India loses Afghan proxy war

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

Pak has won and India has lost!!! This win in a hundred years is worth losing the East Pak every day....

 

[xyxmt]

Yes, gangadesh lost the proxy-war through Afghanistan....

But the price we paid is 80K dead and loss of $220+Bln loss in economy... it is a very steep price that gangadesh extracted form us...

So let us not celeberate just yet...

It wasn't Gangadesh alone, they don't wits for it, It was mainly US

 

[Thorough Pro]

The history is witness to the fact that Indians are cursed to always jump on the wagon going in opposite direction and keep crying all the way to humiliation and failure.

JULY 14, 2019 BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
India loses Afghan proxy war

American soldiers in a remote post, silhouetted against the dimming Afghan sky. (U.S. Army photo)

The Four-Party Meeting on the Afghan Peace Process, held in Beijing last Thursday and Friday, comprising China, the US, Russia and Pakistan, is a dramatic development auguring a peace settlement in Afghanistan. In a regional setting, it also signifies that Pakistan has inflicted a heavy defeat on India in the decade-old proxy war in Afghanistan.

The special envoys of the four countries who met in Beijing have issued a joint statement underscoring their consensus on peacemaking in Afghanistan and signalling their intention to speed up the peace process to a final settlement.

The salients of the joint statement are: first and foremost, the trilateral US-Russia-China format on Afghanistan has been expanded to include Pakistan, given the shared belief of the three big powers that “Pakistan can play an important role in facilitating peace in Afghanistan.”

Second, the four countries have endorsed the intra-Afghan meetings in Moscow and Doha in the recent months and called on relevant parties to “immediately start intra-Afghan negotiations between the Taliban, Afghan government, and other Afghans” with a view to “produce a peace framework as soon as possible.”

Third, they have urged that the peace framework should “guarantee the orderly and responsible transition of the security situation and detail an agreement on a future inclusive political arrangement acceptable to all Afghans.”

Four, the joint statement encourages the Afghan parties to scale down violence “leading to a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire that starts with intra-Afghan negotiations.”

Finally, the four countries have resolved to maintain the momentum of their consultation and “will invite other important stakeholders to join on the basis of the trilateral consensus agreed on April 25, 2019 in Moscow, and this broader group will meet when intra-Afghan negotiations start.”

All in all, the Four-Party format will henceforth chariot the Afghan peace process — monitoring its progress, mentoring the Afghan protagonists, fine-tuning the intra-Afghan negotiations and so on.

In an upbeat note, the US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted from Beijing on Friday that the four countries agreed that “intra-Afghan negotiations between the Taliban, the Afghan government, and other Afghans should start immediately; that these negotiations should produce a peace framework as soon as possible; and detail a future inclusive political arrangement acceptable to all Afghans.”

Khalilzad added, “We also agreed that violence needs to slow now and a comprehensive and permanent ceasefire should start with intra-Afghan negotiations. We agreed we will expand and ask more international partners to join with the start of negotiations. Very positive.”

In sum, US, Russia and China who are tiptoeing toward a new Cold War, seem to set aside their differences and disputes and seek and end to the Afghan war. Curiously enough, the Pentagon’s recent Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (released in June) called China a “revisionist power” and Russia a “revitalised malign actor”, but last weekend, all three were tangoing in Beijing like nobody’s business.

Indeed, this is how the “great game” was always played in Central Asia — intense rivalries interspersed with interludes when rival powers retired to the shade, nursed their injuries and brooded over next moves on the shifting landscape.

It is hard to believe that post-war Afghanistan will witness the end of history. For the present, the game stands suspended. However, when China’s shadows lengthen over the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan transforms as a hub of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is inexorable, the great game will resume.

As the US vacates its occupation, China becomes the dominant presence in the Hindu Kush. The US would have no prospects of regaining its lost hegemony in Afghanistan for a foreseeable future — perhaps, never.

The Four-Party format crystallises Pakistan’s crucial role as a factor of Afghan security and stability. This works in China’s favour and, paradoxically, makes Pakistan an indispensable partner for the US (and Russia) as well. Washington and its western allies have no option but to depend on Pakistan to ensure that Afghanistan will not become a “lab of terrorists” (to borrow President Trump’s words.)

