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So the Narendra Modi-Donald Trump joint statement has been read and the nuances and body language debated in the media. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's much-awaited US visit is now behind us, and different factions are claiming victory or defeat.

Representational image. AP

Afghanistan and terrorism were among the many issues touched upon by both sides, particularly the Indian delegation. The joint statement also, much to the pleasure of both sides, delivered a stinging rebuke to Pakistan. The statement told Pakistan to refrain from hosting terrorists, which appeared to elevate Indias diplomatic position on terrorism vis--vis Kashmir.

However, even as Modi and Trump were breaking bread, another notable event took place closer to home.

On 26 June, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang announced that Beijing would conduct shuttle diplomacy between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was the result of foreign minister Wang Yi visiting both countries.

The announcement included several interesting points, including a mechanism to manage crises that stressed intelligence and operational cooperation and a mechanism to set up the meetings of Chinese, Afghanistan and Pakistan foreign ministers, presumably to enable this shuttling to take place.

The statement also backed the Quadrilateral Coordination Group made up of China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States with the specific intention of bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table and into the peace process. Further flying the peace flag, the statement called for a revival of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) contact group with Afghanistan, presumably to include Russian interests.

That China is the reigning SCO power is a separate issue. As an added palliative to Afghanistan, the statement also backed The Kabul Process, President's Ashraf Ghani's pet project. On one level, Beijing is simply acknowledging the confusing mix of powers that have influence in Afghanistan and have a role to play.

Russia, which has been in and out of Afghanistan, had been, for years, cooperating with the United States in eliminating Al-Qaeda leaders. However, since 2015 there has been a sea change. Russian presidential envoy to Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov reportedly stated that Russia and the Afghan Talibans interests objectively coincide due to the formation of the Islamic State.

Since then, Russian officials have admitted to meeting with Taliban leaders while Afghan intelligence officials have been quoted as saying that such meetings occurred in Moscow and Tajikistan. The Russians also reportedly frequently visit Kunduz province which abuts Tajikistan, a strong Russian ally. Still others allege that some of these meetings have taken place in Iran.

Whatever the truth, the fact remains: Russian president Vladimir Putin has held four multinational meetings on Afghanistan. This showcases that Russia is once again a major player in Afghanistan and has positioned itself directly against US interests.

Why Russia is negotiating with the Taliban is not entirely clear. It could be alarmed by the Islamic State's growing influence in Afghanistan it calls itself the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) which it sees, correctly, as a threat. The Islamic State in Syria, with its several hundred Chechens and Uzbeks, has Moscow squarely in its sights.

Recently, there have been reports of the Islamic State expanding its presence in the north Afghanistan, towards Jowzian. Meanwhile, according to Al Jazeera's Afghan sources, "thousands" of Islamic State cadres have moved to Afghanistan. While some movement cannot be ruled out, there has been no indication that the group has more than 3,000 cadres. And this was before the US bombed their Nangarhar base using the Mother Of All Bombs.

So a Russian finger in the Afghan pie is probably the precursor to a large Russian fist making its presence felt in its old sphere of influence. But given Russias continuing economic woes its GDP is below India's it is unlikely to be able to sustain its Afghanistan venture.

Analysts are already predicting the advent of a New Cold War as Russia and US continue to be at loggerheads, exacerbated after the proxy bombing in Syria. In Afghanistan, the New Cold War has seen the United States eschewing Russian equipment while rearming the Afghan National Army.

Russian interference is also likely to smoothen the way for the US-China cooperation, at least on this issue. Although China's links to the Taliban go back to the 90s, it has no Cold War lineage in this theatre of war. It does, however have an economic interest. Afghanistan lies smack dab in the way of the Dragon's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

While China may not be the lynchpin that some claim, Afghanistans importance is apparent from rising Chinese economic aid, which, despite being small change relative to the size of BRI, has been quickly ramped up from a few million dollars to a pledge of more than $300 million. The now standard housing projects are apparent in Kabul, while about 3,000 Afghans have been sent to Beijing for training.

Most importantly, it announced the first train linking Hairatan in northern Afghanistan to China. While China used the existing rail links of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it nonetheless counts as an achievement. Beijing has also, for the first time, offered Afghanistan security assistance and there have been talks of patrolling the Pamir area together.

China has also offered to provide $85 million for a mountain brigade for Badakshan. The Dragon could do far more for Afghanistan and it is this promise and "persuasion" that it is expected to exert on Pakistan that attracted the attention of the Kabul presidential palace.

