Shift focus on trouble brewing in neighbouring countries

Inder Malhotra

In Afghanistan, things seem to be falling into place sooner than even the most optimistic leaders of the war on Al-Qaida and the Taliban had envisaged. Strategists and pundits who had talked of the war lasting years have fallen silent and are indeed running for cover. However, nothing in the rugged country straddling the Hindukush can be as simple as that. If Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s spiritual leader and supremo, has meekly surrendered, despite his rhetorical excesses about fighting to the bitter end, a shadow has fallen on the interim government that is scheduled to take over on December 22. How Prime Minister-designate Hamid Karzai and UN mediators resolve the problem created by the Uzbek warlord, Rashid Dostum, currently excluded from the new government, remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, from the Indian point of view, the vital issue is what happens to the Taliban and Al-Qaida warriors who surrender. The United States, readjusting its earlier policy of a total war on them, has accepted the doctrine of “amnesty” to those who raise the white flag. But the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, more blunt than most of his colleagues, has made a clear distinction between Mullah Omar and his followers on the one hand and Osama bin Laden and his murderous thugs on the other. There could be, according to him, amnesty for the former but not at all for the latter.

New Delhi will have to hold the Americans to Rumsfeld’s pledge that Al-Qaida terrorists and their Pakistani collaborators would not be allowed to escape to places like Kashmir to carry on their unspeakably vile and heinous activities. This is not an imaginary danger, as home minister L K Advani has underscored only the other day.

Of course, South Block has welcomed the formation of the Karzai-led provisional government in Kabul. But, unfortunately, there are in its reactions undercurrents of familiar complacency. Some of the policy-makers at least have taken for granted that the new ruling dispensation in Kabul will necessarily be anti-Pakistan and pro-India. They should realise that geography has its own compulsions and some of the statements of the Northern Alliance on not only Pakistan but also Kashmir need to be studied with care.

Overall, the fight against terrorism in Kashmir has to be fought by us, not by others. This obvious fact has to be reaffirmed if only because of the persistent official belief that the US led coalition would “turn its attention” to the havoc being wrought in Jammu and Kashmir by cross-border terrorism in the “next phase’’. But, everything else apart, the current “phase” is not going to end with Mullah Omar’s surrender.
Cleaning up of Al-Qaida networks, putting in place a multilateral peacekeeping force and stabilising the new regime in Kabul could take a long time. Nor should it be overlooked that Pakistan’s ISI has instantly tried to jump into the window of opportunity opened by disgruntled General Dostum.

Overwhelming concentration on Aghanistan — and its evident (but yet unacknowledged by the international community) repercussions on terrorism directed against us — is understandable. But it must not make us oblivious of the escalating dangers emanating from those of our neighbours that are usually neglected or ignored, thanks to our obsessive preoccupation with Pakistan.

The Maoist uprising in Nepal — a neighbour with which India’s relations are uniquely close and, ironically for that very reason, full of complexity, complexes and even tension — is a menace to both it and India. Mercifully, both sides are equally conscious of this. To its credit, the Vajpayee government was quick to offer all help that Nepal needed and asked for. But that is not enough. The nexus between Maoist soul-mates on both sides of the totally open border that has flourished over the years has got to be broken. The ban on the Maoist Communist Centre and the People’s War Group would not do this. The crass ineptitude of the administration, central and in relevant states, has to be ended first.

In Bangladesh, the new government’s strange inaction against the perpetrators of horrific atrocities on the Hindu minority is a chilling indication of the looming trouble, though not the only one. Voices are being raised in Dhaka that could lead to reopening the 1996 treaty on the sharing of Ganga waters. A painful twist to the tale is that the former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, traditionally a friend of India, has started demonstrating against the idea of selling natural gas to this country! The Bangladesh High Court has issued a temporary injunction against the proposal.

Chandrika Kumaratunga’s defeat in the parliamentary elections and the virtual impossibility of amicable co-existence between her and Ranil Wickermasinghe’s government spell trouble also for the southern neighbour. India cannot remain unaffected by it. Let not South Block say later that it wasn’t warned.