Pakistan’s relations with China will acquire a new verve as the BRI spreads its wings in Afghanistan. The growing Russian interest in the CPEC will take concrete form. A revival of Pakistan’s moribund strategic ties with the US is already under way.

Without doubt, India is the big loser. Pakistan has worsted India in the Afghan proxy war and the defeat becomes a template of regional politics. The Indian analysts put the blame on the US, arguing that Washington ditched India after leading it up the garden path. Indeed, President Trump once hailed the Modi government as the US’ number one partner in its South Asian strategy. But does the fault lie with the US?

From the American viewpoint, Afghanistan has become a “bleeding wound” (as Gorbachev described the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan), causing big drain in resources. In the final analysis, the Indian policymakers failed to read the tea leaves correctly when it became apparent that the so-called Afghan surge under Gen. David Petraeus ended inconclusively by September 2012, with no fanfare at the Pentagon and no proclamation of success from the Obama White House.

Fundamentally, the Indian policy failure lies in turning Afghanistan into a turf to wage a proxy war against Pakistan. In the zero-sum mindset, Delhi overlooked that Pakistan has legitimate interests in Afghanistan — no less than what India would have in, say, Nepal — and that by virtue of culture, tribal and ethnic affinity or sheer geography and economic and social compulsions, Afghans can never do without Pakistan.

Delhi regarded the Taliban as a progeny of the Pakistani intelligence and military, but that was never the whole story of Afghan insurgency and resistance. Delhi was impervious to other ground realities too — such as that Kabul government was lacking legitimacy, that massive corruption was undermining the state; and, importantly, that this was an unwinnable war and a reconciliation with the Taliban was the only way out.

A long haul lies ahead for India now to regain the lost influence in Kabul. Meanwhile, India will have to reconcile with the geopolitical reality that Afghanistan comes under the Chinese orbit for the first time in the history of our region.

But the spectre that is haunting Delhi is the strong likelihood of a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan and of a Sharia state emerging in India’s neighbourhood. How come Indian diplomacy failed to stop this happening?

The short answer is that the obsessive focus on the proxy war meant that India missed the wood for the trees. The intelligence and security establishment was on the driving seat and there was no sustained effort to network at the diplomatic level with like-minded countries, especially Iran and Russia, or to mobilise international opinion against a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. This policy failure will have serious consequences. Once the US withdrawal is over, India has to deal with a triumphalist Pakistan that gains immense strategic depth vis-a-vis India.

Meanwhile, the big powers are busy securing their specific interests with Pakistani help and cooperation, which leaves India out in the lurch. The latest al-Qaeda call for “jihad” in India needs to be taken seriously. But India has cried “wolf” so often that no one may take it seriously when the wolf finally arrives at the doorstep.

A close analysis of the Doha Agreement following the so-called intra-Afghan talks on July 7-8 shows disturbing signs that the Taliban may have “marched closer to their stated objectives of enforcing Islamic shari’a rule in Afghanistan and of restructuring the Afghan government institutions, including the military, to their liking.” This is the expert assessment of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) headquartered in Washington, after studying the three different versions of the Doha Agreement and the Taliban’s own version. Read it here.

 

[imadul]

Good post

And I should add, Pakistanis must not forget that.



It's just an artificial country whose blue prints were developed in the west with an aim of destabilizing China and guarding western interests. They even have a borrowed name, history and civilization, all gifted to them in books just to bring them up to be comparable to China.

No you are totally carried away due to emotions. India is not an artificial country. Hindu empires been here over two thousand years.
Problem of hindu is hate and oppression of the weak. In modern era they are totally blinded by hate of Pakistan and revenge of 1000 year Muslim Rule. They were given opportunity to be fair and just, but they could not. It wont remain a Hindutva state. Oppression does not last long.

Hahahaha.
Author is MK Bhadrakumar.
Each of his predictions on Indian foreign policy have ended up as wrong.rofl:

He is the same guy who claimed in Aug 2016 that Pak-Iran & Afghanistan will form joint alliance against RAW in Balochistan and also the same guy who claimed in 2018 Sri Lanka and Maldives will give forward basing rights to China and Pakistan navies.