On the other side is long time player Iran, which remains suspicious not just of the United States which retains facilities on the Afghan-Iran border but also of the Saudis, who have long had an active hand in Kabul while simultaneously engaging with Pakistan. Taliban heads such as Motasem Agha Jan traveled to Riyadh at least thrice a year to collect funds for the terrorists' coffers.

While the Saudis denied that they provided such funds, a leaked 2014 telegram from former secretary of state Hilary Clinton stated that this funding was fallout of the fight between the Saudis and Qatar for influence in the Sunni world. Given the ongoing Gulf diplomatic crisis, this is an action replay of the worst kind. Saudi Arabia has long resented the role that Qatar played in hosting the Taliban office and its role in negotiations.

Meanwhile, Iran, which once lined up with Russia and India against the Taliban, did a spectacular somersault by hosting Taliban leaders including its then chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour who was later killed in a US drone strike and has been using its considerable clout with the Taliban to expand its influence. With the Obama administrations policy up in smoke, Tehran is hardly likely to cooperate with the US in reigning in the Taliban.

So at what price our position on Afghanistan and more importantly, Pakistan the central spider in the web?

With Iran and Russia finding common ground with China, it would seem that India has already been edged out from influence in Afghanistan. This particularly when the US is also encouraging Afghanistan and Pakistan to cooperate in areas very similar to what China has set.

However, Indias position has never been wishing away geography. Afghanistan and Pakistan are neighbours. They have to sink or swim together. That we would rather see Islamabad sink into its own terrorist swamp is a separate issue.

At the moment, we are seen by Afghans as a country that has been loyal to Kabul through good times and bad.Most of all, our aid, which must be ramped up, is being channelled for stability. Hopefully, it will push connectivity in the future. That counts for something.Especially since US drone strikes continue to hit Pakistani territory, killing a Haqqani commander or two.

The author is former director of the National Security Council Secretariat

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Mission Afghanistan: As China engages in 'shuttle' diplomacy and US-Russia renew rivalry, India must ramp up aid - Firstpost

Soldiers from Team Canada and Team U.S.A. jostle in a ball hockey game in Kandahar, Afghanistan, Sunday, April 1, 2007. ( John Cotter / CP file photo )

A piece of hockey history, which helped prop up many a game at the Canadian Forces Airbase in Kandahar, Afghanistan, settled into its new home at the Hockey Hall of Fame Tuesday.

A well weathered portion of the boards from the rink at the Kandahar Airbase were unveiled at the Hall. They brought with them a tapestry of stories from a place where men and women on a mission to protect Canadas freedom enjoyed ball hockey for more than a decade.

Tiger Williamss (a legendary former Toronto Maple Leaf) elbow is embedded in those boards . . . . He ran over someone when we were playing a game against the USA, said Lanny McDonald, ex-Leaf, now the chairman at the Hall.

McDonald was joined by Brigadier General Kevin Cotten,, and former Leafs GM and current Calgary Flames President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke.

Each man stressed the significance of the 126-inch by 48-inch length of the boards. The once beaming, red Canadian flag logo was bleached by a desert sun in Kandahar that often drives temperatures over 40C.

We were told that we should get an early start on our game, so we did . . . . We played in 46C heat, but that beat the (mid day) heat of 51C, Burke said.

This (Hall of Fame) is a perfect place for these boards. I played on that rink a couple of times . . . . Kandahar is a staging area, and a place where they (military) can relax and play some ball hockey. Those people are working 14 to 17 hours a day, seven days a week, so they got a chance to relax a bit there (at the ink).

Burke was among a wide group of NHL executives and players who visited the troops at the Kandahar Airfield, which housed more than 50,000 people in its time as the centre of Canadas military engagement in Afghanistan, from 2011-16.

Some 158 members of the Canadian Armed Forces, plus four civilians, were killed, and more than 1,800 wounded, serving Canada during its mission in Afghanistan.

General Cotten welcomed the chance to have the boards, and their history, brought to Toronto, where theyll be on display at the Hall from June 30 to Sept. 4.

Its an honour to have a piece of Canadiana brought to the Hall of Fame, Cotten said. The boards help represent Canadas rich history of the combination of hockey and the military, which dates back to the first World War, and saw the Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers win an Olympic gold medal in 1948.

The boards were originally part of the Airbase rink, a near regulation-sized concrete sheet where military personnel played ball hockey from the time the rink was built, mostly by Canadian engineers volunteering their time on off day, in 2006.

