Divided by the lip

That perceptions are more important than reality, is a rather disturbing notion. It belittles reality and encourages concepts like brainwashing, spin doctoring and psychological warfare. The trouble is that the reality too is often merely our perception of the reality. We therefore have no choice but to keep fighting this war of perceptions.

During a recent AfPak moot on the other side of the Durand Line, a very scholarly member of the host delegation remarked that on the streets of Kabul, Pakistan was perceived to be the main adversary. Now, when did you last conduct an opinion poll; would have been a legitimate question. The reason one resisted the temptation was that some views in Pakistan were even more problematic.

We claim to have made many sacrifices for Afghanistan. Those who have lost millions in defence of their country may not be much impressed but must hear us out. But when we accuse these “ungrateful” Afghans of helping our archenemy in the East, all set to stab us from the West, they do have a befitting response. Whenever we had to shoot it out with India, the Afghans beseeched us to take our troops from the western borders since we needed them on the eastern. More often than not, they too resist the temptation, rather graciously, to remind us of the favour.

Nevertheless, the list of our mutual misperceptions is as long as that of our futile efforts to fight them!

Afghanistan was once a “buffer” between the Russian empire and the British India- and after the Raj, its successor state in the region, Pakistan. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we not only lost that buffer but with India in the East, were caught in a “nutcracker”. Helping the Afghan resistance to push the Soviets back to the Oxus was our lone hope to restore, what some here called our (forward) “strategic depth”. The war against the Soviets was won, but amongst many others that continued, the one on semantics has proved to be almost unwinnable.

Strategic Depth is a sound concept though not merely a geographic or a spatial notion. It is best provided by internal coherence and economic strength. Some countries have to build alliances to achieve it. Israel’s real strategic depth for example lies in the US. Interestingly, in the AfPak context, the country that has often provided strategic depth to the other is Pakistan. When invaded by foreign forces Afghans take refuge here in large numbers, use it as a sanctuary for their resistance, create economic linkages, and indeed the landlocked country often has to depend on us to secure access to the outside world. That is one reason that Afghanistan have never followed a policy that could harm its most precious strategic asset, Pakistan.

Lately, Pakistan’s centrality in untying the Afghan knot has become part of our strategic faith. While many of us may have good grounds to bask in the new limelight, our eastern neighbour has found reasons to be upset. When talking to the Taliban was almost universally recognised as the way to go, some in India got worried that the strategic balance was now shifting in Pakistan’s favour. In the interest of regional peace and stability, it would be prudent on our part to allay these concerns, and many Indians will of course find means to mend fences with the Taliban. What this development however conclusively proves is that an Indo-Afghan nexus against Pakistan was not a feasible proposition- is in fact a myth.

“Conjoined Twins” is how Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, calls the two countries. The American equivalent, naturally less elegant, would describe them as “joined at the hip”.  That they could be separated merely by some loose lips would have sounded absurd if it was not so real. Seal these lips, I would say.