Afghanistan: the worst case scenario

By tightening grip over Central Asia, Moscow will be able to blunt the instrument the West is hoping to use against it

It helps to develop the worst-case scenarios on which public policy choices can be made. This is done frequently by economists to prepare for low-probability events if they do happen to occur. Nassim Taleb in his well-known book Black Swan (Random House, 2007) wrote about the need to build institutional capacity to handle low-probability events if they do materialise. His book was published about the time the West and then the rest of the world was about to plunge into what has come to be called the Great Recession of 2007-09. Very few analysts had seen the sharp downturn coming. When it came, policymakers in Washington and the capitals in Western Europe were not well prepared to handle the crisis.

Islamabad needs to apply the same line of thinking to the rapidly evolving situation next door in Afghanistan. Elections were held in that long-troubled country on April 5 but the results would not be known for weeks –– perhaps even for months –– to come. If no candidate wins more than half the number of votes cast, a run-off contest will take place. According to initial readings, the two top candidates are likely to be Ashraf Ghani, a Pashtun, and Abdullah Abdullah, a Tajik. The runoff between Ghani and Abdullah could take the form of a contest between two powerful ethnic blocs that have competed with each other ever since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Abdullah represents the ethnic groups that have strong links with the Central Asia states, once dominated by the Soviet Union. The Pashtuns in the south and east of the country have a larger number of their ethnic group living in Pakistan.

These two ethnic groups have opposing interests. The Tajiks, the Uzbeks and other non-Pashtun groups have done better economically during the period President Hamid Karzai was in charge. They were also more accommodating of the other minorities in the country, including the Shia Hazaras. The Pashtun population, while accounting for the largest share of the ethnically-divided country, has done less well. It has strong antipathy towards the Shias and generally resents the way it was treated by the Karzai administration. An electoral battle between the two groups will be part of the worst case scenario that can be envisioned for Afghanistan. It becomes even grimmer if this ethnic battle draws in the newly assertive Russia into the fray.

It may be tempting for Vladimir Putin’s Moscow to take advantage of the ethnic and religious tensions in Afghanistan in order to advance its economic and political interests. The Russian president has let it be known that he considers the collapse of the Soviet Union to be a great tragedy his country and his people have faced. He is working hard to bring into Moscow’s orbit the countries that were lost and spun off as independent states. Most of these are in Central Asia. It would be helpful for Russia if a non-Pashtun leader finally holds the reins of power in Kabul. That way he will have considerable influence over the energy-rich nations of Central Asia. One of the strategies the West is working on is to have the energy-deficit West European nations become less dependent on the Russian oil and gas exports. Central Asia and the growing energy production in the United States offer alternative sources of supply to Europe. By tightening its grip over Central Asia, Moscow will be able to blunt the instrument the West is hoping to use against it.

Increasing influence over Afghanistan helps President Putin in one other way. He will recover some of the lost prestige by a superpower as a result of the 1989 withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan. Pakistan, with Moscow reinserting itself into the equation, must prepare to deal with the worst case scenario developing in Afghanistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2014.

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