Saturday 30 May 2020, 11:10 AM
Syrian militants secretly flown to Afghanistan, China raises a battalion
By Saeed Naqvi | Bharat Defence Kavach | Publish Date: 9/1/2018 12:57:08 PM
Syrian militants secretly flown to Afghanistan, China raises a battalion


He returned with his mouth full of news. "US-Taliban romance is over," he announced with authority. Until the previous day, the US was operating on the assumption that the Taliban was the most organised and muscular group in Afghanistan who could be relied upon to stabilise the country. TAPI, or the Turkmenistan, Afghan, Pakistan, India gas pipeline, would then begin to look feasible to the US oil company, UNOCAL -- the principal reason for the Afghan conflict.

What the US had not bargained for was the brutality with which the Taliban applied Shariah law on Afghan women. A series of prime time features on Taliban cruelty against women, telecast by the CNN's Christiane Amanpour, created a sensation in Washington. Without any waste of time, the US decided to distance itself from the Taliban. US officials supportive of the UNOCAL project did not conceal their disappointment. "US gender politics has scuttled a strategic initiative."



In a paper for the Observer Research Foundation in September 2010, I had argued that Obama's exit plans were a pipedream. Do Americans have an endgame planned? Can a superpower, in a theatre of strategic importance, have a linear exit plan when multiple strategic options present themselves? The US has been extremely watchful of a nuclear Pakistan. Is it now willing to walk away leaving the world's only "Islamic" bomb unmonitored? Let's not forget, Afghanistan has been the US watch tower on this count.



Are the Americans likely to walk away simply because they are exasperated? After having spent a trillion dollars, losing thousands of lives, losing face -- so soon after their reversal in Syria -- are they really contemplating withdrawal? Will the bosses of UNOCAL suck their thumbs now? Will the priceless poppy fields of Helmand, the oil in the North, the unexplored mineral wealth now become a Russian asset?

Of course not. Absence of consistency has been one of the constants in US policy on Afghanistan. To cloak this inconsistency, amplified in the time of Trump, we have strange reports coming out of the White House. Before Steve Bannon, the President's Chief strategist, was shown the door in August 2017, he had drawn the President's attention to an outlandish proposition put forward by Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater, the world's biggest provider of private armies.

At a strategy session in Camp David, Trump's Best and Brightest considered the plan: Afghanistan should be administered exactly as the British controlled India -- under a viceroy. Is former US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, to be that Viceroy? He is an ethnic Afghan and is being tipped as special Envoy which is what the Viceroys were.

Of course, the senior military brass around Trump shot down the first Prince proposal. But with Trump beginning to look vulnerable, all manner of risky adventures are being contemplated. The other day, National Security Adviser John Bolton leaked the alarming news that Syria was about to launch a chemical attack in Idlib. How did he know? From Hezbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah's speech last Sunday? Nasrallah said, "Data indicates that preparations are underway to stage a new chemical incident in Idlib." This is the Western "ruse to launch an aggression on Syria".



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