RUSSIA-INDIA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT

http://www.ceps.eu/book/russia-europe-and-west

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/?lng=en&id=114434

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers38/paper3732.html

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

The Russia-India Strategic Partnership has been brought into sharper focus this week for two significant reasons. The first significant reason was the recent visit of Russian Prime Minister Putin to New Delhi in mid-March 2010. The second significant reason is the changed South Asia geo-political context generated by the United States abject appeasement of Pakistan Army Chief’s demands on the United States to craft Pakistan’s strategic parity with India and pressurize India to yield on Kashmir issue and the water-disputes as a new contentious issue raised by Pakistan.

In the rapidly changing South Asia geopolitical environment, Prime Minister Putin’s visit in rich in symbolism both in its timing and content. Putin as Russia’s President in the period 2000-2008 has been the architect and prime mover in resurrecting the Russia-India Strategic Partnership from virtual redundancy it was consigned to in the Yeltsin era. In his earlier four Presidential visits to India and now again as Prime Minister, lies the Russian reiteration of the continuing value it places on the Russia-India Strategic Partnership.

In marked contrast to the above, the yet to mature US-India Strategic Partnership of recent vintage stands endangered in Indian public perceptions by US Obama Administration’s propensity to cut an opportunistic deal with the Pakistan Army Chief to facilitate a speedy United States exit from Afghanistan.

The primacy, being accorded by the US Obama Administrations apex level officials to Pakistan Army Chief, General Kayani in determining the course and content of the ongoing unprecedented Ministerial-level US-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue is worrisome both for the Pakistani public and India’s policy establishment.

Pertinently, eminent Pakistani TV commentator and media personality Hameed Mir reiterated on Indian TV news channel, TIMES-NOW that the Pakistan Army Chief’s parleys in Washington aided by Pakistan Foreign Minister did not carry the mandate of the Pakistan Parliament, implicitly highlighting the uncertain implications of the new US initiative.

The Pakistani public opinion should be left in no doubt that once again the United States is obstructively standing in between Pakistani’s aspirations for genuine democracy and the Pakistan Army intent on retaining its primacy in Pakistan's governance and control of Pakistan’s foreign policies especially towards India.

The Indian policy establishment should be a worrisome lot that the United States has not left them even a fig-leaf to cover the utter failure of India’s policies on Pakistan, determined and evolved by the Indian Prime Minister under strong pressures from the United States. The distinguishing feature of Indian Prime Minister’s Pakistan policy was an object appeasement of Pakistan for peace at all costs.

Such has been the servile attitudinal reflexes of those US apologists close to the Indian policy establishment that they are now preaching that India like the United States, should invite Pakistan Army Chief, General Kayani to India for talks to enable move forward of the peace dialogue.

In such a political environment that dominates the thinking of the Indian policy establishment, the strategic gaze of objective analysts necessarily veers towards making comparisons between India’s strategic partnerships with Russia and the United States.

In this context, this Paper would like to focus on examination of the following related issues.

• India’s Contextual Geopolitical Environment

• Russia-India Strategic Partnership and US-India Strategic Partnership: Brief Comparative Analysis

• United States Renewed Strategic Tilt Towards Pakistan: Strategic Change of Course or Tactical Expediency

India’s Contextual Geopolitical Environment

“India’s Foreign Policy 2004-2009: The Wasted Years” was the title of an earlier paper of this author. India’s contextual geopolitical environment in which India now finds itself severely strategically disadvantaged arises directly from these wasted years.

India’s contextual geopolitical environment is dismal in which India stands checkmated on virtually all strategic fronts, namely:

• United States has effectively sidelined India from Afghanistan in favour of Pakistan.

• United States has resorted to balance-of-power strategies against India by continued supply of advanced military hardware to Pakistan, unrelated to counter-terrorism operations.

• At Pakistan’s insistence, the United States has subjected India to persistent pressures to engage Pakistan in dialogue oblivious to Pakistan’s continued terror attacks against India.

• Notably and significantly, China’s renewed intransigence and territorial violations on the Sino-Indian border have coincidentally sprung back to life in tandem with what China perceives as the devaluation of the US-India Strategic Partnership by the US Obama Administration.

Ironically, from a position of strategic predominance in South Asia of earlier years, India today stands being reduced to one of military equivalence with Pakistan as a result of United States recent South Asia policies with a Pak-centric focus. Additionally, India stands so reduced as a result of the Indian policy establishment allowing itself to be pressurized to toe US strategic priorities in the region, namely US proclivities to submit to Pakistan Army demands.

Russia-India Strategic Partnership and US-India Strategic Partnership: Brief Comparative Analysis

A comparative analysis of India’s strategic partnerships with Russia and the United States can be briefly done by highlighting the following characteristics/connotations of the two:

• The Russia India Strategic Partnership has been a time-tested and enduring one for more than a quarter of a century. Geo-strategically and geopolitically Russia has stood by India under trying circumstances and contributed to India’s national security interests.

• The US-India Strategic Partnership is still an evolving one. With just one change of US Administration, the US-India Strategic Partnership stands strategically and politically endangered.

• Russia, creditably, has never indulged in balance-of-power strategies in South Asia and provided strategic ballast to India’s South Asian predominance.

• United States strategic tilts in the past and now underway have been in favour of Pakistan and at India’s strategic expense. The United States has never effectively restrained Pakistan in its anti-India political and military adventurism, despite US tremendous leverages over Pakistan.

• India can still count on Russia to act as “the sheet anchor of its foreign policies”. The United States has yet to provide that assurance and confidence to India.

On balance, therefore, the Russia-India Strategic Partnership serves India’s national security interests more effectively than the US-India Strategic Partnership.

As on date the Russia-India Strategic Partnership encompasses a wide spectrum of providing muscle to the Indian Armed Forces by supply of advanced military hardware, predominantly underwriting India’s economic growth with the large number of civil nuclear reactors contracted for and provision of other high technologies including joint R & D and production of futuristic weapon systems.

United States Renewed Strategic Tilt Towards Pakistan: Strategic Change of Course or Tactical Expediency

United States renewed strategic tilt towards Pakistan, on the face of it, seems to be determined by the Afghanistan problem and the US predicaments there.

The question that begs an answer then is whether this American shift in South Asia policies is one of tactical expediency to make use of the Pakistan Army in the short-term future or is it a really a well-thought out long term strategic change of course in US policies.

If it is a strategy of tactical expedience then the manifestations would be apparent in the next two to three years or even earlier. So far the record of the United States towards Pakistan has been one of spasmodic tactical expediency.

