It is not quite clear why Mr. Rajiv Gandhi has sent Mr. Gopi Arora to Kabul at this stage when the Americans, Soviets, Pakistanis, Iranians and others directly involved in the unholy mess are trying to sort it out. India was effectively sidelined on the Afghanistan issue in 1980 when, instead of accepting New Delhi’s offer of cooperation in persuading the Soviets to withdraw their troops from there, Pakistan went in for the American option and decided to take on the Russians militarily, through the Mujahideen whom it armed. India has remained sidelined since. As such, it does not possess a leverage it can use. As it happens, there is also no good reason for it to wish to involve itself in the extremely complicated game that has begun with Mr. Gorbachov’s announcement of the time-table for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. To put it bluntly, for all we know, having enjoyed the advantages of US munificence for eight long years, Pakistan may now be landed with the adverse consequences of its policy. Surely, we could have no interest in helping it out of the possible tragedy it faces, even if it was within our capacity to do so which, of course, is not the case.
To begin with, the point needs to be grasped firmly that Afghanistan is in reality little more than a geographical entity, where at the best of times, the writ of the set-up in Kabul has not extended effectively beyond the major towns, including Kabul, and the highways. It is a tribute to Zahir Shah, the former king now living in exile in Rome, that he managed to keep things reasonably quiet, despite the resumption of the great game after World War II, this time between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the former operating from Pakistan. His overthrow in 1973 in a palace coup led by his cousin, General Daud Khan, destroyed the fragile arrangement on which some kind of order had rested in Afghanistan. Obviously the coup itself was an expression of the growing instability which the forces of change, such as the spread of education and means of communication and transport, had created in the country. Those details need not detain us. We are principally concerned with the fact that there has been no peace in Afghanistan since.
It is pointless to argue whether or not General Daud Khan could have lasted if, possibly under pressure from the Shah of Iran, he had not overplayed his hand vis-à-vis the local communists. Our view is that he could not have continued much longer than he did, since he could neither restore the status quo ante, nor establish an alternative system on a durable basis. But all that is now beside the point, the pertinent point being that the Afghan Communists, too, failed to produce a durable order. The Soviet military intervention in December 1979 was, above all, the result of that failure, the details of which need not bother us. Left to themselves, the Soviets could possibly have restored a measure of peace and order, though it would have been a pretty bloody affair. But in view of other developments in the region, especially the fall of the Shah of Iran, it was inconceivable that the United States would have allowed the Soviet Union to help consolidate a Communist regime in Afghanistan. So the Americans moved in support of the Mujahideen and have finally forced the Soviets to agree to withdraw.
There can be no question that the Soviet Union has suffered a defeat in Afghanistan, in that it has not been able to help consolidate the PDPA regime in Kabul to a point where it can cope with the Mujahideen on its own. But Mr. Gorbachov is willing to live with the loss of face and not much more is at stake for him in Afghanistan. The US propaganda notwithstanding, Afghanistan is not strategically important for the Soviet Union. It is absurd to talk of the Soviet push to the warm waters through Afghanistan in this day and age, and there is not the slightest evidence of Moscow wanting to use its influence in Afghanistan to dismember Pakistan. Mr. Gorbachov would like to do all he can to ensure that the communists are not butchered in Kabul. But his central objective is to extricate his own troops from the morass they have got sucked into. It is a different story for Pakistan and its American allies.
We very much doubt that a coalition government Pakistan is insisting on can be set up in Kabul by agreement between the interested parties. We find it difficult to believe that the Soviets can abandon the PDPA set-up in Kabul on which the Mujahideen groups based in Peshawar are insisting. We also find it difficult to believe that Iran and Pakistan can agree on a set-up. But what even if a patchwork is in fact arranged? It cannot possibly last. The Afghans are not British-type liberals used to the give-and-take of democratic politics. Power for them grows literally out of the barrel of a gun. Only a prolonged armed struggle can settle the new power equations in Kabul. Even in the absence of such a struggle, a large number of refugees now in Pakistan are unlikely to go back to Afghanistan. Pakistan has willfully abolished the Durand Line except in name. It cannot restore it in effective terms. Only on Monday, President Venkataraman reminded us of Pakistan’s involvement with the Sikh terrorists who continue to constitute a grave threat to our unity and security. Thus from whatever angle we examine the Afghan issue, the conclusion cannot but be, that we should keep out of it. There could be one caveat to this proposition. We should have tried to save the PDPA set-up in Kabul if we could. But we are just in no position to do so. And that should be the end of the matter for us.