India Abroad - April 29, 2011

Testing the Caspian waters
A new beginning in India’s diplomacy in Central Asia
INSIGHT
India Abroad
April 29, 2011
India’s diplomacy in the Central Asian region took a big leap forward last week with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan
Singh’s visit to Astana, Kazakhstan’s capi-
tal. It is a measure of Indian statecraft’s
skill — or its audacity, depending on one’s
point of view — that Delhi could plough a
sequestered bilateral furrow at all toward
Astana, impervious to the great volatility in
the security climate affecting the region.
There is no need to elaborate that the
process of State formation in the ‘Stans’ is
still far from complete. Governance, public
corruption, accountability and the absence
of a due process of law characterize the
political environment in the ‘Stans’ and
they deter even the most audacious inter-
locutors from abroad from deeply commit-
ting in the region.
Over and above, dark clouds hover on the
horizon as the forces of extremism and mil-
itancy, drawing strength from the failure of
the United States-led war in Afghanistan,
lurch toward the region. Curiously, all these
tendencies or aberrations were lurking just
below the surface last week.
The same day that Dr Singh arrived in
Astana, Kazakh President Nurusultan
Nazarbayev summarily sacked six judges of
the country’s supreme court for corruption.

Again, the day before Dr Singh arrived in
Astana, after a relentless manhunt
lasting months in the remote Rasht
Valley that is part of the Pamirs in
Tajikistan, the country’s security
forces killed the dreaded Islamist
leader Mullah Abdullo, who had
returned to Central Asia from
Afghanistan after a decade with a
band of ‘foreign fighters’ trained by
Al Qaeda. In one stroke the inci-
dent brought home what a botched
‘reconciliation’ of Taliban could
mean for the stability and security of
Central Asia.
Yet, within a day of Mullah Abdollah’s
sudden death, a high-powered delegation
comprising Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf
Gilani, its army chief Ashfaq Kayani and
Inter Services Intelligence chief Shuja
Pasha arrived in Kabul to explore just how
the stalemate in the Afghan war can be
turned into a window of opportunity to
reintegrate Taliban into Afghan national
life — an approach that is predicated on the
assumption that the insurgent groups oper-
ating in the Hindu Kush do not harbor any
agenda to expand their activities into
Central Asia.
Indeed, last week, the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization was formalizing in
Brussels the setting up of a Trust Fund that
will help Russia equip Afghan armed forces
with military helicopters. The Western
alliance is willing to spend close to $376.5
million in an enterprise that marks Russia’s
‘return’ to Afghanistan after 22 years. Quite
obviously, the West is ‘co-opting’ Russia
India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, with Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana, April 16
MUKH TAR KHOLDORBEKOV/REU TERS
into the Afghan war without Moscow hav-
ing to commit troops or to do any fighting
in a spirit of pragmatism even as the
endgame is unfolding.
Curiously, the Russian parliament
(Duma) held a hearing in Moscow last
week at the same time to probe dispassion-
ately whether the ‘Arab spring’ would have
any prospects of arriving on the Central
Asian steppes — and what would follow if a

M K
BHADRAKUMAR
social and political upheaval ensues in the
region with acute problems. Moscow’s pre-
scription? Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minis-
ter Grigory Karasin pointed out that the
way to avert any potential ‘Arab scenario’ in
the region would be for the ‘Stans’ to
undertake democratic changes and
reforms.
However, against the backdrop of such
huge uncertainties what stands out as
extraordinary is that the India-Kazakh cog-
itation in Astana has gingerly sidestepped
all the stuff that goes into the making of the
Great Game in Central Asia. Dr Singh’s visit
once again underscored that Delhi prefers
to conduct its diplomacy in the region
without getting inveigled in the big power
rivalries. The Indian approach has its mer-
its. Delhi could husband its political capital
from being squandered in vainglorious
projects and instead keep its mind focused
on what matters to India’s vital interests
and core concerns and work on them calm-
ly and steadily, while factoring in that the
region is still passing through a period of
phenomenal transformation.

M K Bhadrakumar is a former
Indian diplomat

About this publication

fullscreen

fullscreen

subscribe

article text for page

< previous story | next story >

add comment | read comments

Share this page with a friend
Save to “My Stuff”
Subscribe to this magazine
Search
Help