However, this time, at the highest levels, the United States has declared and emphasized that it is looking forward to establish a long term strategic relationship with Pakistan, transcending the traditional military dimensions.

One would therefore prefer to reserve one’s comments on the tactical or strategic perspectives. However, a few observations are in order to get the perspectives right.

Firstly, the euphoria that has overtaken the Pakistani military establishment in the wake of President Obama’s recent utterances and the outcome of the London Conference is not matched by the US side. In the United States, the optimism is more deliberate and calibrated.

Secondly, the connotations being given by Pakistan and the United States differ. The Pakistan military establishment, prefers to term the Strategic Dialogue of March 24, 2010 as one of being the first steps to establish a long term “US-Pak Strategic Partnership”. The United States on the other hand prefers to term it as a “strategic relationship”.

On balance, whether the US renewed tilt towards Pakistan is tactical or strategic, both carry serious security implications for India. India's policy establishment therefore urgently needs to weigh US-India Strategic Partnership on more realistic scales of how effectively it is contributing to India's national security interests.

Concluding Observations

The Russia-India Strategic Partnership is a time-tested strategic partnership. It was the sheet anchor of India’s foreign policies during the Cold War when India was being buffeted around strategically. It continues as the sheet-anchor of India’s foreign policy even contemporarily when the contextual geopolitical situation portends that India would once again be likely to be buffeted around on Kashmir and other contentious issues with which Pakistan Army is at odds with India and asking USA to pressurize India.

While an equally vibrant US-India Strategic Partnership is also desirable for India, but regrettably that vibrancy is unlikely to emerge till such time the United States gives up its propensity for periodic strategic tilts towards Pakistan.

With Russia not carrying any “Pakistan baggage” in its policy approaches to South Asia and towards India, the Russia-India Strategic Partnership is better placed to serve India’s national security interests. To some Indians it may be devoid of glamorous embellishments but then in the end-game in strategically and politically in turbulent times for India, a strategic partnership requires the assured stability of a strongly and deeply embedded sheet-anchor. The Russia-India Strategic Partnership carries that distinction which stands validated historically.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group.

The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story

http://larryflynt.com/?p=693?x=1

http://www.thedailybell.com/897/Newsweek-US-in-Terminal-Decline.html

By Mark Perry

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow … and too late.”

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region’s most troublesome conflict.

[UPDATE: A senior military officer denied Sunday that Petraeus sent a paper to the White House.

"CENTCOM did have a team brief the CJCS on concerns revolving around the Palestinian issue, and CENTCOM did propose a UCP change, but to CJCS, not to the WH," the officer said via email. "GEN Petraeus was not certain what might have been conveyed to the WH (if anything) from that brief to CJCS."

(UCP means "unified combatant command," like CENTCOM; CJCS refers to Mullen; and WH is the White House.)]

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus’s request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied (“it was dead on arrival,” a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama administration decided it would redouble its efforts — pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen’s trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians “in a larger, regional, context” — as having a direct impact on America’s status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus’s Mullen briefing: “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronothwent on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers — and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has forever shifted America’s relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

[UPDATE 2--from Mark Perry: A senior military officer told Foreign Policy by email that one minor detail in my report, "The Petraeus Briefing" was incorrect: a request from General Petraeus for the Palestinian occupied territories (but, as I made clear, not Israel itself), be brought within CENTCOM's region of operation was sent to JCS Chairman Mullen - and not directly to the White House. My information was based on conversations with CENTCOM officials, who believed they were giving me correct information. It is significant that the correction was made, not because it is an important detail, but because it is was inconsequential to the overall narrative. In effect, the U.S. military has clearly said there was nothing in this report that could be denied.]

Brazil steps between Israel and Iran

Brazil steps between Israel and Iran
By Pepe Escobar

Talk about a Via Dolorosa. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the first Brazilian president to visit Israel officially. Lauded for his charisma, swing and formidable negotiating powers - United States President Barack Obama refers to him as "the man" - little did Lula know that to engage his hosts this week he would have to give the Prophet Abraham a run for his money, no less.

In the end, he stood his ground. He made no concessions. And unlike United States Vice President Joseph Biden last week, he even managed not to be publicly humiliated by his hosts.

Lula is no stranger to tough neighborhoods. Former bouncer turned hardline politician Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, boycotted Lula's speech at the Knesset (parliament) as well as Lula's meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The reason: Lula did not visit the tomb of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl. But neither did France's President Nicolas Sarkozy or Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when they visited Israel.

Brasilia - as much as Paris and Rome - knows very well that a visit to the tomb is not mandatory on presidential trips. Yet a choir of the Likud/settler hardcore Zionist faction in Israel carped that this would fatally wound the Brazilian government's drive to become a mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After being grilled in the Knesset - including by Netanyahu - for his policy of non-confrontation and dialogue with Iran, Lula did not flinch. He condemned both the Holocaust and terrorism; he reminded his hosts of Brazil's and Latin America's stand against nuclear weapons; he stressed "dialogue" and "compassion" to solve the Middle East conflict; he defended a viable two-state solution for Israel and Palestine; but he also did not refrain from criticizing the expanded colonization of East Jerusalem. He received a standing ovation and, according to some members of parliament, "more applause than [former US president] George W Bush".

The tropical prophet
Not even at his Abrahamic best would Lula have been able to mollify Zionists and assorted hardliners. Anyway, Lula told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz what every serious player in the Middle East already knows; the "peace process" is going nowhere, and bringing new mediators such as Brazil to the table is the only way forward.

And the same applied to the Iranian dossier: "The [world] leaders I spoke to believe that we must act quickly, otherwise Israel will attack Iran." Lula is convinced that further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program are counter-productive. And this quote is bound to resonate globally, "We can't allow to happen in Iran what happened in Iraq. Before any sanctions, we must undertake all possible efforts to try and build peace in the Middle East."

The official Brazilian government view - echoed by much of the international community (that is, not the exclusive club of Washington and the usual European suspects) - is that everything is still to be negotiated with Iran over its nuclear dossier. Lula is adamant: Iran has a right to develop a peaceful nuclear program in terms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which it is a signatory.

Brazil is currently a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council. As much as China, it will not support new US-driven sanctions on Iran - regardless of US Secretary of State Robert Gates spinning that the US has enough backing to advance a fourth, tough round of sanctions, with Saudi Arabia finally persuading China. China will never vote against its own national security interest - and Iran is a matter of Chinese national security. Lula will be in Tehran in May and will meet - again - with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Hardline Zionists are - what else - fuming.

