Obama’s early Afghan exit plan worries India

US president Barack Obama gave his generals in Kabul the military support they sought by announcing a plan on Tuesday to send in 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, but he also stumped them by setting a timetable to begin withdrawing the reinforcements in 18 months.

Clearly, Obama is treading a cautious middle path by increasing US forces to nearly 100,000 while limiting their deployment. The troop increase is aimed at checking gains made by the Taliban. No doubt New Delhi will be pleased with Obama’s new resolve to quash the Taliban, but it will also be worried that publicising firm dates will encourage the Taliban to wait out US troops. The Taliban, which is close to elements in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul twice in the past 15 months. Conceivably, the message is that India should back off from any enterprise to expand its presence in Afghanistan.

On his visit to Washington, prime minister Manmohan Singh urged the White House not to think of a “premature exit” in Afghanistan as it could “embolden terrorist elements who are out to destabilise not only our part of the world but the civilised world everywhere”. India would have liked Washington to embrace an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan, but Obama has his own political compulsions for pursuing a potentially high-risk military gambit.

"The absence of a timeline for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government,” Obama told gray-uniformed cadets at a US Military Academy in West Point, New York.

“It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan,” said Obama while stressing that Washington does not have an open-ended commitment in Afghanistan.

The Republicans slammed Obama’s Afghan strategy. “A withdrawal date only emboldens al Qaeda and the Taliban, while dispiriting our Afghan partners and making it less likely that they will risk their lives to take our side in this fight,” said Arizona Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “Success is the real exit strategy.”

Geopolitical analyst Parag Khanna, who had advised Obama’s campaign on foreign policy, told DNA that with the troops surge the Taliban are likely “figuring out more how they can hide for a while until the military presence withdraws”. 

India is a major donor country, having committed $1.2 billion as assistance in Afghanistan. Pakistan views the hyperactive Indian aid programme in zero-sum terms as essentially aimed at undercutting its influence. Pakistan expects the Obama administration to be sensitive to its concerns vis-a-vis an Indian presence in Afghanistan. But last week during Singh’s visit to Washington both India and the US agreed to enhance their respective efforts in Afghanistan.  

With a friendly Hamid Karzai-led government in power in Kabul for the next five years, the mood in Delhi is increasingly that India should adopt a “forward policy” toward terrorism in the region rather than allow itself to be bled periodically by Pakistan-based terrorists. 

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is hoping that a timetable will pressure Kabul to get on its feet. The average Joe is exhausted by the eight-year war in Afghanistan and a timetable allows Obama to bring soldiers home ahead of the 2012 elections.