Although India has denied news reports that it is winding up its humanitarian and infrastructure-building activities in Afghanistan following the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist attacks on Indian citizens in Kabul, it may eventually come to that coterminous with the US/ NATO withdrawal from that country in the middle of next year. But it is unclear what India’s next steps are in Afghanistan short of creating a second Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda and keep resurgent Pakistani terrorism away from Jammu and Kashmir. Given the peaceable nature of India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who has fought domestic opposition and differences within his own Congress party to reopen controversial talks with Pakistan, it is uncertain if India will back Northern Alliance-2 even if, given no other choice, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian states may be ready to do so.
 
It is reasonably certain that the Hamid Karzai government is on a downward slope to extinction and he may conceivably not share the unfortunate Mohammed Najibullah’s fate if he bails out in time. Because if not in the next sixteen months to the deadlined US pullout from Afghanistan, then certainly in the six to eight months thereafter, Karzai will find his powers eroded and his government’s writ lost over large parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan to the invading forces of the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda. The good/ bad Taliban concept accepted at the Turkey and London conferences merely gives a face-saver to the US to withdraw from Afghanistan with the biggest gainer in this apart from the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda being Pakistan’s military-intelligence establishment seeking “strategic depth” in that country against India.
 
What is possible is that Pakistan may give guarantees to the US to rein in Al-Qaeda elements in Afghanistan to prevent American drone and special forces’ counter-attacks, the first of which is happening in FATA but not the second because of Pakistani protests. It is also likely that Saudi Arabia, the old sponsor and recognizer of the previous Taliban regime, may renew its links in the hope to buy peace with the Taliban twin Al-Qaeda, whose chief, Osama Bin Laden, is a sworn enemy of the Saudi ruling family.
 
But this happy convergence of Pakistan-Saudi interests with the prospective Taliban/ Al-Qaeda regime in Afghanistan may not fructify, especially with the offensive power of the United States withdrawn in new isolationism, if the Islamist-jihadis who take Kabul remain true to type. Both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda have an inseparable aim to create an Islamic caliphate with its centre as Kabul/ Afghanistan and its terror tentacles radiating worldwide. The first to be affected in the exercise of this aim will be Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons, established state structure, sea access and proximity to the Middle East makes it exceptionally attractive to the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda. As custodian of Islam’s two most holy places and with vast oil resources, naturally Saudi Arabia remains an equally big catch, and perhaps bigger.
 
Almost certainly, the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda’s caliphate aims will meet India, China, Central Asia, Russia and crucially Iran’s opposition, which is a Shia state to boot, and ready and itchy to spread Shia imperialism in Sunni-dominant Middle East. To resist and destroy the caliphate aims, it is evident that its regional opposers must come together, but India, which has huge stakes in the success of constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, is still not ready or willing to take even baby steps to work up an anti-Taliban/ Al-Qaeda alliance in the very likely scenario that they come to autonomous power in Kabul. It is nearly assured that with the Al-Qaeda rise in Afghanistan again, the US will be forced to back a second Northern Alliance, as it did with the first after the USS Cole attack. But neither side, bar to an extent China, Russia and Iran, are thinking long-term to devise ways to contain the spread of Taliban/ Al-Qaeda terrorism from Afghanistan.
 
To be sure, US-Iran differences on Teheran’s nuclear ambitions are an obstacle, as too the Sino-Indian border dispute. But India specially has its proverbial ostrich head in the sand despite the obviously mounting Afghanistan crisis. This Indian attitude can be particularized in Manmohan Singh who has shown no inclination or capacity, regardless of the grossest of Pakistani terror provocations in Kabul, Poona and in November 2008 in Bombay, to contemplate, leave alone take, hard actions against Pakistan. This attitude, this writer fears, extends to Afghanistan in the context of the Taliban/ Al-Qaeda rise.
 
Northern Alliance-1 was largely created by Iran in 1996 to oppose the Wahhabi Taliban and to kill the US Unocal-led pipeline project from Central Asia to Pakistan’s Arabian Sea ports via Afghanistan. With the Al-Qaeda’s rise and its threats to Russian and Central Asian states’ interests, Russia backed the alliance and later, largely with medical assistance, India. Indian participation was more notable after the NDA, A.B.Vajpayee government came to power in 1998, when non-traditional military-security measures were attempted with some success. Perhaps the Manmohan Singh government thinks it is too early to embrace the default and civil-war-inducing Northern Alliance-2 plan. But by the time it is alive to the reality of a murderous, jihadi Taliban/ Al-Qaeda administration in Kabul, backed by Pakistan, much precious time may be lost.