Lula knows very well that so-called "smart sanctions" that would apply mainly to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - in charge of the bulk of economic and political power in Iran - would also affect millions of civilians connected to IRGC-controlled businesses, and thus the population at large, which is already paying the price for the current sanctions. The IRGC controls at least 60 ports in the Persian Gulf. Preventing Asia from doing business with Iran would imply a naval blockade - and that's a declaration of war.

How not to push Iran
Lula has hit the Middle East at a crucial juncture - just as Netanyahu's government has decided to build more settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even to the detriment of crucial US support on the Iranian front.

Ironically, it's on the economic front, rather than geopolitics, that Brazil is managing to seduce the Israeli establishment. Israel signed a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Mercosur [1] - the fifth-largest bloc in terms of gross domestic product in the world - much to the chagrin of Palestinians, who identify the FTA as a powerful boost to the Israeli military-industrial complex.

And this when it is clear that Brazil is strictly in favor of a viable Palestinian state according to the 1967 borders. This FTA carries a key strategic provision - it allows the transfer of weapons technology to Mercosur members. Thus weapons responsible for the repression in Gaza will soon be available in South America.

On a parallel front, bolstering Brazil's role as mediator, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally suggested to Lula that Brazil could make two visits - by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and by Netanyahu - coincide on Brazilian soil. Assad goes to Brazil this year, and this week Netanyahu also accepted an invitation. A tropical, informal Syrian-Israeli summit might be ideal to break the ice. Lula and Netanyahu have adopted a bilateral system of meetings between heads of state and top ministers every two years.

By what about the US in all this? An official US-Brazil strategic agreement is also now in place, implying two foreign minister-level meetings a year, one in the US, one in Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim has a very close relationship with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On her recent visit to Brazil, Clinton pressed both Lula and Amorim to support tougher sanctions on Iran. The refusal was polite but firm.

Clinton was left to complain at a press conference about how Iran is "using" Brazil, Turkey and China to evade sanctions. Amorim for his part is always fond of remembering the Iraqi disaster: "I was an ambassador at the UN during the critical moments of deciding about Iraq. And what we saw was a big mistake."

Lula could not be more specific: "It is not wise to push Iran against the wall. I want for Iran what I want for Brazil: to use nuclear energy for peaceful ends. If Iran goes beyond that, then we will not agree with it." Roughly, that's the same position as China's.

Lula and Obama had seemed to be in synch on Iran, starting from their meeting on the sidelines of a Group of Eight plus five meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, nine months ago. Then, Obama even encouraged the Brasilia-Tehran dialogue, as long as Brazil pressed on Iran the commitment to a strictly civilian nuclear program. That's exactly what Lula told Ahmadinejad when they met in Brazil. It is the Obama administration's position that has substantially hardened.

Brazilian diplomats insist that Ahmadinejad never closed the door to negotiations. In discreet, bilateral diplomatic talks, US officials even admit to their Brazilian counterparts that Ahmadinejad himself is not inflexible, nor is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In a February 19 speech at the naming of an Iranian destroyer, Khamenei once again denied that Iran was after nuclear weapons and stressed that they were illegal according to Islamic law because they killed large numbers of innocent civilians.

The problem has been amplified by much American and European media hype. Defusing the sanctions drum rolls, even Clinton, in a moment of candor during her South American trip, was forced to admit that sanctions could take "several months" to be adopted, if at all.

Even before Clinton's visit, Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki had already admitted to Brazilian media on the record that Brazil could be a "bridge” between Iran and the US/European Union front, because of its "realist" position. Mottaki does not see Brazil as a "mediator" - but rather as "acting to facilitate consultations", as Tehran does not believe that any country should speak for its (Tehran's) own interests.

Neither did Brasilia explicitly ask to be a mediator. Mottaki has revealed he's developing substantial "telephone diplomacy" with Amorim. Tehran obviously sees the benefits of establishing a dialogue channel to the industrialized West via a key developing country.

The BRICS as the new superpower
Lula's strategy of trying to position himself as a "bridge" should be especially welcomed as the Iranian dossier reaches a crucial stage at which hardline factions within the US/EU/Israel are doing everything to disregard any intelligence that doubts Iran is building a nuclear bomb; there have been systematic attempts to "fix" intelligence to suggest that they are (echoes of Iraq?)

Lula stepping into the arena also means one more instance of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) acting as a new rival superpower to an increasingly disoriented "full spectrum dominance" US. None of the BRICs is in favor of isolation of, not to mention an attack on, Iran. This is the case as long as they believe that Iran, according to all available evidence, is nowhere near a nuclear weapon, and an attack would inevitably accelerate nuclear proliferation in the Persian Gulf.

The BRICs also know that the US and Iran are able to collaborate on thorny dossiers - such as over Afghanistan.

That leaves the strategic agenda of the proverbial elephant in the room - Israel - on the table. So it's time for the BRICs to call Israel's bluff.

If the Netanyahu government in Israel can humiliate both Obama and Biden on expanded Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it's fair to assume it could ignore the pleas of the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, who has warned that an attack on Iran would be a "big, big, big problem for all of us".

Israel (as well as Washington) may simply want regime change in Iran by any means necessary. Israel may go nuclear - using bunker-busting tactical nukes to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. Israel may be ready to unleash preventive war - a staple of Israeli policy fully adopted by the George W Bush administration. And Israel certainly counts on the US for logistical and political support.

Lula hasn't gone that far. But his positioning contains the embryo of all these thorny questions with which the BRICs should confront Israel. Then the whole world will know which tale is really wagging the dog.

Note
1. Mercosur or Mercosul (Spanish: Mercado Comun del Sur) is a regional trade agreement between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela.

