New Delhi, Nov 09 : Patronising anti-India outfits while cracking down on the Taliban by the Pakistan government will not work since these outfits are only loyal to terror, warns People’s Democracy, the CPI(M) journal, in its latest editorial.
Noting the alarming regularity with which terrorist attacks were taking place in Pakistan, the editorial said the vulnerability of the US’s Af-Pak policy was clear. The conflict in Afghanistan was engulfing Pakistan. India had not been spared either: the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul proved that.
India’s assistance of over one billion dollars might have generated goodwill among the people but it had also generated a backlash from the Taliban. “But, it would be naïve to hope that Pakistan’s pre-occupation with the Taliban means that India will not be targeted again. An approach towards terrorism that sees it bounden in national territories is faulty,” the party organ said.
The write-up said the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, had sought an additional 40,000 troops.
Though US President Barack Obama had not yet endorsed this, troop augmentation was indicated. The US’s NATO allies, however, were wary, it said.
Regarding the statement issued by the Taliban on the eighth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, claiming that it did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe but would resist turning “the country of the proud and pious Afghans into a colony” and were braced for a prolonged war, the editorial noted that this was being interpreted differently: some were interpreting this to mean the Taliban’s readiness to be a part of future governmental structures in Afghanistan.
President Hamid Karzai too had been talking about this for a while. But would the US treat the Taliban as separate from al-Qaeda and permit such a possibility? The US had indicated favouring a ‘unity government,’ whatever that meant. Britain and Germany have called on the UN secretary-general to convene an international conference on Afghanistan. One former foreign minister of Afghanistan had proposed to replace the US-led forces with troops from Islamic countries under the UN leadership. This difference in approaches left little hope of the US Af-Pak policy succeeding, the journal said.
“Given India’s long links with Afghanistan, we need to take a clear policy direction. These areas eluded control by imperial powers for many centuries. The Mughals made such efforts, with Akbar shifting to Lahore for over a decade to control these lands. His absence, incidentally, led to the desertion of Fatehpur Sikri.
Centuries later, the British waged three Indo-Afghan wars between 1838 and 1918. Subsequently, the former Soviet Union supported a progressive regime there. To combat this, the US gave birth to its Frankenstein’s monster — the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
“Afghanistan occupies a central position in the US strategy for the economic control of the oil and gas resources in West Asia. The US government’s Energy Information factsheet on Afghanistan in 2000 said: “Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographic position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.” This potential includes a proposed multi-billion dollar oil and gas export pipelines through Afghanistan.
Hence this US-led war to control Afghanistan.” It warned that unless the US abandoned the pursuit of these interests through military means, no possible solution to this imbroglio was possible.
–Agencies