Meanwhile in the real world, India has been invited to join the next meeting as US, Russia and China have agreed to expand the meet to include all regional stakeholders.
So India will join KSA, Germany & Tajikistan in the next meeting by group on Afghanistan to be held in September 1st week.

Congrats!

 

[Republic]

Ur dumb to think a country like india would invest in Afghanistan for pire business.. india was very much there to damage and reduce Pakistani influence and it did to some extent. India miscalculated n put all its eggs in one basket, they thought it will play out like in iraq, so they invested in new US backed govt. Now that govt is a mere puppet and taliban will soon be back to rule and believe me they hate india.
Once taliban are back and legitimate majority comes forward, ull see who they love n hate. Northen alliance will always be with india but they will hold little power.

So as per you,

"taliban will soon be back to rule and believe me they hate india"

But Pakistani posters in this forum are crying from last five years that Taliban are Indian stooges. Please convince them, India has nothing to do with Taliban.
Thanks.

 

[TNT]

So as per you,

"taliban will soon be back to rule and believe me they hate india"

But Pakistani posters in this forum are crying from last five years that Taliban are Indian stooges. Please convince them, India has nothing to do with Taliban.
Thanks.

Again it shows ur lack of knowledge. By taliban i mean afghan taliban and legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.
India is helping TTP, they call themselves taliban too and are indian paid. The use of word taliban is to give them legitimacy of some sort in the area. India has very much to do with all the anti Pakistan groups along with insurgents in balochistan.

 

[Cash GK]

Meh nukes in Asia... It's just so weird to think about it.
You can kill a billion Indians, and there will still be 400 million left.

In 40 years they'll make another billion.

Hahah lule langry for next 100 years..muslims still has 55 coucountr but india has only hindu country in the world

 

[Baby Leone]

The latest al-Qaeda call for “jihad” in India needs to be taken seriously. But India has cried “wolf” so often that no one may take it seriously when the wolf finally arrives at the doorstep.

 

[Kaniska]

India loses proxy war ?? lol...

firstly..India was never there for a proxy war... India means business and nothing else.

On another note, i'd say its better if these (or any other country) gets involved in peace process in Afghanistan.... India should just continue doing whats it doing , the development work. The Afghans know who is doing what in Afghanistan. That's how you win a country... through its people ! and we know whom Afghans love and whom they hate .. you guys can continue working towards peace in Afghanistan though..India welcomes your effort

Spot on...There is a serious faultline between Pakistan and Afganistan which is supressed due to US presence in Afganistan..After comflict of US and Afganistan rivals die down, new fault line will emerge..
India should continue to do what we are doing now...Engage with their society at institution level..
In any India and Pakistan match in England, i have seen the support of Afganistan students for India...That the win India should aim for rather than any army on ground in Afganistan

 

[khansaheeb]

I would say taking Afghanistan gives Pakistan the strategic depth that it really needs.

You mean strategic hole don't you?

 

[KeyBORED Warrior]

https://m.timesofindia.com/world/pa...ium=social&utm_campaign=TOI&utm_content=om-bm
Another good read to enhance your feelings of schadenfreude

 

[AUz]

I would agree most Taliban are Pashtuns, or were. Now it's mostly misled people from all over the islamic world doing Jihad in Afghanistan. Against innocent Afghans who are trying to have a normal life. You might look at Afg in factions, but Afghans don't. I don't think the Indians do either. Work with what's at hand. Pashtun or non-Pashtun. you can get fact from afghan-bios.info, which shows majority Pashtuns in all spectrem of the country. Be it business, military, government etc. After all Afg is "land of Pashtuns".

Agreed. Afghanistan is a Pashtun land and must be ruled by Pashtuns with Pashtun culture and worldview/outlook.

That's all Pakistan wants. And what Pakistan wants, it will get in Afghanistan. As it always has.

Afghan land won't be allowed to be used against us. Pakistan wants friendship with Afghanistan but its only Afghans that seek constant conflict with us over something we had no control over (British's division of this land). So it is Afghans who need to move on and accept Pakistan's offer of brotherhood and friendship.