Pakistan and the Afghanistan Endgame

HTTP://WWW.CARNEGIEENDOWMENT.ORG/PUBLICATIONS/INDEX.CFM?FA=VIEW&ID=40347 Wary neighbors: Afghan President Hamid Karzai (left) with Pakistan’s Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani, seeking accommodation. http://www.takeoverworld.info/grandchessboard.html India and Pakistan vie for influence in Kabul After the failure of high level talks between India and Pakistan over their long running disputes, both countries are now locked in an escalating proxy war in Afghanistan. If no solution is found to reconcile Pakistani and Indian interests in Afghanistan, the coming months might see stepped up terrorist attacks against Indians in Kabul and the return of militants infiltrating Indian Kashmir from Pakistan. The fact that in recent weeks a large number of Taliban operatives have been captured in Pakistan signals an intensified struggle over the fate of Afghanistan rather than a winding down of the conflict. With Afghan President Hamid Karzai seeking negotiations with the Taliban, some of whom Pakistan distrusts, along with India increasingly concerned about the Pakistan-backed Taliban coming to power in Kabul, the conflict is reaching a new stage of intensity. Even as an intensive US and NATO military offensive against the Taliban is underway in southern Afghanistan, neighboring states are already considering the Americans as good as gone and preparing for an end game scenario with old rivalries renewed. While Pakistan charges India with undermining Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, India fears that Pakistan is preparing the ground for pro-Pakistan elements from the Taliban to negotiate with Kabul, in an attempt to force India out of Afghanistan after US forces start a slow withdrawal in July 2011. Meanwhile, a year after Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out Mumbai attack they are yet to be brought to justice. Against this backdrop, Indian and Pakistani Foreign Secretaries met in New Delhi at the end of February but failed to make any progress. Just a day later a suicide squad in Kabul hit two hotels, killing 16 people including 7 Indian civilians and two Indian army majors. Three days later the Afghan government accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of being responsible for the Kabul attack. In a series of briefings to the Pakistani and foreign media, Pakistani generals have portrayed India as seriously threatening Pakistan, using its embassy and consulates in Afghanistan to harbor, train and fund Baloch separatists who are waging an insurgency in Balochistan province, trying to undermine Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan and even for backing elements of the Pakistani Taliban. Tensions heightened after four Pakistani workers were gunned down in Kandahar in early March by unknown assailants. The Pakistani media has accused the Indian consulate in Kandahar of organizing the attack. Pro-military commentators have risen to the occasion demanding that as Pakistan now faces a two-front situation, India should be pushed out of Afghanistan by the Taliban or as a pre-condition which the US must accept, if and when peace talks between the Taliban and the Kabul government are held. India was seriously rattled when the US and NATO agreed at the January 28 London conference on Afghanistan to begin “re-integrating” Taliban fighters and field commanders and lavishly funding a peace package for them. President Karzai went much further by demanding ‘reconciliation’ with the mainstream Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar. India was aghast at the unanimity of the international community which is tiring of the war in Afghanistan, as India has vociferously opposed any dialogue with the Taliban. India sees the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda working closely with anti-Indian groups based in Pakistani Punjab, such as Lashkar, who have begun to re-infiltrate into Indian Kashmir to restart the guerrilla war which has been dormant since 2004. Even US officials say that Punjabi militants are increasingly fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Although Karzai has declared that “Afghanistan does not want proxy war between India and Pakistan,” India’s real concern is that Pakistan appears determined to position itself center stage of any dialogue between the Taliban and Kabul. Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence Bureau recently arrested key Afghan Taliban leaders who have been engaged in talks with representatives of the Karzai administration without Pakistan’s ISI being involved. Senior US officials in Washington say the initial arrest of the powerful second in command Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi in early February was accidental – after the CIA discovered the location of a meeting of Taliban commanders where Barader was found. The ISI arrested him and then decided to bring in all his supporters, resulting in more arrests. Kabul’s request that Barader be extradited was refused. Despite repeated requests, US officials have been given only limited access to question Barader and even less access to question other arrested Taliban. However, despite his significant sanctuary in Pakistan, Barader was at odds with the ISI talking independently to Karzai’s representatives without taking the ISI into confidence and instead enlisting the help of Saudi Arabia. Over the past 12 months Saudi Arabia has been intermittently involved in helping the two sides hold informal talks that so far have not led to real negotiations, although they have the potential to do so. The Saudis, although close allies of Pakistan, had also appeared willing to keep the ISI out of the dialogue. The Obama administration is still far from accepting the idea of negotiating with the Taliban leadership and US officials were annoyed with Karzai after the London conference for raising the issue, but the ISI and the military are now forcing the pace to have a three way dialogue between Kabul, Islamabad and the Taliban, while also pushing the US administration to accept such a dialogue and agree to a major role for the ISI. India has now embarked on a diplomatic offensive to counter Pakistan’s growing role, sending National Security Adviser Shivsankar Menon to Kabul in early March and the Foreign Minister S M Krishna to Iran in coming weeks. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s hastily arranged trip to Afghanistan this week underlined Tehran’s keen interest in the Afghanistan endgame. India has asked Karzai about his secret negotiations with the Taliban and how India can play a role. At the same time India appears to be wanting to rebuild the alliance with Iran, Russia and the Central Asian Republics that opposed the Taliban in the 1990s and supported the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance. Missing as yet from this complicated maneuvering is the US administration, which will have to decide soon on supporting Kabul-Taliban talks if it is not to see its military and economic development offensives in Afghanistan undermined by growing regional rivalries. Also missing from the equation is Pakistan’s civilian government, which has been bypassed in the foreign policy decision making by the military and the ISI. It is well known that the much weakened President Asif Zardari would like to improve relations with India and Afghanistan and encourage trade and investment, rather than foment a new set of regional tensions. However a too overt Pakistani role is likely to be rejected by Karzai, by Afghanistan’s non-Pashtuns and civil society and even by many Taliban who are tired of fighting and would like to end their dependence on Pakistan. Any sign of excessive Pakistani influence in Afghanistan would immediately prompt a reaction from India, Iran, China and the Arab Gulf states, which could include backing anti-Pakistan proxies in Afghanistan and making it even more difficult for Afghanistan to achieve peace and stability. Ahmed Rashid is a Pakistani journalist and author, most recently of “Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.” Reprinted with permission from YaleGlobal Online, the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

