Taliban’s next target is India: From Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, taking over the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, would be a cakewalk
By Neena Gopal
24 Jan 2014
The suicide bomber, who detonated himself last Friday at the entrance of the Taverna di Liban, in Kabul’s tony Wazir Akbar Khan neighbourhood, killing 21 people in the popular watering hole, and the man behind the microphone bomb attack at a mosque in Logar, that killed urbane Canada-returned 47-year-old governor, Arsala Jamal in mid-October last year, had one thing in common. Both Taliban assassins had been released from jail at the US-run Bagram military base, at the personal behest of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The release of Taliban prisoners is part of a long running plan by the President to lay the groundwork for talks with the Taliban ahead of key presidential polls in April this year.
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Polls that preclude Mr Karzai from seeking re-election for a third successive term, and could see the Taliban, which has recently upped attacks, stepping into the vacuum as all foreign forces prepare to exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014, leaving a bigger security vacuum than previously envisaged.
The Wall Street Journal reports that US President Barack Obama will leave a mere 8,000-10,000 troops in Afghanistan towards the year end. Wary of a repeat of their frantic retreat from Iraq when they were at the receiving end of Sunni ire, there could be “none at all” by 2017. The dreaded zero option, at the end of Mr Obama’s term, make the prospect of a complete Taliban takeover of Afghanistan by 2017 all too real.
All 11 of the presidential candidates in the fray have written an open letter to Mr Karzai and Mr Obama, urging the Afghan Presi-dent to sign the contentious Bilateral Security Agreement.
Mr Karzai is reluctant, unwilling to endorse the deeply unpopular presence of foreigners on his land.
Those that would have him sign it say that keeping “foreign forces” in play, both during and after the presidential polls is the only way to stop a Taliban upsurge. Especially against a Taliban, who no longer answer to their former Inter-Services Intelligence masters.
In fact, in neighbouring Pakistan, where Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is also signalling to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakis-tan that he wants talks, a blast ripped through a Pakistani Army convoy in Bannu, killing 20 soldiers, exactly 24 hours after the Kabul restaurant blast.
On Monday, barely a stone’s throw from Pakistan’s Army General Headquarters, a suicide bomber set off explosives taped to his body in the main Rawalpindi market. Only the men who launched a failed assassination attempt on former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf had come this close to the real seat of power.
There was no mistaking the message sent out by back-to-back bombings this week in Kabul, Bannu and Rawalpindi. This wasn’t just payback for the US drone attacks on Taliban bases on either side of the Durand Line. It was far simpler. Divided as they are, the Taliban is done talking.
Except, neither Mr Karzai, nor Mr Sharif — or, for that matter, the floundering head of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Imran Khan — seem to have fully understood the implications. Or are they simply unwilling to accept its true import?
Delhi is clearly rattled. Its $2 billion or more investment in rebuilding Afghan infrastructure, its attempt to neutralise the Taliban by lending its weight to a political process that engenders faith in an internal system of governance and debate through popularly elected political parties and civil society, and not an arcane, ethnically driven religiosity that appeals to one segment of Afghanistan society alone, look set to fail.
Acknowledging the danger that Taliban nihilism poses to the region, former national security adviser and present West Bengal governor M.K. Narayanan warned that New Delhi would be the next target if the Taliban capture Kabul.
The Taliban calculation is simple. While scrapping talks with Mr Karzai and the US, until all foreign forces exit the Afghan theatre, the Afghan Taliban has kept up the war of attrition, in the full knowledge that once the US drawdown is in place, it can waltz into Kabul. An enfeebled Afghan Army and police force may be richer in US arms, but without the drones and coalition forces’ air support, they will be fighting blind.
As for the Pakistan Taliban, taking control of the badlands in Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, where the government’s writ does not run is not difficult. From there, to taking over the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, would be a cakewalk.
There is little doubt, that the Taliban, nurtured in the nurseries of terror in Pakistan’s seminaries, is no longer tied to Pakistan’s ISI. It is clearly functioning independently of the master, seeing the Pakistan government as fair prey, just as the Karzai presidency is to the Afghan Taliban.
As Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi, a defence analyst based in Lahore, said months ago, “The tide of militancy that kept Afghanistan on the boil all these years is now flowing in reverse, into Pakistan.”
Perhaps it's time for Kabul and Islamabad to realise the perils of supping with the devil, and forge a compact with Delhi to counter the threat posed to their polity as much as it does to ours. Could Delhi start negotiations by offering President Karzai a safe haven?
Source: deccanchronicle.com/140124/commentary-columnists/commentary/taliban%E2%80%99s-next-target-india
URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/taliban’s-next-target-india-pakhtunkhwa/d/35431