As Pakistan and US face-off over the Nato killing of 24 Pakistani
soldiers, in the now winding down war in Afghanistan, one can’t help
but recall the army here invoking the post-US exit security scenario
in the region to delay lifting of AFSPA. Army’s contention is that US
withdrawal from Kabul will redraw the geo-strategic environment of the
region which among its many spin-offs could help revive the militancy
in Kashmir. Hence the need to keep the AFSPA in place to be of use in
such an eventuality. Army also warns that AFSPA rollback at this time
would lead to Kashmir’s secession  by 2014, exactly the year the US is
scheduled to begin its troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.
 This may sound a bit far-fetched but there is no way to discount the
profound geo-political transformation in the regional geo-politics
after US is gone. There is great uncertainty about what kind of
Afghanistan would US leave behind? Considering the way the war has
fared over the past ten years, It looks highly improbable that the
Kabul  would  have changed for better by 1914. US may have put in
place a patchwork ruling arrangement but that is unlikely to hold in
the great upsetting effect that US withdrawal will unleash across the
region.  Such an arrangement is also unlikely to have Taliban
partnering it and in the likeliest case of their exclusion, Taliban
would continue their campaign to dislodge the US-backed dispensation.
 This brings to mind a sense of deja vu.  Haven’t we been here before.
Would the situation that followed the exit of USSR and its subsequent
break-up repeat itself, this time compounded by a resurgent China.
Will China  assert itself more aggressively on regional stage and on
Pakistan’s side? Will this launch a new regional great game with
India, Pakistan and China its immediate players? And with US off its
back, will Pakistan seek to again take a hardline on Kashmir. And, of
course what about the fallout on the separatist struggle in Kashmir.
Post-US exit the political and strategic priorities of the regional
players – including India and Pakistan - may change fast enough for
any existing  arrangement to hold.  The sum of the argument is such a
scenario could hurtle India, Pakistan unprepared into a dangerous new
world whose rules are yet to be written.
 As the ongoing confrontation between Washington and Islamabad over
the Nato attack underlines, the region is already in throes of the
unfolding fallout of an imminent US exit. It is first time in the past
ten years, or perhaps first time ever, that Islamabad has so defiantly
taken on Washington, blocking Nato supplies and boycotting
US-sponsored conference in Bonn. Even though mutual expedience keeps
them tied together, the relationship will snap at the first
opportunity of the US outgrowing the need to seek Pakistan’s
assistance in any geo-strategic objective in the region. Will such an
opportunity present itself after 2014? It again depends on how the war
fares in Afghanistan and if at all Taliban are reigned in and tamed.
 And if at all the situation does assume the apprehended troubled
dimensions, it will need a matching policy and strategic re-adjustment
by the countries concerned.   It looks incredible how the army here
wants to safeguard itself against such far-reaching  geo-political
changes by securing itself with law like AFSPA. If militancy has to
revive, boosted by the favourable geo-politics, it will revive any
which way, with or without AFSPA. The law will under no circumstances
halt its resurgence. And if militancy does indeed reach improbable
scale of early nineties, the easiest of all the responses will be to
bring back AFSPA. What does therefore prompt the defence establishment
to resist tooth and nail the partial withdrawal of the law and that
too from the areas where army doesn’t operate. Army so far has itself
found it difficult to explain.  Its refusal has been reduced to an
egoistic denial rather than a principled rejection of a move which it
thinks is being wrongly pursued. And whether the defence forces like
it or not, it is this approach of theirs that makes the case for
revocation of law even more stronger and lends it an irresistible
legitimacy.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 6 Dec 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 6 Dec 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 7 Dec 2011 00:00:00 IST