Implications of U.S.'s Withdrawal from Afghanistan
iasparliament
January 26, 2019
What is the issue?
America is in the process of quitting Afghanistan as its soldiers are too expensive to send abroad.
The SAARC countries, India and Pakistan especially, are required to assess the situation and respond appropriately.
What does the withdrawal mean for the countries?
Pakistan is scared of what will happen if America really quits and Afghanistan returns to its heroin-sustained warlordism.
The Afghan Taliban are winning on a daily basis and control half of the country.
They even eye the 250,000-strong Afghan army as future Taliban.
India has presence in Afghanistan after the construction of the Chabahar Port in Iran and the highway that links it to Kabul.
China is the next economic presence in Afghanistan after India.
Turkey is also eying an opportunity to play its role to safeguard the interests of Afghanistan’s Turkmen-Turkic community.
Three South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) members - Afghanistan, Pakistan, India - could have cooperated.
But the countries are only moving to end up in a conflict.
What is Pakistan's stance?
When the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, Pakistan’s own jihadi underground in the madrasa-dominated regions was vulnerable to their influence.
Rebellious Pakistani Taliban, safely located in northwestern Afghanistan, has hurt Pakistan as no one else in Afghanistan.
In 2014, six of its gunmen attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar, killing more than 100 children.
This changed the thinking of the Pakistan army.
Pakistan no longer viewed Afghanistan as its “strategic depth” against India as it posed challenges to it in return.
How does Afghanistan's future look?
The Taliban have warriors in their hordes who have come from the Middle East and Central Asia.
Also, there are ISIS-Daesh and Al Qaeda still operational in Afghanistan, threatening all the three SAARC members.
It is true that most Afghans will accept the return of the Taliban.
They would welcome the destruction of the liberal order now being held up by an America-overseen constitution and American money.
But they would like to leave the country, if they could, before a Taliban takeover.
This is because Afghanistan is already on the brink of a food and water crisis.
The “small landlocked country recovering from decades of war” is among the water-stressed nations and whose people lack sufficient dietary diversity.
The Ashraf Ghani government will not survive after the American-funded Afghan army disintegrates and joins up with the Taliban.
That’s why the Taliban are refusing to even recognise the Kabul government.
For them, the Afghan army is the low-hanging fruit that will enlarge their capacity to challenge both Pakistan and India.
What lies ahead?
It is difficult to diagnose the state of the mind of decision-makers in Pakistan.
But their decision to turn to India and offer talks and trade points to the possibility of the kind of normalisation needed for handling the crisis in Afghanistan.
A dead SAARC must now be revived to decide what its three members are going to do after the Americans leave Afghanistan.
