25 November 2020
One of the worst decisions taken by President Trump was his firing of Secretary Defense Mr Esper for refusing to kowtow his desire to pull out American Troops from Afghanistan before the end of his term, ahead of any verifiable mutual agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government at Kabul https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-how-will-a-u-s-drawdown-impact-afghanistan/. We are aware that setbacks in negotiations has taken Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Doha-Qatar, to get officials who are parleying there on behalf of the US Administration on board with latest instructions from President Trump- which is ‘abandon this sinking ship’ in many well sounding phrases!
We all knew that Trump was on to something in Afghanistan. May be it started with the Inspector General’s report on Pentagon obfuscating Presidential briefs for long years that the ‘War Against Terror’ was waged there. So that could have made Trump feel ‘betrayed’ or consider the Pentagon and military leadership in Afghanistan a ‘bunch of losers’. For the efforts to suddenly get an agreement with Taliban and the controversy surrounding the Pentagon’s handling of the AfPak operations was no coincidence. Then came the lacklustre and near denial of the intelligence finding that Russia was placing bounties with Afghan insurgents on US military personnel. It was an issue even raised by Democrat Presidential ticket individually and through proxies such as former President Barrack Obama. We know that military mail in ballots were pro Biden ticket now, and we can say that largely President Trump is to blame for losing this always Red base, for the GOP has been viewed traditionally favourably by military veterans, military families and serving personnel. Of course, people say that Trump’s indiscriminate remarks about Marines and his ill considered views on military sacrifices was more to blame. But, if you get the drift, Trump was unravelling against the military on a personal front, which started with this IG’s Report on Afghanistan briefs. All this is personal for Trump and without any internal resistance in his administration, the personal leanings of Trump have led to this hasty decision to withdraw all but 2500 US military personnel by 15 January 2021!
When you see how the Taliban view this, it is clear that firstly bounty or no bounty, they upped the ante this year, from February to October the number of attacks was nearly twice as the last two years put together, at 13000! A new outfit based in Korasan claimed credit for attacks including the spectacular one in a Kabul hospital maternity ward! What I suspect is that this ISKP (Islamic State Korasan Province) group is a local franchisee of the Taliban backed by ISI and the GHQ in Pakistan who are waiting in the wings for their comeback to grand scheme of things with their northern neighbour.
What could happen with Afghanistan is uncertain, because Trump now presents President Elect Biden with a clear fait accompli, of a US with notional presence only in Kabul with a few intelligence gathering outposts elsewhere, which in the face of a Taliban upsurge could be a repeat of what the Mujahideen and Taliban did with Kabul and Afghanistan after the Soviet Withdrawal. Do I see President Ashraf Ghani hang like his predecessor Mohammad Najibullah did in a compound in Kabul on 27 September 1996? I hope the Americans will rescue Afghan government officials before they meet the fate of those who were in government at the time of the Soviet withdrawal in 1996.
Reading Mr Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land, it is very clear that under Obama as Vice President, Joe Biden was very much against entanglement in Afghanistan. It is also clear that he felt that the US military should carry out only a limited counter terrorism mandate there, he was not wanting to put the US military and tax payer money to pay for a ‘modern Afghanistan’ which was the COIN strategy of General Petraeus and General McChrystal who served in CENTCOM and personally led surge strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively. So going by the National Security Team announced by Biden Transition, we have Mr Blinken who is a lightweight as Secretary of State, (compared to both Secretary Clinton & Kerry in Obama Presidency who were Senators and had campaigned as Presidential candidates) Mr Jake Sullivan as NSA, who was both NSA to VP Biden and deputy chief of staff to Secretary Clinton. It is a clear indicator that Biden Presidency will restore the diplomatic thrust of the Obama years even more strongly, and the appointment of former Secretary John Kerry as Special Envoy for Climate shows that Afghanistan is not an issue, Climate is more a national security concern for the incoming administration.
So unless there is a drastic change in circumstances, if the Taliban guarantee to spare the US, the entire ISI led network of elements who export terror are going to have a clear base in Afghanistan and the AfPak region in 2021! This is what Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller announced as his first act after taking over from the fired Mr Esper. Pentagon’s other announcement was the raising of an Indian Ocean Fleet, which signalled a continuation of the focus on China centric strategic and tactical military economic decision matrix that will have no friction with the incoming Biden Administration and in all probability, Biden will dial down on China much more particularly to relieve the pressure on Taiwanese airspace, and try to extract democratic concessions for Hong Kong. So if Obama made the ‘Pivot to Asia’ you can expect Biden to go further ahead and cement the same as AsiaPacific. If some think https://thediplomat.com/2017/01/the-pivot-to-asia-was-obamas-biggest-mistake/ that the Pivot did not make any gains, like Obama’s Afghan strategy, just delaying the inevitable, what I can offer is that unlike the Afghan situation, in Asia, the US withdrawal in the initial years of the Trump Presidency was seen as a folly and rectified to some extent this year by Secretary Pompeo’s efforts to reactivate the Quad, to make Huawei 5G rollout the centre of a strategic and technological argument for allies neglected by President Trump. What reading Obama offers us is that he was aware of issues, that he could even prophesy quite a bit, but his scope for engagement and management of them were not always in his hands, stymied as he was by domestic US situation and the fractured nature of American polity that has fully exposed itself in the three weeks after 3 November 2020, when President Trump refused to accept the verdict of the polls!
So imagine an Afghanistan forgotten and off the map of the White House soon! Imagine a Pakistan reenergised by becoming a full fledged player in its northern neighbour, with capacity to harass both Iran and India with this ‘strategic depth’! With China going to either encourage or look the other way, US not really keen to get embroiled back into AfPak region, it is going to be India that will face the brunt of the adverse impact of US exit from Afghanistan and I found it surprising that MEA Mr Jaishankar MOD Mr Rajnath Singh have not been able to convince Mr Modi to lead the opposition to the US facilitation of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Indian headlines https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/terrorists-planning-strike-on-26/11-anniversary-pm-holds-review-meet/articleshow/79319922.cms did mention a serious plot by insurgents in Jammu Kashmir, which was also tweeted by Mr Modi personally as he congratulated security forces for the neutralisation of the threat. Since 9/11 and US involvement in AfPak region, India enjoyed the relative lack of foreign Islamic actors, other than Pakistani and ethnic Kashmiri players. The spectre of battle hardened hardcore Al Qaeda recalibrating the insurgency or a broader terror campaign against India is one that is worrisome, considering how NATGRID , NIA and other assets created specifically for such contingency in the yesteryears have gotten re-appropriated or fallen into relative decay! Consider this decision of President Trump as his parting gift to India!! Consider this as fair warning!!!
indiarubberman.com 