakistan Army has engaged Islamic militants to be flushed out in the FATA and Balochistan regions with ‘success’. There are as many Taliban Groups in Pakistan as you like to see. There is no single Taliban party in Pakistan. The Taliban that Zia-ul Haque created when he was Pakistan’s second military dictator was designed to deliver Afghanistan as the Pakistan Army’s strategic depth in the event of war with India in the post-Bangladesh period. Obama.s AfPak strategy has virtually conceded the Pakistan Army’s strategic depth commitment to Afghanistan. In New Delhi’s perception, the Obama administration’s look for ‘good Talibans’ in the PakAfghan expanse of geopolitics implies recognition of the “strategic depth’ policy followed by Islamabad since Pakistan’s loss of its Eastern /Wing in 1971-72. @010 is expected to witness the emergence of a new political persona in the AfPak space wearing the face of ‘good Taliban’.In 2011, Obama expects to start the process of pulling out from Afghanistan. He will seek and obtain tacit approval of Russia and China as both share ‘soft’ borders with Afghanistan and would prefer to see ‘soft Islam’ reign in Afghanistan under joint US-Pakistan patronage to a takeover by hard-line Taliban zealots of the 1980s composed more of Pakistnis than Afghans. Mullah Omar himself