With the assassination of Afghanistan's chief peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani, India is hoping that its Russia-backed desire of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) getting itself involved as a grouping would gain traction.
The SCO Regional Forum, whose members and observers essentially enclose Afghanistan, would be an effective means of addressing some of Afghanistan's problems if it treated observers (such as India, Iran and Pakistan) and special invitees (Afghanistan) on an equal footing, said government sources here.
“That is a good regional platform,” they said of the grouping that extends a helping hand to Afghanistan, nurtures little ill will towards Iran and Pakistan and has a greater interest in stabilising the country than the West since the flow of drugs and militants from Af-Pak region directly affects their well being.
The proposal was aired by Russia and found a backer in India at a time when the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), routes ending in a funnel in Uzbekistan, is being increasingly relied upon by the West to send supplies to Afghanistan.
The SCO Regional Forum could also talk to the U.S. and the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organisation(NATO), both of which prefer to deal bilaterally with countries in Afghanistan's near neighbourhood, but now need to involve the region's major players as a grouping to address the Afghan issue.
Role of Tashkent
Recognising the crucial role that Tashkent will play in the NDN, the U.S. has already warmed up to Uzbekistan. In fact, it was the sharp U.S. reaction to the troubles in Uzbekistan's Andijan province in 2005 that led to Tashkent accelerating its involvement with the SCO.
A beginning with the SCO Regional Forum, it is felt, would stand the U.S. and NATO in good stead especially with the beginning of the drawdown of troops and equipment which arrived over nine years. But bulk of it will now have to be sent back in a much more compressed time frame of three years.
The NDN is much costlier and circuitous. However, greater reliance on it would reduce the dependence of the supplies on routes going through Pakistan that have frequently been attacked. The NDN routes go through several countries, in the case of supplies from the German base of Germershiem as many as 10. Despite these challenges, the upfront involvement of SCO countries and Turkmenistan, would greatly help in the efforts to resolve the Afghan conflict which has players linked to neighbouring countries by ethnic bonds. So far, all these countries have promised to deal only with Kabul and its nominees rather than cut deals with warlords with shared ethnicity.
In the coming days, sources expect the NDN to expand to include China. There have been reports of NATO and Beijing opening talks on a supply route via Xinxiang Province.
It is in line with this thinking that India is planning to reopen a hospital it had set up on Afghanistan's northern borders to treat Northern Alliance fighters when they took on the Taliban. India already has an air base in Tajikistan which it neither confirms nor denies. But sources speak of a base with developed infrastructure which has been used by the Tajik security forces for heavy duty operations against Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) militants.
Currently, India is taking an active interest in the SCO's Tashkent-based counter-terrorism centre where it gets to discuss the subject with four Central Asian countries besides Russia and China. “It is a great forum to do joint exercises with,'' said the sources.
The New York meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bodes well for the development of an alternative route to Pashtun-dominated areas of Afghanistan in which India has played and will play a major role.
