India begins uphill journey with the SCO

By M K Bhadrakumar

A shift in India's approach to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has become unavoidable as Indian regional policy in Central Asia painstakingly works its way out of a cul-de-sac. Tentative signs first appeared during the visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Delhi last December and formed part of a rethink against the backdrop of the transition of power in Washington.

In a manner of speaking, Delhi began a slow, painful process of edging away from the George W Bush era. A top Indian official said over the weekend that it has become an "uphill task" for Indian diplomacy to cope with US President Barack Obama's Central Asia policy with regard to Afghanistan.

The shift in Indian thinking comes not too soon as the government's lackadaisical approach to the SCO through the past five-year period is increasingly becoming unsustainable. The heart of the matter is that the SCO is much more than a mere clearing house for the Caspian hydrocarbon reserves but is a security organization first and foremost. (The SCO comprises China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.)

Not that the Indian government did not realize this. But it pretended otherwise since Delhi was striving to harmonize India's regional policies with the George W Bush administration, and the SCO was anathema to Washington, being a challenge to the US strategy to propel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the prime security framework in the Central Asian region.

The Bush administration's "Great Central Asia" strategy attributed a pivotal role to India insofar as it envisaged India as a balancer to the traditional Russian (and increasingly Chinese) influence in that strategically vital region. Senior officials of the Bush administration and noted American regional experts and think-tankers dropped by in Delhi on a regular basis and nudged the Indian establishment toward the "Great Central Asia" strategy.

The main thrust of the US diplomacy was to use Afghanistan as a strategic bridge between Central Asia and South Asia and to encourage the Central Asian states to forge economic and political bonds with India. On a parallel track, the Bush administration's strategy strove to involve India gradually in the NATO processes so that the alliance's agenda of isolating Russia and containing China received a fillip.

In the kind of worldview - or "global vision" - that the present Indian government (which is completing its five-year term in May) claimed to possess, the US's regional strategy aimed at building up India as a major regional player and as a counterweight to China.

The Bush administration carefully nurtured these Indian aspirations - though Washington also quietly kept encouraging Beijing to make inroads into the Russian preserves in Central Asia and began developing common ground between the US and China on the contentious agenda of energy security.

At any rate, the Indian government followed a policy of masterful inactivity towards the SCO. The most glaring sign of this was that India was the only country among the SCO's member and observer countries that was not represented at head of state/government level at the organization's gala fifth anniversary summit meeting in June 2006 in Shanghai. In an appalling insensitivity toward the SCO's political agenda, Delhi kept insisting that petroleum minister Murali Deora, in the Indian cabinet, was the most appropriate official to advance the country's interests within the SCO.

For these reasons, the SCO's conference in Moscow on March 27 holds special significance for Delhi. The conference underscores that regional security and stability have been and always will remain as the raison d'etre of the organization. The agenda of the Moscow conference focuses on the situation in Afghanistan and how a regional initiative can be structured for stabilizing that country. The Indian decision to participate in the conference at the level of the prime minister's special envoy duly takes note that the SCO is placing itself in a key role in any Afghan settlement.

The main challenge for Indian diplomacy is that among the regional capitals, Delhi faces potential isolation apropos the Afghan problem. This is partly because of the centrality of Pakistan in any Afghan settlement, and most big powers are chary of Islamabad's aversion to including Delhi at the high table of conflict resolution in the Hindu Kush. Furthermore, India's adversarial relationship with Pakistan somehow has come to figure as a major template of the Afghan problem.

Such a linkage, historically, has no basis and must be counted as a failure of India's Afghan policy in the past seven years. Delhi now has to grapple with growing international opinion - especially among Western experts - that a regional solution to the Afghan problem must include a settlement ("grand bargain") of India-Pakistan differences, including Kashmir.

In retrospect, the propensity of Indian policymakers to view Afghanistan as a "second front" against Pakistan and build up an axis with the Kabul government has come to haunt them. India should have known that the government of President Hamid Karzai was too fragile as an ally. The irony is that the Obama administration itself has lately put a distance between itself and Karzai.

The SCO conference in Moscow, therefore, provides a window of opportunity for India to harmonize its Afghan policy with Russia, China, Iran and the Central Asian states. But this also poses challenges to Delhi insofar as India's US-centric foreign policy during the recent years has not gone down well in the region. Indian diplomacy must strain every nerve to recapture the verve of strategic understanding that India used to enjoy with Russia and Iran.

Nonetheless, the Moscow conference provides India with an opportunity to become part of a major regional initiative on Afghanistan's stabilization. It is highly unlikely that the SCO will be inclined to take a stance that is confrontational vis-a-vis the US's strategy. This provides comfortable space for India to negotiate. (Incidentally, India is also participating in the US-sponsored conference on Afghanistan scheduled to be held at The Hague on March 31.)

The bottom line of current Indian diplomacy is that Delhi should find a berth in the mainstream international and regional efforts in search of an Afghan settlement. Clearly, India shares the SCO's concerns over the ascendancy of the forces of religious extremism and militancy in Afghanistan. Having said that, the Indian stance towards the Taliban remains rooted in the past, whereas international opinion has evolved and nuances have appeared in Russian, Iranian and Chinese thinking. Whereas India remains stuck in the argumentative contention that there is nothing like "good" or "bad" Taliban, the Russian and Chinese stances seem to take note of the fact that the Taliban do not constitute a monolithic movement.