India savors Russian friendship

India savors Russian friendship By M K Bhadrakumar http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2010/03/india-and-the-us-haunting-past-and-beckoning-future.html The morning after can be as significant as the day before. What strikes the eye are two developments, in Moscow and Delhi, the morning after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin left the Indian capital on Friday after an eventful working visit. There is no country outside Russia where Putin is widely admired as a statesman as in India. He strikes chords in the Indian psyche that are difficult to explain except in the totality of what has come to be known as "Putinism" and his historic role in Russia's resurgence. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/swamy300806.html During Putin's visit, Russia stitched up multi-billion dollar contracts in the military and civil nuclear sectors. The list of contracts and agreements is truly impressive: $1.5 billion deal for the supply of 29 additional MiG-29 Fulcrum D-based fighter aircraft. An agreement to sign a contract on the joint development of a new fifth-generation fighter. A revised deal of $2.3 billion on the upgraded Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier with a displacement capacity of 45,000 tons, a maximum speed of 32 knots (59 kilometers per hour) and a range of 13,500 nautical miles (25,000 kilometers) at a cruising speed of 18 knots. Deals to establish a joint venture to produce navigation equipment for GPS (global positioning system) and its Russian equivalent Glonass, and the use of Glonass signal for military use by India. An array of agreements for the construction of up to 16 nuclear power plants in India worth tens of billions of dollars at the very least. Priority lies with US ties However, life moves on. No sooner than Putin returned to Moscow, than the Kremlin announced that US President Barack Obama had phoned his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to discuss the "final stages of preparation" of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and they agreed that "it is now possible to talk about specific dates" for initialing the agreement. The Kremlin is eager to start the "reset" of Russia-US ties and may well drop its demand that any new arms reduction deal should be linked to the US's missile plans in Central Europe. In Delhi, too, the government has mooted a new legislation on Monday whose unstated purpose - some say, sole purpose - is to enable the US nuclear industry to secure multi-billion dollars worth business in the Indian market. The US-Russia-India triangle offers a great study of paradoxes. Russia and India are advocates of a democratized international system, which they hope to influence. Neither is a satiated power, while both see a window of opportunity in the emerging polycentric world order. Yet both estimate that the US's pre-eminence as the sole superpower is not under any serious challenge, and neither has any doubt that its equations with Washington shall remain its foreign policy priority. Putin's successful visit to Delhi needs to be seen in perspective. India and Russia drifted apart in the 1990s and both went through transformative periods that saw the birth of new elites and economic models and societal changes. Delhi, Moscow and AfPak Indian opinion today is supportive of the rising curve of the country's post-Cold War strategic partnership with the US. Russia has a constituency of cold warriors, but it is a dwindling tribe and meanwhile, Moscow's aspiration too is to retain its privileged status as Washington's interlocutor on issues of global strategic balance. Therefore, when the Indian leadership expresses its desire to Putin for an intensification of consultations with the Kremlin regarding the Afghan problem, Delhi's intentions are quite pragmatic. Delhi does not seek strategic defiance of the US in Afghanistan and it knows that for Russia, Afghanistan is not only about al-Qaeda and Taliban but is also related to its search for a new era of "post-Euro-Atlanticism". An al-Qaeda problem may or may not appear in North Caucasus and Russia would be worried if Afghanistan once again becomes a revolving door for international terrorism. But India's concerns are tangible, very specific and are primarily related to its adversarial relationship with Pakistan. Moscow can help by alleviating Delhi's near-total diplomatic isolation over the Afghan problem and putting the brakes on a Taliban takeover in Kabul that is fine-tuned by Pakistan. By virtue of its role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has a say in any Afghan settlement. Putin suggested while in Delhi that Indians' view of Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism needs to be mellowed. From the Russian perspective, Pakistan is a key player in the great game in Central Asia. Moscow (and Beijing) will remain wary of driving Pakistan into isolation as a client state of the US. Ideally speaking, Delhi should gain from Russian or Chinese efforts to moderate Pakistan's adversarial mindset, but Delhi depends almost entirely today on the US. Curiously, India's dependency on the US is only helping to strengthen Pakistan's geopolitical positioning. Islamabad estimates that the US regional strategies in Afghanistan can work only with its cooperation and it expects in return that Washington accommodate its aspirations as a regional power. The Obama administration on one hand needs to get Pakistan on board as a key regional ally, since without Islamabad, plans for the stabilization of Afghanistan and the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will get nowhere. But on the other, Washington still needs to string India along. So far, the US has heavily counted on the fact that Delhi has not explored other options than going along with it, given India's disputes with China and its atrophied ties with Russia. But if a fine comb is run through Putin's visit to Delhi, a sense of frustration is discernible in the Indian mind about the US's regional policies. Delhi feels let down Afghanistan is a thorn in the flesh. The Indian elites feel let down. Arguably, even the boisterous American lobby in the Indian elites would feel embarrassed as their prognosis of the US and India living happily ever after comes unstuck in the face of icy cold geopolitical realities. The Indian government cooperated with the US to an astonishing degree by dovetailing their Afghan policy with the US's AfPak objectives; by "breaking down walls and bureaucratic obstacles between the two countries' intelligence and investigating agencies" - to quote American expert Lisa Curtis of Heritage Foundation in a recent US Congressional testimony and supporting a US/NATO military presence in the region. India also scrupulously avoided any sort of coordination with other regional countries such as Russia, Iran or China lest that might irritate Washington. Nonetheless, the Obama administration is gearing up to engage the Taliban in league with the Pakistani military. That was not the impression the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got during his "state visit" to Washington last November. The US officials may explain that the Indians have a fixation about the Taliban and Pakistani military. But the Indians simply do not see any significant shift in the Pakistani military's mindset towards jihadi groups operating in the region. Nor does Delhi believe that the Taliban are capable of power-sharing or independent of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. In the Indian perception, Taliban and the Pakistan-based terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are birds of the same feather and they will flock together. Washington has viewed LeT primarily through an India-Pakistan lens and calculated that the group did not pose a direct threat to US interests. To quote Curtis, "The US officials have shied away from pressuring Pakistan on the LeT in the interest of garnering Pakistani cooperation against targets the US believed were more critical to immediate US objectives." Over and above, Obama shows no sign of a rethink on the US's embargo on the transfer of "dual-use technology" to India. While India no longer takes to Cold War-era rhetoric to air its differences with the US, there is disquiet in Delhi about the US's military assistance to Pakistan. Against this backdrop, Delhi's move to revive ties with Moscow stands out. Delhi cannot hope to source from anywhere else the advanced military technology that the Russians willingly offer - the global navigation satellite system, aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered attack submarine, state-of-the-art missiles and fighter aircraft. Ironically, the nuclear deal India signed with the US in 2008 lies unimplemented due to Obama's reluctance to transfer "dual-use technology" to India, but it provided just the international non-proliferation framework Moscow needed to boost cooperation with Delhi on a range of sensitive areas such as reprocessing technology, joint thorium fuel cycle nuclear power projects and fast-neutron reactors. In short, the Indian leadership has returned to a precept that it ignored; namely, that with a world power like Russia, it is not possible to cooperate except on the basis of special relations. However, the realization is yet to dawn on the elites in Delhi that an optimal foreign policy vis-a-vis the US will still continue to elude India in the absence of a profound dialogue with China on regional security.