Over the years, the boards saw the Hockey Night in Kandahar, a game between the Canadian and U.S. military in 2010, which Canada won 16-2, and a 24-team league, with teams from Canada, the U.S., and Slovakia, which became a mainstay at the rink at the height of the Canadian mission prior to 2011.

NHLers such as Burke, Don Cherry, Guy Lafleur, Tiger Williams, Jerome Iginla, Mike Gartner and others, returned many times to the rink. They were given no special treatment during their visits.

We stayed for three days and we slept in the barracks with everyone else, Burke said.

The first couple of days, the air space over Kandahar was not secure, and we heard they attacked (the base) two days after we left. The first time I was there, there was an air ramp service for a U.S. Marine, who had been killed.

Burke felt NHL players should view the boards, and learn as much as they can about the efforts of the Canadian military. In 2011, during one of his three visits (four others were called off due to weather or safety), he brought former Leafs defenceman Luke Schenn to experience the base and the rink.

I told him (Schenn) if you are going to go out (in the NHL) and behave like a soldier, then you better get some real sand in your boots, said Burke, who took heat for one of his visits because it fell on Canada Day, which coincided with the opening of NHL free agency at a time when the Leafs were fighting to make their roster playoff-worthy.

Ill go again if they ask, Burke said.

You get off that plane and one of the first things they do is warn you about rocket attacks, so you realize these are the people with important jobs.

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Hockey Hall of Fame installs rink boards from Kandahar, Afghanistan - Toronto Star

WASHINGTON In Afghanistan's turbulent Helmand province, U.S. Marines are rekindling old relationships and identifying weaknesses in the Afghan forces that the Trump administration hopes to address with a new strategy and the targeted infusion of several thousand American forces. Returning to Afghanistan's south after five years, Marine Brig. Gen. Roger Turner already knows where he could use some additional U.S. troops. And while he agrees that the fight against the Taliban in Helmand is at a difficult stalemate, he said he is seeing improvements in the local forces as his Marines settle into their roles advising the Afghan National Army's 215th Corps. Turner's report on the fight in Helmand will be part of a broader assessment that Gen. Joseph Dunford wlll collect this week from his senior military commanders in Afghanistan. Dunford landed in Kabul Monday with a mission to pull together the final elements of a military strategy that will include sending nearly 4,000 more U.S. troops into the country. He will be meeting with Afghan officials as well as U.S. and coalition military leaders and troops. The expected deployment of more Americans will be specifically molded to bolster the Afghan forces in critical areas so they can eventually take greater control over the security of their own nation. The Taliban have slowly resurged, following the decision to end the combat role of U.S. and international forces at the end of 2014. The NATO coalition switched to a support and advisory role, while the U.S. has also focused on counterterrorism missions. Recognizing the continued Taliban threat and the growing Islamic State presence in the county, the Obama administration slowed its plan to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of last year. There are now about 8,400 there. But commanders have complained that the sharp drawdown hurt their ability to adequately train and advise the Afghans while also increasing the counterterror fight. As a result, the Trump administration is completing a new military, diplomatic and economic strategy for the war, and is poised to send the additional U.S. troops, likely bolstered by some added international forces. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will be in Brussels later this week and is expected to talk with allies about their ongoing support for the war. While Turner said he has already seen improvements in the Afghan's 215th Corps, he said adding more advisers would allow him to pinpoint problems at the lower command levels, including more brigades. "The level and number of advisers you have really gives you the ability to view the chain on all the functional areas. The more areas you can see -- you can have a greater impact on the overall capability of the force," he told the Associated Press in an interview from Helmand Province. "If we had more capacity in the force we would be able to address more problems, faster." He said that although the Afghan forces have improved their ability to fight, they still need help at some of the key underpinnings of a combat force, such as getting spare parts to troops with broken equipment. The seemingly simple task of efficiently ordering and receiving parts -- something American forces do routinely -- requires a working supply chain from the warehouse to the unit on the battlefield. And Turner said that's an issue that could be improved with additional advisers. Other improvements, he said, include increasing the size of Afghanistan's special operations forces and building the capacity and capabilities of its nascent air force. The Afghan ground forces in Helmand, he said, have been able to launch offensive operations against the Taliban, including a recent battle in Marjah. "I don't think last year they could have taken the fight to Marjah like they just did," he said. "They're in a much better position that they were a year ago." But they are facing a resilient Taliban, whose fighters are newly financed, now that the poppy harvest is over. "Once they draw their finances, they start operations," said Turner. "What we've seen so far since the end of May, when they made that transition, is a steady grind of activity across a number of places in the province." What has helped a lot, Turner said, is his Marines' ability to renew old relationships with Afghan tribal elders, provincial ministers and military commanders they worked with six or seven years ago. Battalion officers they knew then are now commanders; many government leaders are still in place.

