Page 2 of 2 All roads lead out of Afghanistan By M K Bhadrakumar
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. A branch line could also go from Georgia
via Azerbaijan to the Turkmen-Afghan border.
The project, if it materializes, will be a geopolitical coup - the biggest ever
that Washington would have swung in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus.
At one stroke, the US will be tying up military cooperation at the bilateral
level with Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
Furthermore, the US will be effectively drawing these countries closer into
NATO's partnership programs. Georgia, in particular, gets a privileged status
as the key transit country, which will
offset the current European opposition to its induction as a NATO member
country. Besides, The US will have virtually dealt a blow to the Russia-led
Collective Security Treat Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO). Not only will the US have succeeded in keeping the CSTO and
the SCO from poking their noses into the Afghan cauldron, it will also have
made these organizations largely irrelevant to regional security when
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the two key players in Central Asia, simply step out
of the ambit of these organizations and directly deal with the US and NATO.
Third, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on December 12 that the US was
also concurrently setting up a presence in Almaty. It said, "The talks that the
US administration officials are having in Central Asia confirm the view that a
new project exists. Last week, Kazakhstan's parliament ratified memorandums of
support for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. They allow the US to use
the military section of Almaty airport for emergency landings by military
planes."
Therefore, the US is making a determined bid to render Russian diplomacy on
Afghanistan toothless. Interestingly, the US has allowed NATO at the same time
to negotiate with Russia for transit route facilities, which Moscow will be
hard-pressed to refuse. Last week, the NATO envoy for Central Asia, Robert
Simmons, visited Moscow. If Moscow had calculated that assisting the NATO
supply route would enable it to gain influence on other issues of Russia-West
relations or on Afghanistan, that is not going to happen as the US would have
no dependence on Russia as such and would have no compulsion to reciprocate.
Washington has certainly done some smart thinking. It is having the best of
both worlds - NATO taking help from Russia with the US at the same time
puncturing the CSTO and undercutting Russian interests in the Caucasus and
Central Asia.
What hits Russian interests most is that if the Caucasian route materializes,
the US would have consolidated its military presence in South Caucasus on a
long-term basis. Ever since the conflict in the Caucasus in August, the US has
maintained a continuous naval presence in the Black Sea, with regular port
calls in Georgia. The indications are that the US is planning a carefully
calibrated ground presence in Georgia as well. Talks are in the final stages
for a US-Georgia Security and Military Agreement. US Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State Matt Bryza visited Tbilisi on Tuesday for consultations in this
regard.
According to reports, Washington is finalizing a document that includes helping
Georgia fulfill the criteria for NATO membership and promoting "security
cooperation and strategic partnership". As a US expert summed up, "The South
Caucasus option is more expensive but incomparably more secure. It is also
immune to Russian political manipulation ... a larger flow of supplies by land
and air would presuppose an unobtrusive US military-logistical presence on the
ground. It would also require reliable control of Georgian and Azerbaijani air
space."
Another dramatic fallout is that the proposed land route covering Georgia,
Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan can also be easily converted into an
energy corridor and become a Caspian oil and gas corridor bypassing Russia.
Such a corridor has been a long-cherished dream for Washington. Furthermore,
European countries will feel the imperative to agree to the US demand that the
transit countries for the energy corridor are granted NATO protection in one
form or the other. That, in turn, leads to NATO's expansion into the Caucasus
and Central Asia.
Surely, the renewed Taliban threat in Afghanistan and the escalation of combat
is providing a fantastic backdrop. For the first time, the US would be
establishing a military presence in the Caucasus and the distinct possibility
emerges for a Caspian energy corridor leading to the European market. Both
Russia and Iran will feel directly threatened by the US military presence
virtually in their border regions, and both would feel outplayed by Washington
in the Caspian energy sweepstakes.
These maneuverings over the supply routes bring out the full range of the
bitterly fought geopolitical struggle in the Hindu Kush, which mostly lies
hidden from the world opinion that remains focused on the fate of al-Qaeda and
Taliban. The fact is, seven years down the road from the 2001 invasion of
Afghanistan, the US has done exceedingly well in geopolitical terms, even if
the war as such may have gone rather badly both for the Afghans and the
Pakistanis and the European soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
US holds trump card
The US has succeeded in establishing its long-term military presence in
Afghanistan. Ironically, with the deterioration of the war, a case is now being
built for establishing new US military bases in Central Asia. While the US's
close partnership with the Pakistani military continues intact, the search for
new supply routes becomes the perfect backdrop for expanding its influence into
the Russian and Chinese (and Iranian) backyards in Central Asia.
The veiled threat of reopening the "Kashmir file", which is patently aimed at
keeping India at bay, also serves a useful purpose. Plainly put, the US faces a
real geopolitical challenge in Afghanistan if only a coalition of like-minded
regional powers like Russia, China, Iran and India takes shape and these powers
seriously begin exchanging notes about what the Afghan war has been about so
far and where it is heading and what the US strategy aims at. So far, the US
has succeeded in stalling such a process by sorting out these regional powers
individually. Indeed, Washington has been a net beneficiary from the
contradictions in the mutual relations between these regional powers.
On the whole, the US holds several trump cards, given the contradictions in
Sino-Indian relations, Sino-Russian relations, the situation around Iran,
India-Pakistan relations and Iran-Pakistan and, of course, Russia-Pakistan
relations. The US's number one diplomatic challenge at this juncture will be to
pre-empt and scatter any sort of incipient coordination that may take place
between the regional powers surrounding Afghanistan in the nature of a
regionally initiated peace process. The US has done its utmost to see that the
SCO proposal for holding an international conference on Afghanistan doesn't
materialize.
But as the Russian-Indian and Iranian-Indian consultations this week in Delhi
testify, the regional powers may be slowly waking up and becoming wiser about
the US's geostrategy in Afghanistan. The time may not be far off before they
begin to sense that the "war on terror" is providing a convenient rubric under
which the US is incrementally securing for itself a permanent abode in the
highlands of the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs, Central Asian steppes and the
Caucasus that form the strategic hub overlooking Russia, China, India and Iran.
The million-dollar question is Obama's sincerity. If he genuinely wants to end
the bloodshed and the suffering in Afghanistan, tackle terrorism effectively
and enduringly, as well as stabilize Afghanistan and secure South Asia as a
stable region, he has to make a definitive choice. All he needs to do is to
feel disgusted with the "collateral damage" that the great game is causing to
the human condition, and seek an inclusive Afghan settlement in terms of the
imperatives of regional security and stability.
Such a break will be consistent with what he claims his sense of values to be.
The existential choice is whether he will break with the past out of principle.
No doubt, Obama faces a tough call, being a quintessential "outsider" in
Washington, as he will run into the vested interests of the US security
establishment, the military-industrial complex, Big Oil and the influential
corpus of cold warriors who are bent on pressing ahead. The war in the Hindu
Kush enters a decisive phase for the New American Century project.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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