BRICS
Summit Against Backdrop Of Plummeting Washington-Moscow Relations
Saeed Naqvi
Two recent events will influence
attitudes at the 9th BRICS summit at Xiamen, China, from September 3
to 5 – Doklam and Trump’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Beijing and Moscow have grave anxieties
about terrorist groups, in the name of militant Islam, threatening their
Xinxiang and Caucasus regions. They would therefore like terrorism to be an
important theme at the summit.
So would New Delhi, but the Indian focus
would be on Pakistan as the source of terror. The complication is that Pakistan
has looked upon China as an all weather friend in recent years. Has skillful
diplomacy, on all sides, defused the Doklam standoff sufficiently to prevent
divergent approaches to Pakistan on terrorism come to the fore at the summit?
Moscow is cautious. Who knows how
durable is the understanding reached over Doklam between Beijing, New Delhi.
That a RIC (Russia, India, China) Foreign
Ministers conference is billed in New Delhi is a good sign. It was postponed in
April because of heated exchanges between China and India over Dalai Lama’s
weeklong visit to Arunachal Pradesh. Also, New Delhi had refused to attend the
Belt and Road conference Beijing placed great store by. Indeed, New Delhi also
prevailed on Thimpu not to attend.
Moscow and Beijing view Afghanistan as
the centre where terrorist groups like the Islamic State can breed and threaten
countries in the neighbourhood and beyond.
Since April 2016 a group of countries
under the auspices of what came to be known as the Moscow initiative began to
analyze the Taleban as an Afghan, nationalist category which was not fired by
transnational aspirations like the IS and Al Qaeda. The Taleban, in other
words, should be brought into the tent, to borrow Lyndon Johnson’s colourful expression.
This is a transformational design because
so far the government in Kabul, Afghan security Forces, US and NATO Forces have
targeted the Taleban as the enemy.
The use of this massive firepower, with
western troop levels waxing and waning over the past 16 years, has not brought
the alliance anywhere near victory. To the contrary, the terrain under Taleban
control has grown exponentially. Defence Secretary James Mattis became only the
umpteenth US official to declare before the media, his face in the lower mould:
“we are losing.”
This candid acceptance of defeat in the
longest war (16 years) ever waged by the US, has coincided with the Moscow led
initiative to bring the Taleban into the Kabul power structure.
The Moscow initiative was designed
against the backdrop of Trump’s chant of walking away from previous US policies
of intervention and nation building. Since the US was withdrawing, as Trump
kept reminding all and sundry, it made sense for Moscow, Beijing, Tehran,
Islamabad and the Central Asian Republics, to shape their Afghan policies
according to their strategic requirements.
In a White House where the Deep State is
demonstrably the ventriloquist and Trump the puppet, a flip-flop in Afghan
policy was announced last week: there will be no withdrawal but a minimal troop
surge (less than 4,000 to augment 11,000 already on the ground) to enable Kabul
to recover some of the vast swathes of the country from Taleban control.
Somewhere in this pursuit of a military solution, a carrot has also been
inserted: a channel for talks with Taleban will also be opened.
To dignify this US initiative, the
Moscow initiative has to be rubbished. Russians have been arming the Taleban,
goes the allegation from Washington. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov,
clarified this and more at a Moscow Press conference.
When the US State Department made this
accusation, he said, the Department should have known better. “Because at a
news conference in the State Department, journalists asked the official
spokesperson to present facts. Not a single fact was presented just like there
was not a single fact to confirm our interference in the US election or
breaking into sites.”
Lavrov contrasted Moscow’s policy with
that of Washington on contacts with Taleban. He gives two reasons for such
contacts. First, Moscow needs to resolve practical issues on which security of
Russian citizens and offices in Afghanistan depend.
“Second we are striving to encourage a
dialogue between the Taleban and the government on the basis of criteria (this
is important, he insists) established by the UN Security Council.”
According to this “criteria” the Taleban
must break ties with terrorists, end the armed struggle and respect the
Constitution of Afghanistan. Washington’s abrupt policy of connecting with Taleban
is without any conditions.
The fine print the Russians read in the US
script on Afghanistan is not difference from what Lavrov has openly said in
other theatres of conflict. The US is not out to douse fires of militancy: it
intends to preserve some of it as “assets” against rivals and enemies. Breeding
of the Mujahideen to evict the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 80s was not a one
time trick.
Trump’s Afghan surge, despite himself,
also comes at a time when he has been persuaded by his hawks to ratchet up
tensions with Russia. The Russian Consulate in San Francisco has been closed
and two other Russian properties in Washington and New York have been ordered
to be shut by September 2.
This being the big-power play in the
region, how should New Delhi respond to Trump’s cajolery in Afghanistan? To
frame policy, friends in South Block have to do no more than visit Saket in
South Delhi. You cannot walk into Max hospital without coming face to face with
an Afghan. By universal consent of doctors and other hospital staff, they are
the most gentle patients. This outreach cannot be matched.
In front of the hospital, in Hauz Rani,
a row of Afghan eating places has come up.
Pakistanis stepping out of Kabul’s
Serena hotel do not wear Peshawari sandals and Pathan suits. They feel safer in
trousers and bush shirts, looking like Indians. Hospitals, schools, roads and,
above all, Bollywood have already won Afghan hearts. Nothing should be done to upturn
this low key, common sense policy. Expeditious completion of Chabahar port in
Iran, linking to Central Asia by a road through Afghanistan will be brilliant
for commerce and for winning hearts and minds.
What must not be overlooked is the
change in US policy towards New Delhi’s role. When President Barack Obama
announced troop withdrawals from July 2011, the assumption was that Afghanistan
would have been reasonably stabilized by that date.
US Force Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal
created something of a flutter in New Delhi. He said New Delhi’s popularity
among the Afghans – because of development works – creates complications
because it distracts Pakistan from its war on terror focus.
Washington’s new blandishments make one feel
good but they would be more valuable if the reliability quotient of the
occupant of the White House was a shade higher.
The principals sitting around the table
at the Xiamen summit likewise will carry in their minds the image of what to each
one of them is a very different kind of Presidency in Washington. No one quite knows
what to make of it.
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