by Kaustav Dhar Chakrabarti
Download the Full Article: Building Bridges in Afghanistan
The debate on Afghan nation building has pivoted on the duration of America's presence. The concept of joint India-Pakistan teams across military training, government and development spectrums, presents a wildcard that carries the potential of correcting systemic flaws and resource deficiencies, and also promises to reduce deep rooted mistrusts between rivals India and Pakistan. Joint Indo-Pak nation building teams could concurrently yield four positive results-provide additional resources, bridge ethnic and political polarities, foster cooperation between India and Pakistan and device means to enable them to verify each other's role, and ultimately, present a mechanism to ensure Afghanistan's neutrality.
Download the Full Article: Building Bridges in Afghanistan
Kaustav Chakrabarti is a junior fellow in the Centre for International Relations at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. His research interests include Pakistan, insurgency, civil military relations, and nuclear security.
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Comments
@ subrosa: That's an interesting concept. Thanks!
@ Omar: I was expressing frustration more than anything else. Everyone likes to complain about their elites - it's a near universal populist complaint. We must be "hard-wired" for it.
@ carl: The following might be of interest:
<em>ABSTRACT: Scholars attribute conventional violence in a nuclear South Asia to a phenomenon known as the "stability/instability paradox." According to this paradox, the risk of nuclear war makes it unlikely that conventional conflict will escalate to the nuclear level, thereby making conventional conflict more likely. Although this phenomenon encouraged U.S.-Soviet violence during the Cold War, it does not explain the dynamics of the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan. Recent violence has seen Pakistan or its proxies launching limited attacks on Indian territory, and India refusing to retaliate in kind. The stability/instability paradox would not predict such behavior. A low probability of conventional war escalating to the nuclear level would reduce the ability of Pakistans nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Because Pakistan is conventionally weaker than India, this would discourage Pakistani aggression and encourage robust Indian conventional retaliation against Pakistani provocations. Pakistani boldness and Indian restraint have actually resulted from instability in the strategic environment. A full-scale Indo-Pakistani conventional conflict would create a significant risk of nuclear escalation. This danger enables Pakistan to launch limited attacks on India while deterring all-out Indian conventional retaliation and attracting international attention to the two countries dispute over Kashmir. Unlike in Cold War Europe, in contemporary South Asia nuclear danger facilitates, rather than impedes, conventional conflict.</em>
<a href="http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/704/india_and_pakistans…;
From Belfer Center (Harvard)
and
<em>These policy approaches include nuclear/military parity with
India, quelling internal dissent, strengthening religious cohesiveness, and
making foreign aid plentiful and certain. The geographic dimension of this
is "strategic depth," seen as Pakistani influence in Afghanistan to counter
Indian and Iranian proxies there, to hedge against a future occupying force,
and to provide a base for irregular warfare against India in Kashmir.</em>
From Pakistans Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies
<a href="http://haidermullick.com/Documents/Pakistans%20Security%20Paradox%20For…;
1. a friend just commented to me that my remark is "eurocentric", so I just wanted to clarify that my remark about "European" assumptions implies no moral judgment. Just the fact that European countries (who practically invented modern nationalism) now have a set of assumptions about nations that includes certain notions about national "interests", the fact that those interests are in the interest of most nationals of that nation, and that it is rational for all nations to promote those interests. My thought was that this does not necessarily apply everywhere in the world.
2. I am sure the US elite is not as thoroughly duped as Carl or Madhu imply.
3. To the extent that they ARE duped, its not due to superior duping skills being concentrated in Pakistan. Its a perfect storm: Cold war exigencies/illusions created a relationship with the army and there was never a formal divorce. Afghan war exigencies created a closer bond. Terrorism has disrupted this happy marriage, but both parties think they know each other well and have memories of payments made and tasks performed. The weaker party naturally uses more wile and guile. The stronger party gives the whole matter much less thought. In other words, the big bully husband has many wives and concubines and a life outside the home, so many other priorities. The wife trapped at home has a narrower horizon, more incentive to really really know hubby's moods and eccentricities and has fewer outside distractions and only two other lovers (Saudi Arabia and China), one of whom may have an ongoing thing with the hubby too....
perhaps it should be a SAARC nation-builder effort. i think that would neutralize the bad politics. bangladeshis are muslim, srilankan have experience in counterinsurgency and nepalese are the best peacekeepers in the world! plus india and pakistan. then of course if maldives which is another muslim country wants to add in they can (didnt karzai hold talks with the taliban there?).
