Custom Search
|
|
Address The Afghan Dimension Of The Pak Challenge
Despite the recent setbacks it has suffered in Kabul, in order to secure its long-term geo-political and security interests, New Delhi should aim at having an effective and continued presence in Afghanistan so as to have a deterring effect on a recalcitrant Pakistan. India needs to have such a strategy as is placed on Afghanistan soil and exert its effective influence on Pakistan. To that end, Indian policy planners need to drive home the point to Pentagon that even US interests are best protected with the moderating influence that needs to be brought to the restive region and that only India, and not Pakistan, is capable of playing such a constructive role in Afghanistan, especially after the US troops have left the scene. The recent Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has declared in unequivocal terms that nuclear terrorism is one of the most challenging threats to international security, and strong nuclear security measures are the most effective means to prevent terrorists, insurgents and the so-called non-state actors from acquiring nuclear materials and nuclear technology. In order to achieve the goal of global nuclear security, the world leaders have decided upon securing of all nuclear material the world over by the year 2014. To achieve the goal of global nuclear security and to diminish the danger of nuclear terrorism and safeguarding nuclear material, active, honest and transparent international cooperation is the only way. It is in this background that both India's and Pakistan's respective nuclear track records need to be perused. Especially after the withdrawal of NATO forces, with a weak government in Kabul and the various institutions of governance still in a nascent stage, the situation from Afghanistan to Pakistan's restive west is likely to remain as volatile or deteriorate further. Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), Swat Valley, South Waziristan and the southwestern province of Baluchistan are already in the direct grip of raging extremism and insurgency. The worsening security situation will quite likely further reinforce and centralize the role of Pakistan's military establishment and the powerful ISI in the overall regional security situation. With the Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT), Pakistan's neo-Taliban groups such as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and the ISI playing the czar of terrorism in the region, the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre is bursting with world's most alarming terror hotbed. It is here that the terror groups are most likely to lay their hands on nuclear material. Thus, there is a real threat of nuclear terrorism emanating from this region. Further, there is a clear dichotomy in the aims of the US and Pakistan's defence establishment in the region. Both envisage, in accordance with their respective national interests, radically different end-results of the protracted Afghan war. The US would like to effectively neutralize the Taliban and the al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but the Pak defence establishment would, however, prefer to co-opt it in a new power regime in Kabul. The recently floated terminology of "Good Taliban" and "Bad Taliban" is a pointer of things to come. Much like the Punjabis in India and Pakistan, Pushto-speaking Pakhtuns form a historic sub-nationality in the region and are a closely-knit ethnic group in both Afghanistan and North-West Pakistan. There exists a natural kinship and mutual feeling of brotherhood between the two groups. Bulk of the military trainers of al-Qaeda and Taliban has been the former and regular elements of the Pak army and the ISI. The US’s political leadership as well as its top field commanders on the ground in Afghanistan, therefore, cannot hope much from the Pak army, once they leave Afghanistan. The situation is, therefore, likely to worsen by the end of the next year. Instead of leaving the affairs of Afghanistan in the hands of an unstable and ungovernable Pakistan, a strong presence of a responsible nuclear nation like India as a guarantor of peace and tranquility in the volatile region should be more reassuring to the western world. India's blemishless record, its long sufferings and sacrifices in the country and its constructive role in re-building Afghanistan should put to rest any doubts in the matter. While India's nuclear record is blemishless , Pakistan's past track record shows that it is neither a willing partner nor a cooperating nation in promotion of a nuclear security culture. The international community is well aware of Pakistan's covert role in clandestine nuclear proliferation from Libya to North Korea. India, and not Pakistan, therefore, is capable of contributing to genuine progress in making the world a safer place. It is widely feared that the spectre of nuclear terrorism that the world is currently facing is most likely to burst forth from the terror hotbed of an increasingly unstable Pakistan and a volatile Afghanistan. In its own immediate and long-term national security interests and those of the west in general and of the US in particular, India will have to successfully address the Afghan dimension of the challenge emanating from Pakistan. The international community today is gearing up to take strong and meaningful steps in order to secure the world’s nuclear materials. It is time that New Delhi seizes this global sentiment and acts upon it. Technology Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com |
|