Indian wheat for Afghanistan through Pakistan soil: Sign of ties to come?

The previously unthinkable has happened – Islamabad and New Delhi have joined forces to help Afghanistan

M. K. Bhadrakumar

The three-week-long “anti-terror operation” undertaken by the Indian Army from October 11 in the Bhatta Durrian forest in Poonch district after the killing of nine soldiers, including two junior commissioned officers and two policemen, was billed as “one of the longest” in the history of the insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir.

Yet no Indian functionary or politician pointed a finger at Pakistan. This is despite the fact that on October 21, Pakistan was facing scrutiny in Paris at the plenary meeting of the multilateral watchdog known as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on moneylaundering and terror financing.

Again, the state elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are looming large on the political horizon and the Bharatiya Janata Party has not so far used Pakistan as its bogeyman during election campaigns.

New Delhi has chosen instead to take the diplomatic initiative to engage Pakistan constructively, seeking transit facilities for transporting 50,000 metric tons of wheat as humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. The crux of the matter is that New Delhi has shown a preference for the Pakistani route.

Curiously, again, this initiative also overlapped the Indian government’s decision on the reopening of the Kartarpur Corridor – interestingly enough, with some Pakistani prompting.

It now transpires that Pakistan has given the green light to the transit request for the Indian wheat to be transported to Afghanistan. Indeed, the Taliban leadership had earlier endorsed the Indian request for transit via the Wagah border.

Without doubt, the positive Pakistani response has profound implications, since Islamabad is de facto facilitating the commencement of a constructive engagement between New Delhi and the Taliban authorities in Kabul.

Humanitarian crisis

Put differently, Delhi, Islamabad and Kabul find themselves on the same page in regard to addressing the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan.

The folklore used to be that India would prop up an anti-Taliban resistance movement all over again and that Pakistan would exorcise the Indian presence from Kabul. Both assumptions must now be set aside.

Delhi has come to accept the Taliban takeover in Kabul as a reality and seems increasingly unsure of its dogmatic view of the Taliban as a mere proxy of the Pakistani military and security establishment.

While connecting these dots, what emerges is that the Indian government is rapidly adjusting to the undercurrents in the Western strategy to reengage with the Taliban and Pakistan. Basically, the Indian government never really “decoupled” its policies from the US strategy.

The resumption of talks in Doha between US and European Union representatives and the Taliban indicates that the Western powers are shifting gear. What gives impetus in this direction are two things.

First, unless the humanitarian situation is addressed urgently and the collapse of the Afghan banking system is averted by creating liquidity in the economy, a refugee flow out of the country is in the cards.

Second, the terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan are stepping up and the Taliban are hard-pressed to counter them.

Both are highly consequential scenarios for international security.

Then there is the overarching Western concern that a protracted absence from Kabul can only work to the advantage of China and Russia – and Iran.

The US policy is trapped in the “legitimacy” aspect of the Taliban government. On the contrary, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran have discreetly sidestepped the contentious issue of “legitimacy,” which creates space for them to develop their relations with the authorities in Kabul even without having to recognize the Taliban government.

China getting ready to move in

A recent report in the Global Times disclosed that several Chinese companies are even conducting on-site inspections of potential lithium projects in Afghanistan. To be sure, the American companies that were secretly doing business in Afghan lithium under former president Ashraf Ghani’s watch must be getting frantic that the Chinese companies are stealing a march over them.

Against such a backdrop, Washington has knocked at the Pakistani door seeking help to work out the terms of the West’s engagement with the Taliban. Pakistan is willing to be of help.

Despite Imran Khan’s strident anti- Western posturing in the past, after becoming prime minister, he has shown a remarkable degree of pragmatism – as his openness to taking help from the International Monetary Fund or heeding the US de