Permanent Aggression, War on the horizon in Latin America

March 12th 2010, by Eva Golinger - Correo del Orinoco International

Latin America has suffered constant aggressions executed by Washington during the past two hundred years. Strategies and tactics of covert and overt warfare have been applied against different nations in the region, ranging from coup d’etats, assassinations, disappearances, torture, brutal dictatorships, atrocities, political persecution, economic sabotage, psychological operations, media warfare, biological warfare, subversion, counterinsurgency, paramiliary infiltration, diplomatic terrorism, blockades, electoral intervention to military invasions. Regardless of who’s in the White House – democrat or republican – when it comes to Latin America, the Empire’s policies remain the same.

In the twenty-first century, Venezuela has been one of the principle targets of these constant aggressions. Since the April 2002 coup, there has been a dangerous escalation in attacks and destabilization attempts against the Bolivarian Revolution. Although many fell beneath the seductive smile and poetic words of Barack Obama, it’s not necessary to look beyond the past year to see the intensification of Washington’s aggressions against Venezuela. The largest military expansion in history in the region – through the US occupation of Colombia – the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet of the US Navy, as well as an increased US military presence in the Caribbean, Panama and Central America throughout the past year, can be interpreted as preparation for a conflict scenario in the region.

Escalation in Agressions

The hostile declarations from various Washington representatives during the past few weeks, accusing Venezuela of failure to combat narcotics operations, violating human rights, “not contributing to democracy and regional stability”, and of being the “regional anti-US leader”, form part of a coordinated campaign that seeks to justify a direct aggression against Venezuela. Soon, Washington will publish its annual list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, and if Venezuela is placed on the list this year, the region could be on the brink of an unprecedented military conflict.

Evidence seems to indicate a move in that direction. A US Air Force document justifying the need to increase military presence in Colombia affirmed that Washington is preparing for “expeditionary warfare” in South America.

The 2009 Air Force document, sent to Congress last May (but later modified in November after it was used to demonstrate the true intentions behind the military agreement between the US and Colombia), explained, ““Development of this CSL (Cooperative Security Location) will further the strategic partnership forged between the US and Colombia and is in the interest of both nations…A presence will also increase our capability to conduct Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), improve global reach, support logistics requirements, improve partnerships, improve theater security cooperation and expand expeditionary warfare capability”.

On the verge of regional war

The first official report outlining the defense and intelligence priorities of the Obama administration dedicated substantial attention to Venezuela. The Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community – which has mentioned Venezuela in years past, but not nearly with the same emphasis and extension – particularly signaled out President Chavez as a major “threat” to US interests. “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has established himself as one of the US’s foremost international detractors, denouncing liberal democracy and market capitalism and opposing US policies and interests in the region”, said the intelligence document, placing Venezuela in the same category as Iran, North Korea and Al Qa’ida.

Days after the report was published, the State Department presented its 2011 budget to Congress. In addition to an increase in financing through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to fund opposition groups in Venezuela – more than $15 million USD – there was also a $48 million USD request for the Organization of American States (OAS) to “deploy special ‘democracy promoter’ teams to countries where democracy is under threat from the growing presence of alternative concepts such as the ‘participatory democracy’ promoted by Venezuela and Bolivia”.

One week later, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the OAS – funded by Washington – emitted a whopping 322-page report slamming Venezuela for human rights violations, repression of the press and undermining democracy. Despite the fact that it was a report – and a Commission – dedicated to the topic of human rights, the detailed study barely mentioned the immense achievements of the Chavez government in advancing human rights; advances which have been recognized and applauded over the past five years by the Unted Nations. The evidence used by the OAS to elaborate the report came from opposition testimonies and biased media outlets, a clear demonstration of dangerous subjectivity.

Simultaneous to these accusations, a Spanish court accused the Venezuelan government last week of supporting and collaborating with the FARC and ETA – organizations considered terrorist by both the US and Spain – provoking an international scandal. President Chavez reiterated that his government has absolutely no ties with any terrorist group in the world. “This is a government of peace”, declared Chavez, after explaining that the presence of ETA members in Venezuela is due to an agreement made over 20 years ago by the government of Carlos Andres Perez in order to aid Spain in a peace treaty with the Basque separatist group.

The Empire has no color

Last week, on tour in Latin America, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton couldn’t stop attacking Venezuela during her different declarations made before international media. She expressed her “great concern” for democracy and human rights in Venezuela, accusing President Chavez of not “contributing in a constructive manner” to regional progress. In a cynical tone, Clinton advised President Chavez to “look further south” for inspiration, instead of towards Cuba.

Clinton’s regional trip was part of a strategy announced by the Obama administration last year, to create a divide between the so-called “progressive left” and the “radical left” in Latin America. It’s no coincidence that her first tour of the region coincided with the announcement of a new Latin American and Caribbean Community of States, which excludes the presence of the US and Canada.

The coming conflict

A military conflict is not initiated from one day to the next. It’s a process that involves first influencing public perception and opinion – demonizing the target leader or government in order to justify aggression. Subsequently, armed forces are strategically deployed in the region in order to guarantee an effective military action. Tactics, such as subversion and counterinsurgency, are utilized in order to debilitate and destabilize the target nation from within, increasing its vulnerability and weakening its defenses.

This plan has been active against Venezuela for several years. The consolidation of regional unity and Latin American integration threatens US possibilities of regaining domination and control in the hemisphere. And the advances of the Bolivarian Revolution have impeded its “self-destruction”, provoked by internal subversion funded and directed by US agencies. However, the Empire will not cease its attempts to achieve its final objective, and a potential military conflict in the region remains on the horizon.

A titanic power struggle in Kabul

A titanic power struggle in Kabul

By M K Bhadrakumar

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/03/27/gordon-duff-orchestrating-a-phony-war-in-afghanistan/

The flurry of diplomatic activity in Kabul during the past week heralded the opening shots of a titanic power struggle, the outcome of which will largely determine the contours of an Afghan settlement....http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/15/afghanistan-the-end-is-nigh/.

In what is shaping up as a multi-layered power struggle, the principal protagonists are the United States and Britain, Pakistan, Iran and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The struggle is set to accelerate during the coming weeks and will lead all the way to the Afghan loya jirga (the traditional tribal council), which by present indications is expected to take place in Kabul on April 29. Undoubtedly, the stakes are high for all protagonists and the battle lines are being drawn.