Omar: My last sentence should have read "Theirs is a morally bankrupt even evil position...". I was unclear and did not mean to suggest Robert's position is evil, naive and misguided maybe but not evil and I apologize for the suggestion. The Pak Army/ISI's position is evil. I should have been more clear and I agree with your comment.
Madhu: Brother that is the question of the century. Why are our elites such dopes?
I have an idea and I will present it to you and you guys can tear it apart. The Pak Army/ISI's ideas about "strategic depth" make no sense if considered as one would normally think of how you would use such depth; to fall back on resources and tire your enemy out so you can strike back. What does make sense to me is this. What if the idea was for only part of the Pak Army/ISI to fall back on Afghanistan? That part would be the general sahibs, a small part of the Pak Army and...some of the nukes. Oh yeah and a lot of money. That way they could dominate what ever area they retired to and still have influence and power. They would still be a force to be reckoned with even if they lost another war and got kicked out of their country. They would do sort of what the FDLR has done in eastern Congo after they got pushed out of Rwanda.
Or maybe I am being unfair - maybe they realize they are being "gamed" but have decided the better part of valor is keeping a lid on the whole thing. In other words: enabling the delusions seems better than having one particular party going off the deep end.
Heads everybody loses, tails everybody loses. And on that cheery note, nice thread everybody.
(I still think cross cultural and business exchanges facilitated by the civilian governments is a good idea.)
No, Omar and Carl, the point is valid.
It is possible to reach the same event from two different starting points.
Scenario #1: The Pakistani Generals get worried about Indian inroads in Afghanistan and plan more cross-border acts - leading to conflict.
Scenario #2: The Pakistani Generals get cocky because they have played the Americans and plan more cross-border acts - leading to conflict.
Heads they "win", tails we lose.
I do wish my fellow Americans wouldn't be so naive about the elite, though. They are telling you whatever they think they can get away with. All this stuff about Cold Start and worries about India? Well, maybe they really are worried or maybe they are trying to get more money and aid. Either way, we shouldn't enable the delusions.
I wonder why Pakistani elites are so good at gaming our elites? It's a curious sociological phenomenon.
Carl, I think you may have stumbled upon one of the reasons why some of the best intentioned foreigners only make things worse in that region. Here we see undoubtedly well intentioned people like Robert trying to encourage an "unstable Afghanistan" (meaning, as you said, endless civil war and destruction for the Afghan and Pakistani people)not because they are evil or cynical but because their best intentions are too nice, too naive, too "balanced" and make too many "European" assumptions about the basic aims and motivations of states and armies involved in this mess....
Robert C. Jones:
I find, like Mahhu, your following statement to be completely mystifying.
"A stable Afghanistan provides a solid wall that India can push Pakistan's back up against...do we really want the tenuous detente' between these nuclear powers to have such a hair trigger installed?"
No matter how stable Afghanistan was any armed force they could conceivably have in the next decade or two could not possibly stop the Pak Army if it was inclined to go into Afghanistan. Where does the "solid wall" come from?
If Afghanistan was to remain unstable and there was no "solid wall" to give the Pak Army the vapors how would it benefit them? I assume you mean that in the event of defeat by Indian forces the Pak Army could retreat into Afghanistan in order to refit and fight another day. But I don't understand what they would fall back on, mountain ranges and harsh deserts? I don't get it. How could they do anything there except fall apart?
If they were to fall back into Afghanistan, what kind of reception would an army dominated by Punjabis get from the Afghans of whatever ethnic group? In addition to falling back on harsh deserts and mountain ranges those inhospitable places would be inhabited by even more inhospitable people whom I would guess would do their best to help the Pak Army fall apart.
If they were to fall back on Afghanistan, what would they do with their nukes? Boy if you want to alarm the world just imagine the prospect of a defeated army retreating with loose nukes? Are they going to assure us that they will be well protected on the Khyber Pass road?
If, as I assume, the Pak Army has nukes in order guarantee the territorial integrity of Pakistan, why would the status of Afghanistan matter at all? If they had to fall back into Afghanistan there goes the territorial integrity of Pakistan so why have nukes to start with?
Why does a stable Afghanistan constitute a hair trigger for "nuclear combat, toe to toe with the" Indians? Mahhu asked that question and I echo it. Please explain why that would be a hair trigger. I don't get it at all.