Pashtuns of Afghanistan understand this (even if they don't agree with Durand line as international border)---there are some other factions inside Afghanistan that are puppets of foreigners. Those are being dealt with

 

[War Thunder]

firstly..India was never there for a proxy war... India means business and nothing else.

awww how cute. You're such an innocent mind my friend.

this is the mentality we understand too. We know who is who and what they're doing.



You couldn't be anymore wrong. This isn't the 90's there's no Northern Alliance, that's in tatters, thanks to Ghani. That's why Ghani has former "northern alliance" mastermind Amarullah Salah on his team for the 2019 elections. Taliban ain't ruling nothing. They said they don't want to and neither do they have the capacity. Again, not 1990's. The Afghans aren't of that from the 90's either.



I would agree most Taliban are Pashtuns, or were. Now it's mostly misled people from all over the islamic world doing Jihad in Afghanistan. Against innocent Afghans who are trying to have a normal life. You might look at Afg in factions, but Afghans don't. I don't think the Indians do either. Work with what's at hand. Pashtun or non-Pashtun. you can get fact from afghan-bios.info, which shows majority Pashtuns in all spectrem of the country. Be it business, military, government etc. After all Afg is "land of Pashtuns".


TTP is the legitimate rulers of Pakistan, if you're going to play that game, we can too. Heck, BLA is true rulers of Balochistan. It's all about interests.

You don't understand your own nation and people? Pretentious much or just lacking on things?
You are saying the same things which America and india had believed for over a decade and which brought them nothing in the end.
An actual Afghan would know better, or lets say atleast an informed one who lives there and is not deluded by bollywood.

 

[Kaleem.61]

In 40 years they'll make another billion.

WTF...
how many of them will be men. 0%

 

[Yankee-stani]

By P.K.Balachandran/Daily Express

As troubled Afghanistan moves towards a partial withdrawal of American troops; an end to violence; and a political solution, the presence or influence of China, Russia and Pakistan in that country has increased perceptibly.

Despite its accusation that Pakistan is not doing enough to contain terrorism on its soil and also in Afghanistan; despite its trade and strategic conflict with China; and its stand-off with Russia over issues relating to the Middle East, the US has roped in these very countries to help it get out of the mess in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Afghan troops, militants, and civilians have died every year in the last 18 years of US involvement. Even today, there are 14,000 US troops stationed in Afghanistan either training government troops or participating in commando operations against the Taliban.

US Ropes in Pakistan

The US has roped in Pakistan to help it settle issues with the Taliban because Pakistan and the Taliban have had close historical ties.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will be meeting President Donald Trump in Washington on July 22 to discuss a wide range of issues including Pakistan’s present and future role in Afghanistan.

The meeting comes after the seventh round of US-Taliban talks in Doha in which the two sides had reached a draft agreement on four basic issues: counterterrorism assurances, troop withdrawal, a ceasefire, and intra-Afghan talks.

Pakistan won a place in the high table on Afghanistan by being an intermediary between the Taliban and external parties such as Beijing, Moscow and Washington. This, it had been able to do without diluting its basic stand that there could be no lasting peace in Afghanistan unless the primacy of Taliban is recognized and guaranteed by all parties. It took the regional and global powers-that-be a long time to realize this simple truth.

According to former Indian Ambassador, M.K.Bhadrakumar, the US has assigned to Pakistan the role of ensuring that Afghanistan does not again become a “lab of terrorists” as President Donald Trump put it.

According to the White House, the Trump-Imran talks will focus on “strengthening cooperation between the United States and Pakistan to bring peace, stability, and economic prosperity to a region that has seen far too much conflict.” This must be music to the ears of Imran Khan because Pakistan is facing severe financial problems.

It is difficult to say what exactly the White House statement meant when it said that the US will keep in sight “the goal of creating the conditions for a peaceful South Asia and an enduring partnership between our two countries.”

Perhaps it means that the US will restrain India if the latter becomes belligerent towards Pakistan and intensifies its policy of isolating Pakistan globally on the plea that Pakistan is the launching pad for cross-border terrorism.