The sudden dash by Pakistani army chief Pervez Kiani to Kabul last Friday to discuss "matters of mutual interest" with Karzai, the two-day unannounced mission on Monday by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (whose primary intent was to check out on the intensifying exchanges between Kabul and Tehran), Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad's consultations in Kabul on Wednesday ostensibly to discuss the bright prospects for Afghan-Iranian economic cooperation, and Karzai's own two-day trip to Islamabad from Wednesday - all served to highlight the overlapping templates of the power struggle.

Karzai digs in ...
In a fashion, forming part of the mosaic was London's timely decision last week to place Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's special representative for Afghanistan and formerly ambassador in Kabul, in the Afghan capital as its suave Man Friday in the crucial time until the loya jirga is safely home and dry. Ideally, this role could and should have been US special representative for AfPak Richard Holbrooke's by birthright, but then, his type of muscular diplomacy may prove counterproductive in the sensitive times ahead. Cowper-Coles, on the other hand, can be equally tough as Holbrooke, while smiling all the way.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's major speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Wednesday, "The war in Afghanistan: How to end it", assertively underscored that London intended to be very much in the driving seat in steering Afghanistan politically to a new era.

Several templates are discernible in the power struggle. First and foremost, Karzai insists on his legitimate leadership as elected president under the Afghan constitution to lead national reconciliation which can bring the war to an end.

This translates as his prerogative to convene the loya jirga, and decide its composition. Karzai also holds a mandate from the January 28 international conference in London to draw up the "reintegration" plan for the Taliban, which he is expected to present and seek approval at the loya jirga. Karzai has said his confidante, Ghulam Farooq Wardak will handle the "reintegration" plan.

Karzai hand-picked Wardak for education minister in his new cabinet in December. Having previously held the post at the ministry, a large recipient of Western aid, Wardak was not one of the new faces that the US and Britain had sought.

The choice of Wardak as mentor for the "reintegration" plan is significant. He comes from an influential Pashtun family in Wardak province adjacent to Kabul and Parwan, which forms the gateway to Bamiyan. Wardak is a base of Deobandis and Hezb-i-Islami, and the Taliban have been strongly entrenched in the province.

Conceivably, Karzai would have considered while deciding on Wardak's appointment that he was educated in Peshawar and lived and worked there for a decade. Wardak should be acceptable to Pakistan. This is important as Karzai needs maximum cooperation from Pakistan in ensuring that the loya jirga endorses his road map for the reconciliation of the Taliban. There is always an inherent risk that the assembly turns out to be "uncontrollable" once in session and throws up nasty surprises.

Therefore, Karzai is making preparations with great circumspection, no matter how the Americans and British attempt to force the pace. Washington and London were originally not in favor of Karzai's plan to hold the loya jirga. Now they are stuck with it - and are determined to influence its proceedings.

Their preference will be that the loya jirga leads to a consensus favoring formation of an "interim government", which would force Karzai to step down from the presidency.

... as Miliband baits Pakistan
Karzai, on the other hand, hopes to conduct the parliamentary elections soon after the loya jirga, which would consolidate his power base for the following four years. He has already decreed that no more will there be any US or British proxies in the Afghan election commission.

The fact of the matter is that while both the US and Britain may have grudgingly accepted Karzai's re-election as president, they estimate that he has long since ceased to be anything other than an obstacle to the kind of Afghan settlement that fits their geopolitical agenda towards Central Asia.

Miliband's lecture at the MIT on Wednesday was, in fact, intended to send a loaded "message" to Karzai. "The international community will judge him [Karzai] by his actions, not his words ... The Afghans themselves must own, lead and drive such political engagement [with the Taliban]," Miliband pointed out.

Miliband's speech stopped short of calling for an interim government. He urged Karzai to consider bringing Taliban supporters into the political system and argued that "now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigor and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort".

The Western countries view Karzai's idea of holding a loya jirga as a move by the astute leader to extract legitimacy for continuing as president by heading off the need for an interim government that would require he step down. They anticipate that if Karzai has his way with the loya jirga, he will set the political calendar for the coming years, which would in turn devolve on his presidency till 2013 at a minimum and block any chance of "regime change".

Miliband in his speech literally appealed over the head of Karzai to the participants of the loya jirga when he underlined the framework of a "political outreach", which he saw in terms of a sustainable Afghan government with more inclusive ethnic Pashtun participation, primacy on regional governors and governing councils, a pronounced shift of the locus of constitutional power away from the president to the parliament and a political leadership in Kabul that will forcefully address the "pervasive problem of corruption" in the Afghan government.

Miliband made an undisguised pitch for rallying Islamabad's support by stressing that Pakistan "holds many of the keys ... [and] clearly has to be a partner in finding solutions to Afghanistan". Interestingly, he also called on countries with "vested interests" in Afghanistan - including India, Russia, Turkey and China - to recognize the basic fact that "the status quo in Afghanistan hurts all".

With Miliband's speech, the US and Britain have literally prompted the loya jirga to dictate the peace terms to Karzai.

Iran stands by Karzai ...
As the Afghan leader sizes up the challenge ahead. so too is Tehran, which is extremely concerned that if the US-British game plan succeeds, it will lead to an open-ended presence of American troops in the region bordering eastern Iran, which Washington can always put to use to pressure Iran.

Ahmedinejad's visit to Kabul on Wednesday was primarily intended to make a big statement of solidarity with Karzai, urging the latter to stand up to the challenge and conveying Tehran's willingness to stand shoulder-to-shoulder by his side .

In essence, Tehran abhors the idea of a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan and wants a settlement that duly reflects Afghanistan's plural society. Tehran shares Karzai's thinking that while the Taliban can participate in any inclusive settlement, that has to be on the basis of a willingness to lay down arms and accept the Afghan constitution, which provides for a democratic plural society safeguarding the interests of all religious and linguistic groups.

The US and Britain have been trying to tarnish Karzai by caricaturing him as an appeaser of the Taliban, but Tehran sees through the Western ploy.

Thus, Karzai can hope to tap into Iran's influence with various Afghan groups, which traditionally focused on the Persian-speaking Tajiks and Hazara Shi'ites but today also extends to segments of the Pashtun population. Significantly, Ahmedinejad was received on Wednesday at Kabul airport by the Northern Alliance leader Mohammed Fahim, who has become the first vice president in Karzai's new government despite strong opposition from the US and Britain.

On the other hand, the US and Britain can count on Afghanistan's former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah to raise the banner of revolt against Karzai in the loya jirga. They can also count on sundry disgruntled old war horses like Sibgatullah Mojaddidi and Burhanuddin Rabbani to criticize and isolate Karzai. Some circles have already floated the name of Mustafa Zahir Shah, a grandson of the late Afghan king, as the head of an interim political dispensation in Kabul to succeed Karzai.