Finally your comment implies that the Pak Army's aim is to maintain an unstable Afghanistan with all the human suffering that would entail. That is a morally bankrupt even evil position to take and I fail to see why we should have any sympathy for that at all.
I should read more carefully. Some of my questions are answered, partially, by the article:
<em>Perhaps the greatest service of 'India-Pakistan Nation Builders will be to ensure Afghanistans neutrality, a treaty whereby Afghanistans neighbours will pledge not to use Afghan soil against each other. A government that accurately represents all sections of the Afghan human terrain will naturally decline subservience to any one neighbour, be it India or Pakistan. Such an arrangement will discourage Pakistan to revert to the use of militant groups as state tools. More importantly, it will help obviate Islamabads fears, rooted in its tragic dismemberment in 1971, that India may use Afghanistan as a trump card to destabilize north-western Pakistan.</em>
I should add - because it isn't clear in the above comment - that I doubt the feasibility of India-Pakistan Nation Builders in Afghanistan as things stand today. Goals differ. How would this work in practice?
The majority of my comment was directed at joint India-Pakistan cooperation in other area (and my inability to understand the basic concepts of nuclear deterrence. The points made about deterrence are valid and extremely scary to contemplate. It's just that I can see about a million ways in which things could go wrong because the basic situation is, itself, unstable and likely to become more so because of the changes to either country.)
The article reminds me of the following blog posting:
<em>13. This calls for a beginning in the establishment of a network of relationships at various levels---political and bureaucratic---between the two countries. We have established such a network with China despite the continuing border dispute and despite our continuing distrust of the People's Liberation Army of China. There has not even been an attempt to build such a network between India and Pakistan. Is it possible to build such a network? If so, how to go about it?What role the Interior Ministry of Pakistan and the Home Ministry of India can play in this exercise as the starting blocks? These are questions which should be discussed during the forthcoming interactions.
14. Our insistence on Pakistani action against the LET and Sayeed is legitimate and should be continued. But we shoulde not allow this to become an over-obsession which nullifies all ideas and intitiatives of a positive nature. Over-obsession with certain issues has become the bane of Indo-Pakistan relations. If the two countries, their leaderships and bureaucracies could rid themselves of these over-obsessions, they may realise that a strategic relationship for mutual benefit between the two countries is not such a stupid idea after all.</em>
http://ramanstrategicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/06/india-pakistan-keepi…
I wonder if such ideas are currently gaining favor within Indian foreign policy circles? If growing the economy and China are now the main Indian focus, there may be a cultural impetus to change the current troubled relationship. Also, as the Indian economy grows, the "detente" will change regardless what happens in Afghanistan. We can't stuff this genie back in the bottle. I happen to think it's a good genie - all this economic growth - but I'm starting to think not everyone feels the same way.
<em>A stable Afghanistan provides a solid wall that India can push Pakistan's back up against...do we really want the tenuous detente' between these nuclear powers to have such a hair trigger installed?</em>
I still don't understand the mechanism behind the detente? Is it a psychological "buffer" of sorts for the Pakistani defense community? Is the theory that we are likely to see fewer initiating events for conflict if such a buffer state exists? But Kargil happened in 1999? The history of the subcontinent doesn't necessarily show that an unstable Afghanistan leads to fewer stand-offs between the two powers, does it? Or am I wrong about that?
Interesting. Why would the Indians, given the growing economic clout and the desire to play in the big leagues, want to push Pakistan into greater instability?
Well, I will never understand all these complicated arguments. One could make a perfectly plausible argument for and against a stable Afghanistan in terms of India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence. What data do we use to say which theory is more likely to be correct?
This sounds good, but I doubt very much it is a good idea and would be interested to see what interests the author represents.
A stable Afghanistan provides a solid wall that India can push Pakistan's back up against...do we really want the tenuous detente' between these nuclear powers to have such a hair trigger installed?
I would be more open to a Pakistan-Iranian partnership. The less countries like India, Russia, China, the US or Great Britain get involved, probably the better. Other than as overwatchers to ensure nothing goes too far wrong in ways that create excessive human suffering.
Currently the US is looking to unload a problem onto any viable solution, so may be tempted by what sounds like a good deal, but really isn't. We'd need to do much more analysis than just kicking the tires on this one.