However, what is likely is that the US might step up military aid to Pakistan. Gen Mark Milley, who is Chief of Staff of the US army, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee recently, that Trump had recognized Pakistan as “a key partner in achieving US interests in South Asia, including developing a political settlement in Afghanistan; defeating Al Qaeda and ISIS-Khorasan; providing logistical access for US forces; and enhancing regional stability”.

Gen.Milley argued for closer military ties with Pakistan. Former US Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, told a gathering in Colombo recently that the Obama Administration under which he worked, had erred by cutting off military ties with Pakistan. “As a result of this, the US lost touch with a whole generation of Pakistani military officers,” Blake said.

Accommodating China

In a move welcomed by Islamabad, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has kept China in the loop on the Doha talks with the Taliban. Last month, Beijing itself had hosted Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. Prior to this, in 2018, China had met Taliban leaders on several occasions.

China’s Economic Route To Afghanistan

China has only recently begun playing a role in bringing about peace in Afghanistan. But it had been quietly making economic inroads into that country since 2006.

According to the latest report of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Afghanistan done by the Organization for Policy Research and Development Studies (DROPS), a Kabul-based think tank, China is now Afghanistan’s largest business investor. Chinese companies have been involved in construction projects.

Beijing has an interest in Afghanistan’s vast deposits of essential minerals such as lithium (used in mobile phone batteries). China has won rights to the Amu Darya Basin oil in the north and the massive Mes Aynak copper mine near Kabul, though work on these projects has suffered because of the bad security situation.

In 2016, China and Afghanistan signed a Memorandum of Understanding. In September 2016 the first direct freight train from China reached the Afghan border town of Hairatan. An air corridor linking Kabul and the Chinese city of Urumqi was also opened. In May 2017, Afghan officials attended the international Belt and Road Forum in China, and in October Afghanistan joined China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which funds BRI projects.

According to DROPS, China has pledged “huge support” for building railways in Afghanistan. In 2017, China convened a trilateral dialogue with Pakistan and Afghanistan to discuss extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan.

China’s Anxieties

However, all these ambitious economic plans would hinge on the assurance of safety and security, which have always been a question mark in Afghanistan. One of the main reasons for China’s increasing involvement in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan is the fear that Afghanistan-based Islamic terror groups might infiltrate into Muslim-majority Xinjiang where there has been continuous resistance to Chinese domination.

Beijing’s anxiety about security started growing when the US began to scale down its military presence in Afghanistan in 2011. To protect itself, China built a base in Badakhshan Province and funded a Mounted Brigade. It launched the Quadrilateral Coordination and Cooperation Mechanism (QCCM) with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.

Since 2015, China has been involved in a number of multilateral peace initiatives, including the Quadrilateral Coordination Group and, more recently, the “Moscow Format”.

Beijing has cultivated good ties with the Taliban, meeting them several times in 2018. It was in early 2015 that China began facilitating talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. But deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan over the Taliban made these efforts ineffective.

Therefore, China arranged talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It set up a Trilateral Crisis Management Mechanism. In December 2017, China hosted trilateral talks where the three countries called on the Taliban to join the talks process.

Pakistan and China played a key role in brokering a ceasefire deal. Interestingly, the Taliban agreed to declare a ceasefire only if Pakistan and China became its guarantors.

Ties With Kabul Regime

While all this was going on, China maintained close ties with the Afghan government as well. It signed a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborly Relations with Kabul regime in 2006. Two years later, Chinese companies won a US$ 3 billion contract to extract copper from the Mes Aynak mines in Logar province. In September 2017, China gave US$ 90 million towards development projects in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province alone.

In the past three years, China has also extended more than US$70 million in military aid to Afghanistan, according to Ahmad Bilal Khalil, a researcher at the Centre for Strategic and Regional Studies in Kabul.

In the telecommunications sector, China’s role has grown from supplying Afghanistan with telecom equipment in 2007 to the construction of fiber-optic link in 2017.

(The featured image at the top shows a Taliban delegation headed by Maulana Abdul Ghani Baradar in China for talks)