But with help from Iran (and Turkey and Russia), Karzai can hope to have the bulk of the Northern Alliance extending support to him. Besides, Karzai has also reached out to Hizb-i-Islami leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who is interested in a political accommodation in the power structure in Kabul.

... but all eyes are on Islamabad ...
The "swing factor" nonetheless will be the extent of Pakistan's cooperation.

Iran and Turkey, which remain supportive of Karzai's leadership, have been working with Pakistan to form a sort of regional condominium that offers a regional solution to the Afghan conflict. Ultimately, Pakistan's mind will be swayed by the extent of confidence it has in Karazi's ability to accommodate its legitimate interests in Afghanistan.

And right in the first circle of Pakistan's interests falls Islamabad's demand that Karzai should not stand in the way of a rollback of Indian influence in Afghanistan.

From the available reports, Karzai used his visit to Islamabad to assure Islamabad will have a critical role in any reconciliation with the Taliban. He acknowledged publicly that without Pakistan's cooperation, his reconciliation plan would not get anywhere.

Karzai also seems to have extended assurances as regards Pakistan's legitimate strategic interests. Of note, he had a separate meeting with Kiani.

In his press conference in Islamabad on Thursday, Karzai drew a subtle distinction between India and Pakistan in the Afghan perceptions. Karzai said, "India is a close friend of Afghanistan but Pakistan is a brother of Afghanistan. Pakistan is a twin brother. We are conjoined twins, there's no separation."

Karzai also stressed Afghanistan's neutrality. "Afghanistan does not want any proxy wars on its territory. It does not want a proxy war between India and Pakistan. It does not want a proxy war between Iran and the US on Afghanistan."

However, Pakistan will still closely watch how Karzai goes about fulfilling his assurances that its concerns on India would be addressed, while drawing satisfaction that his tone and tenor on Wednesday and Thursday were exceedingly positive.

The Pakistani leadership went out of the way to roll out the red carpet for Karzai. Almost the entire cabinet turned up at the airport to receive him. A cosmetic outcome of Karzai's visit is that the two sides have agreed to revive the two-year-old idea of holding joint jirgas. Thus, a mini-jirga ("Jirhagai') will be held in Kabul following the April 29 assembly, and another loya jirga in Islamabad later on with a view to narrow down the differences between the two countries and to delineate the role of Pashtun tribes straddling the border areas.

Quintessentially, Pakistan has put its demands vis-a-vis Karzai on the table: Islamabad seeks the "stabilization" of Afghanistan with a minimal Indian role and presence and expects traditional Pashtun influence in the power structure in Kabul will be restored.
The Pakistan army has also offered to help train the Afghan army, which will be a key instrument of power for the Afghan state. "I cannot afford to have Afghan soldiers on my western borders trained by the Indians with an Indian mindset," Kiani is reported to have remarked recently.

... as it bargains with the US
Speaking to the media in Islamabad, however, Karzai left the door open on Kiani's offer. He said, "We have discussed this offer from Pakistan where some equipment has also been offered. We accepted this [equipment]. As far as the training of Afghan soldiers, my minister of defense will study and we will come back on this." He pointedly recalled that the Soviets had also "trained" the Afghan army and "so, we are careful".

Without doubt, Islamabad will now turn towards Washington and assess what it has to offer. There is much satisfaction in Islamabad that recent US statements have virtually acknowledged Pakistan's drive for gaining "strategic depth" in Afghanistan.

Almost the entire Pakistani leadership is going to Washington for consultations in the coming weeks. Pakistani navy chief Admiral Noman Bashir reaches the US capital on March 17, followed by Kiani and Inter-Services Intelligence chief Shuja Pasha, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at the end of the month, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in the second week of April. Pakistan-US strategic dialogue is also scheduled to take place in Washington in the last week of March at the level of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Beyond the Indian presence in Afghanistan, beyond Karzai's political future, beyond imponderables over the loya jirga, and even beyond the fortunes of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Islamabad will calculate that the time has come to assess if, how and to what extent the US is prepared to accommodate Pakistan's aspirations as a regional power.

Specifically, Islamabad expects parity with India as regards the US strategic partnership.

Islamabad estimates that with the endgame in progress in Afghanistan, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bandwagon is already preparing to roll onto the Central Asian steppes, and the great game for the containment of Russia, China and Iran is about to commence in earnest.

The first moves on the Central Asian chessboard have been made already. Washington won over to its side Uzbekistan, a key country in Central Asia, and has significantly eroded Russia's traditional ties with Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The US Embassy in Bishkek last week confirmed the sensational news that Washington proposes to build up a counter-terrorism training center in Batken in southern Kyrgyzstan, close to China's border, which ironically enough will be in immediate proximity to a proposed Russian base.

That is to say, the US estimates that Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is in reality much ado about nothing. At any rate, Tashkent has succeeded in paralyzing the CSTO's proposed activities with regard to mobilizing a rapid reaction force that would have rivalled NATO as a guarantor of regional security.

According to the US ambassador in Bishkek, Tatiana C Gfoeller, "Brand new, modern military equipments ... are arriving in Kyrgyzstan daily and being distributed to Kyrgyzstan's armed forces." It seems the crack Scorpion Battalion of the Kyrgyz military has received "extensive training from US forces".

Close on the heels of Holbrooke's Central Asia tour last month, Central Command chief David Petraeus paid a two-day visit to Kyrgyzstan this week. Following the talks in Bishkek, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev said that "all the main challenges and security threats to Central Asia" come from Afghanistan and "therefore, Kyrgyzstan is interested in providing security and stability in this country, and will continue its efforts to offer its endeavor for rebuilding Afghanistan - along with the international community".

Pakistan will carefully factor in all these trends, which unmistakably suggest that the Barack Obama administration has quietly expanded its AfPak brief to include Central Asia so as to bring it in harmony with NATO's future enlargement.

Islamabad will assess that progression of the AfPak policy will involve greater US (and NATO) dependence on cooperation from Pakistan, which is the strategic "beachhead" to the Central Asian hinterland.

All in all, therefore, Pakistan will take a final call on the developing Afghanistan situation only after the series of intense consultations in Washington. Karzai would have estimated that Pakistan is keeping its trump cards in readiness for playing at a penultimate stage in the titanic power struggle unfolding in the Hindu Kush. Afghanistan's future depends on the US-Pakistan strategic nexus.