Moscow and Beijing seem to appreciate that there could be "moderate" elements within the Taliban, and the issue is really how practical will be any attempt to distinguish the moderate elements in the present climate of violence where the hardliners call the shots. In comparison, as a top Indian official maintained, Delhi insists that the task ahead is to "isolate the Taliban and deal with Afghanistan". He added wryly, "We do not accept this 'good-Taliban-bad-Taliban' theory because how do you decide who is a 'good Taliban'?"

All the same, India would share with Russia and China a deep sense of disquiet over any US attempts to bring about a regime change in Kabul. All three countries have made sustained efforts to cultivate Karzai and will be loathe to forfeit their political capital if the Obama administration chooses to replace him. All three, equally, would like to see that any change of leadership in Kabul should be a matter left to the Afghans themselves to decide rather than for the international community to prescribe.

The SCO, in fact, has taken a consistent position on the subject of regime change. On the Andijan uprising in Uzbekistan in July 2005, and the failed "Tulip" revolution in Kyrgyzstan earlier in the same year, in March, the SCO took a clearcut position opposing the US's intrusive regional policies. This was one of the main issues for the SCO's extraordinary call at its summit meeting in Astana in July 2005 for the termination of the American military base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan.

But Delhi assesses that a sense of realism is finally prevailing in the Obama administration about the importance of Karzai and there is no longer any compelling urge felt within the Obama administration to rush through a regime change in Kabul.

Another area of similarity in the Indian, Russian and Chinese approaches will be the three countries' emphasis on the "Afghanization" of the war. That is to say, all three countries are of the opinion that enduring peace cannot come to Afghanistan unless the capacity of the Kabul government is strengthened and the importance of economic reconstruction duly recognized. Similarly, all three countries share an aversion towards deploying troops in Afghanistan, but are prepared to make substantial contributions as "stakeholders" within that threshold.

Finally, India is developing proximity with the SCO at a time when NATO and Pakistan are getting close to establishing a formal relationship. NATO is keen on stepping up its cooperation with Pakistan, and Islamabad also wants to engage more with the alliance. NATO is working on improving its lines of communication through Pakistan, despite the availability of a northern corridor through Russian territory.

This is understandable, as NATO would like to keep in check the dependence on Russia, which has implications for European security and US-Russia relations on the whole. But 80% of NATO supplies for Afghanistan pass through Pakistani territory. Thus, NATO is under compulsion to seek a qualitatively new level of relationship with Pakistan, making it a partner in the alliance's operations in the region. NATO's decision to establish a "liaison office" in Islamabad will be seen from this perspective.

Without doubt, the developing NATO-Pakistan tango will be closely watched in Delhi. Also of concern to Delhi is NATO's plan to develop a new matrix of intelligence-sharing with Pakistan, even as the alliance is in the process of setting up six border cooperation centers along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The idea is to conduct joint NATO-Pakistan military operations along the border and make it a regular process with set agendas. Incidentally, Pakistan is already operating an intelligence cell in Kabul which coordinates with NATO.

Obviously, there is a divergence of opinion between NATO and Delhi regarding Pakistan's role in the stabilization of Afghanistan, where India views Pakistan as part of the problem. But NATO sees things differently. A senior Indian official said over the weekend, "Our view is that Pakistan should not use extremism as a strategic instrument and that it should make that choice clear."

But the NATO perspective on Pakistan lacks any such cutting edge. On the contrary, it is manifestly sanguine. The aide to NATO's secretary general and the director of policy planning, Jamie Shea, said recently, "We've [NATO] got to bring Pakistan as closely as we can into a regional approach in order to be successful in Afghanistan ... We want the closest possible relationship with [Pakistan] on the basis that the threat we face is also the threat they face - and that they can't face it without us and we can't face it without them. So there is the logic of working more closely together."

Fair enough. But what is bound to raise eyebrows in Delhi are the nascent moves by NATO - under active US and British encouragement - to have a long-term bilateral security cooperation program with Pakistan within an institutionalized framework. Shea broadly admitted, "There have been some ideas that have been around about assistance the [NATO] allies could provide to the Pakistani armed forces ... So I don't rule it [formal structures such as the Partnership for Peace program] out. But we're going step by step."

In short, NATO disagrees with Delhi's bleak view regarding Pakistani intentions. Shea said, "I think it would be very unfair to claim that they [Pakistani military] are not putting their shoulder to the wheel, as we say, in terms of making an effort. They could perhaps benefit from assistance and training, or whatever, that could be given by allies. That's something we may discuss with them in the future. But, of course, we cannot impose that upon Pakistan."

The Pakistani military being raised to NATO standards? Arguably, it is a logical move if viewed in the context of the struggle against terrorism. But then, India holds an altogether different sort of prism for viewing the Pakistani military.

At the Moscow conference, the Indian special envoy is almost certain to realize that there are virtually no takers in the region to any campaign to isolate or "pressure" Pakistan. The SCO - like NATO - will in all probability also visualize Pakistan as part of the solution rather than berate it as the problem. None of the SCO member countries will be interested in isolating Pakistan. Curiously, Pakistan may find itself being courted by NATO and the SCO alike. The region's geopolitics are dramatically changing.