"We obviously have a long commitment here in Helmand. It's been good for the Marines to come back here," he said. "This is a really meaningful mission. I think people realize that we don't want to get into a situation where the kinds of pre-9/11 conditions exist again."

Read the rest here:
Dunford arrives in Afghanistan as Marines work to rekindle relations in Helmand - Military Times

The House Armed Services Committees version of the annual defense policy bill would require the president to give Congress his strategies for United States involvement in Afghanistan and Syria.

The provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are meant to ensure the administration follows through on its promise to give Congress an Afghanistan strategy and build off a previous bills requirement that it give Congress a Syria strategy, a committee aide said Monday.

For Afghanistan, Defense Secretary James Mattis has promised to deliver Congress a new strategy by mid-July that would include a troop increase of a few thousand to break what top generals have described as a stalemate.

To ensure Congress gets a strategy, the NDAA would require the Pentagon to submit a report by Feb. 15 that looks beyond the next five years and should connect current lines of effort to a steady state for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan that meets U.S. objectives, according to the bill summary.

Asked Monday whether the committee is concerned the administration is being too slow with the strategies, the aide said, Its not that.

With regard to Afghanistan, we are anticipating they havent made a decision but a change in their strategy and so its just, Ill call it 'due diligence and appropriate oversight' to ensure that we actually get that strategy articulated, the aide continued in a background briefing.

On Syria, Congress has been asking for the administrations broader strategy since President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on a Syrian government airfield in April. The strike came in response to the chemical weapons attack on civilians carried out by Syrian President Bashar Assad.

To that end, the catch-all fiscal 2017 appropriations bill required the president to submit a strategy for the Syrian civil war, as well as one for the war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Congress fenced $2.5 billion until it receives the ISIS strategy.

Building on that, the NDAA would require a report by Feb. 1 that assesses the goals of state actors such as Iran, non-state threats such as al Qaeda and the ISIS, the resources and timeline required to achieve U.S. objectives, the transition from military operations to stabilization programs and the risks to U.S. forces.

The committee understands that the political and military situation in Syria is unpredictable and that the nature of U.S. involvement may change as the result of such volatility, the bill summary says. The committee, however, believes it important to articulate the United States' strategic objectives and describe a realistic process for achieving such objectives.

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Defense policy bill would require Trump's Afghanistan, Syria ... - The Hill

U.S. policymakers are oblivious to the fact that Afghanistan is home to not one but five distinct conflicts.

By Abrar Ahmed for The Diplomat

June 27, 2017

The Associated Press reported on June 16 that Washington would soon add 4,000 more troops to the 14,000 U.S. and NATO troops already stationed in Afghanistan. This development would be the result of the U.S. interagency review process and corresponds with proposals from the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson. But increasing troops alone wont solve the Afghanistan conundrum.

The dominant discourse regardingthe Afghanistan crisis is often centered around U.S. war in Afghanistan and its strategic implications. This reductionist approach ignores the fact that Afghanistan is home to not one, but five distinct conflicts. Interestingly, four of these conflicts precede the U.S intervention in 2001. Nonetheless, the U.S. strategy is often oblivious to the regions historical intricacies, thus complicating the situation further still.

Afghanistans first war is ethnic in nature. It is an age-old political power struggle between the countrys dominant ethnic community, the Pashtuns, and the other ethnic groups: Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks, Aimaqs, and a modicum of other small ethnic groups. Historically, Pashtuns have almost always been atthe top of political power in the country, despite the fact that they constitute less than half of the total population. They have vehemently struggled to preserve their favored position, which has consequently generated resistance, and their opponentshave created a web of shifting alliances to counter Pashtun power.

This was most vividly evident in 2004, when the new constitutional framework sought to stabilize the government by concentrating power effectively in the office of the president. This generated persistent opposition and hostility from non-Pashtun factions, so much so that, in 2014, President Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun, was forced to reach a power-sharing agreement with Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik, under a National Unity Government.

