India checkmated in Afghanistan

(MENAFN- Arab News) Is the Afghanistan-Pakistan-China entente taking a toll on India's geostrategic interest in Afghanistan and Central Asia apart from exposing the hollowness of Premier Narendra Modi's claim of introducing a new muscularity in New Delhi's foreign policy initiatives? Why else would National Security Adviser Ajit Doval needlessly criticize Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's decision of coopting Islamabad in the complex Afghan peace process?
Indeed the signing of an accord between Afghanistan's National Security Directorate and Pakistan's Inter-Services-Intelligence (ISI) followed by a collaborative endeavor on the part of Chinese and Pakistani intelligence to facilitate a meeting between Afghan government representatives and the Taleban in China's autonomous Xinjiang region has rattled India's strategic security establishment. Otherwise an astute Doval generally reticent in airing grievances concerning friendly nations publicly could not have made the blunder of virtually conceding openly that India's highly rated security apparatus has decisively lost the new version of the 'Great Game' in the Hindu Kush to its archrival ISI. What purpose did it serve when Doval brazenly declared 'What Pakistan wanted was to get an assurance and put pressure on Afghanistan so that they will not allow their territory to be used for any security related work by India?' Though he did emphasize that India do not exploit Afghanistan's soil or its nationals to sub-serve her strategic interest in the region the message however went out loud and clear that New Delhi was finding it difficult to digest that peace at long last might well return to a land that has seen death and destruction for far too long. To add to the number of self-goal India has not only linked British involvement in fostering Af-Pak anti-terror alliance with the future of Indo-UK bilateral ties Modi surprisingly gave an audience to former Afghan President Hamid Karzai who has of late become a rallying point of Afghan President Ghani's domestic opposition. Does it bode well for India to unabashedly wade into the whirlpool of Afghanistan's domestic politics at this crucial juncture thereby giving the impression to the outer world that New Delhi has no qualm in using the India-educated Karzai to try and sabotage any peace deal?
Of course overtly brandishing Karzai in Delhi as a countermove to Ghani's peace initiative will not amuse the desperately peace-seeking ordinary Afghans who are used to seeing India as their all-weather friend. New Delhi's blatant move to try and stop the security pact from proceeding further into the implementation stage will be taken as a slight by the Afghan people who dislike any foreign attempt to trample upon their sensitivities deeply rooted in innate pride and extreme self-respect. Intriguing it is because as an intelligence source confirmed there is no dearth of Indian asset within the Taleban which could have been used tactically to safeguard Indian interest in the Hindu Kush and beyond. And according to the same source nobody knows this reality better than Doval who himself had masqueraded as an insurgent in India's northeastern theatre and even participated in cross-border hit-and-run mission targeting foot soldiers of the Indian state for the ultimate cause of restoring peace and tranquility.
Besides a very reliable source in Vajpayee's regime had once confided in this author that Doval was very much in the loop when Maulana Masood Azhar and three others were released by the Indian government to put an end to the 1999 Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijack crisis only after they agreed to become double agents. Since then India has been sitting on a treasure trove of classified information shared by Mujahideen assets from the Af-Pak region. Worse still as Modi's government fumbled about in the dark groping for an appropriate response to counter India's marginalization in the Afghan theater Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar and Doval himself deliberately put up a show of bravado and muscle-flexing to confuse and hoodwink the domestic constituency obsessed with Modi's carefully crafted image of a machismo swagger ever-ready to take on the world without fear.
While Parikkar suggested unambiguously that 'terrorists have to be neutralized only through terrorists' Doval went a step further to flag India's territorial claim over Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas with his '106-kilometer long non-contiguous border with Afghanistan that we need to factor in' comment while delivering a lecture on 'challenges of securing India's borders.' The irony is that while India's political and security leadership thought that such aggressive comments could put adequate pressure on Islamabad-Kabul axis which they believe is mothballing a robust Indo-Afghan security ties New Delhi actually ended up having egg on its face after their carefully nurtured assets within the disgruntled Baloch rebel outfits launched an audacious attack on Pakistan President's son Salman Mamnoon's convoy.
Intelligence sources say the timing of this ambush on such a high-profile target could not have been more inappropriate for India as it coincided with the ruling hard-line Hindu nationalists' belligerent attitude toward Pakistan thus exposing New Delhi badly. Undoubtedly India has mishandled the Afghans by displaying a domineering and hegemonistic attitude. Anybody who served in Afghanistan would agree that the landlocked nation would always remain a vortex of death for any imperialist power. A tricky terrain the famed Afghan self-esteem that prevents the local populace from bowing before foreign occupiers and a tangled dance of tribalism and religious fanaticism makes it an impossible place to dominate.
Since Afghan insurgency is militarily unconquerable because of its self-restoring attribute all stakeholders must get out of the paranoia of seeing enemies everywhere and give peace ample chance to flourish.