The result of this settlement is a government thatis stable enough to sustain but too fragile to govern effectively. This division of power has created room for disagreements between Ghani and Abdullah to turn into political deadlock, particularly over political appointments. The inability of the government to hold or reschedule the planned parliamentary elections in October 2016 expressly manifested this deadlock.

These ethnic ruptures subsequently trickle down to the level of military platoons and local municipal government officials. It has created a patrimonial state apparatus whereby the patrons keep their subordinates in line with money and promotions, and the bureaucrats, in turn, fleece the people to repay their superiors. Thus, in a place where ethnic association is a principal source of political legitimacy, nepotism and corruption becomes rampant and pervades all sections of society. All of the efforts on part of international community to curtail corruption in Afghanistan have failed miserably. As proof, Afghanistan ranked 169th in Transparency Internationals 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index.

To make matters more complicated, there is also political strife among Afghanistans Pashtun community. This is the second conflict, inter-ethnic in nature, that runs along tribal lines and stretches back to 18th century. The primary antagonists are theGhilzai tribe of rural east and the elites of the Durrani tribe in the south. The Afghan state was founded in 1747 when the Ghilzai were defeated by the Durranis. Since then, the Durranis ruled the country, with a few brief exceptions, until 1996. Later, the Taliban seized power under the leadership of Ghilzai Mullah Mohammed Omar. The subsequent U.S. intervention handed countrys rule back to the Durranis by making Hamid Karzai the interim president in 2002. Today, the violence in Afghanistans east is the continuation of centuries-long power play between these two tribes. The majority of Taliban foot soldiers areGhilzai who deem themselves as fighting a holy war against Western invaders allied with a hostile Durrani-led government.

The third conflict is a cultural war between the cosmopolitan progressives in Afghanistans urban centers and religious conservatives in the rural areas. This conflict also stretched back hundreds of years. In the 19th century, Afghanistans emir, Abdur Rahman Khan, undertook a series of reforms to liberalize the country and delegitimize the ecclesiastical authority of religious leaders. Consequently, there were around 40 insurgencies during his reign.

In the 1920s, when his grandson Amanullah Khan sought to advance modernization and womens rights, the clerical mullahs engineered another rebellion that culminated in his abdication. In 1979, the communist leader Hafizullah Amin attempted to include women in a national literacy program, which sparked conservatives to rebel in the countrys west. The movement spread across the country when Amin tried to suppress the rebellion with force. This subsequently led the Soviet Union, which feared it was a CIA plot to destabilize the southern border of USSR, to invade Afghanistan. Gallons of ink has been spilled to note the chaos that followed thereafter.

The fourth conflict in Afghanistan is one that pervades the whole South Asian region: a cold war between Pakistan and India. Since decolonization, Pakistan has viewed its foreign policy through a security prism vis--vis India. In fact, both India and Pakistan have each used Afghanistan to gain strategic depth and asymmetric advantages over the other. The spillover effect of thiscold war in Afghanistan resulted in the creation of yet another insurgency the Pakistani Taliban, who have operated primarily in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. This extremist upsurge is connected to the larger Taliban movement, and both countries have been accused of using Afghanistans soil to prop up insurgencies in each others territories.

Layered on top of these four conflicts is the ongoing U.S. war against the Taliban in the country, which has, in turn, accentuated all other conflicts. These forces are pulling Afghanistan apart. Deploying 4,000 more troops would not end the long-standing ethnic conflict between the Pashtun and other communities, nor would it mitigate the centuries-old tribal hostility between the Durrani and the Ghilzai. Rural communities would keep resisting any form of foreign invasion or attempts to alter their traditional culture. More than 15 years of scrupulous U.S. diplomacy has been unable to change Islamabads strategic calculus in Afghanistan and the country wont cease being the theater of an India-Pakistan cold war anytime soon.

By adding more troops, Trump will be making the same mistake his predecessors did. At best, the Trump administrations latest surge will partially inhibit the Talibans momentum. It wont contribute to creating a conducive environment for establishing sustainable peace in the country. Instead, the Trump administration should pursue a containment strategy a minimalistic approach that protects the U.S. homeland from terrorist networks in Afghanistan and prevents regional destabilization that could encompass its neighbors. In the context of these multiple conflicts, the goal to turn Afghanistan into a modern, liberal state is neither achievable nor sustainable.

Abrar Ahmedis a political analyst and a specialist in global democratic affairs based in Lahore, Pakistan.

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The 5 Wars in Afghanistan - The Diplomat