From Regional Strategic Convergence to Regional Strategic Coherence

Back in the decade of the 1990s, it was the combination of India’s financial crisis in mid-1991, followed by the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) on December 25, 1991, that was responsible for the ouster of Afghanistan’s then President Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (49) on April 15, 1992. Fast forward to today, one is looking at a vastly different geo-political and geo-economic landscape. India’s foreign exchange reserves increased by US$889 million to a lifetime high of US$621.464 billion in the week ended August 6, 2021, while both Russia and Iran along with India have already outlined their grand ambitions about realising the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a multi-modal transportation corridor for the purpose of promoting transportation cooperation among its member-states. This corridor connects India Ocean and Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran, and is then connected to Saint Petersburg and Northern Europe via Russia. The INSTC project was originally decided between India, Iran and Russia in the year 2000 in St Petersburg, and subsequently included 11 other Central Asian and West Asian countries: Azerbaijan Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Oman and Syria, with Bulgaria as an observer. It envisions a 7,200km-long multi-mode network of shipping, railway and road routes for transporting freight, aimed at reducing the carriage cost between India and Russia by about 30% and bringing down the transit time from 40 days by more than half. In addition, India wants Iran’s Chabahar Port to be included in the INSTC, and expand INSTC membership by including Afghanistan and Uzbekistan (which has welcomed this offer).

Consequently, it stands to reason that Russia, India, Iran and the Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan not only develop strategic convergence, but also quickly move towards strategic coherence for the sake of decisively dealing with the on-going internal turmoil in Afghanistan. The following chain of events in chronological order explains what has been transpiring over the past two months.

Mid-July 2021: The National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRFA) is created in the Panjshir river-valley with the support of Ahmad Massoud, Bismillah Khan Mohammadi, Abdul Rashid Dostum and Atta Muhammad Nur.

Translation: First firm indication of the imminent collapse of Afghanistan’s national unity government led by President Ashraf Ghani.

July 28, 2021: Speaking in Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe where he met his counterpart Sherali Mirzo, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu stated that Russia will bolster Tajikistan’s military with weapons, equipment and training amid a “deteriorating” situation in neighbouring Afghanistan. He added that Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will hold joint military drills next week near Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan.

Translation: Russia did not buy all the assurances given by both the Taliban and Pakistan about the Taliban’s non-interference in the affairs of its immediate neighbouring countries.

August 17, 2021: Tao days after the bloodless takeover of Kabul by the Taliban, Afghan First Vice-President Amrullah Saleh—citing provisions of Afghanistan’s Constitution—declared himself the Acting President of Afghanistan from his base of operations in the Panjshir river-valley, and said that he would continue military operations against the Taliban from there.

Translation: First signalling by the NRFA to the international community about respecting and adhering to international laws and conventions, which clearly dictate that any new Afghan government that comes into existence through military coercion must not be internationally recognised.

August 17, 2021: Indian Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on National Security (CCNS), which was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and India's Ambassador to Afghanistan Rudrendra Tandon, who returned to India on the same day.

Translation: India’s policy and posture WRT the new ground realities in Afghanistan are still in the evolutionary stages and hence a ‘wait-n-watch’ posture was adopted for the time-being.

August 24, 2021: The Kremlin stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Afghanistan in a phone-call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both expressed the intention to enhance cooperation to counter the dissemination of “terrorist ideology” and the drug threat emanating from Afghanistan, and also agreed to establish a permanent channel for bilateral consultations on developments in Afghanistan.

Translation: By then, extensive parleys had been held by New Delhi, Teheran and Moscow regarding the future courses of action, especially on the need to militarily and financially support the NRFA, while also standing by for providing humanitarian assistance to an Afghanistan that had by then undergoing both economic and financial meltdown.

August 30, 2021: India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar welcomes the Diplomatic Adviser to the President of the United Arab Emirates, Dr. Anwar Gargash, at Hyderabad House, New Delhi.

Translation: For the first time, the subject of the UAE Air Force’s A330 MRTTs providing aerial refuelling support to the Indian Air Force’s C-17A Globemaster-III transport aircraft while overflying Iraqi airspace (since Iran had refused such overflight permission for IAF aircraft) and en route to Ayni air base in Tajikistan was broached. The UAE agreed to provide such support.

September 3, 2021: China expressed its willingness to extend its Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) into Afghanistan, saying that the “Taliban believes” that the initiative is good for development and prosperity in the war-ravaged country and the broader region.

Translation: Clearly sniffing a malicious Sino-Pakistan agenda, Moscow, Teheran and New Delhi agreed that this was clearly a move by China to make the INSTC irrelevant and consequently, began devising politico-military options aimed at ejecting the Taliban through military force throughout northeastern and northwestern Afghanistan.

September 3, 2021: Director of the British MI-6, Richard Moore, made an official two-day visit to India to firm up three executive actions with his Indian counterpart Samant Goel, Secretary (Research) in the Union Cabinet Secretariat (R & AW), in line with the directives of the Prime Ministers of both India and the UK.

Translation: The first executive action called for the MI-6 and R & AW to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) under which the latter will share with the former data on northern Afghanistan (this is because the UK had over the past 20 years dealt with only matters pertaining to southeast and southwest Afghanistan). Under the second executive action, the UK will tap into the logistics pipeline established between India and Tajikistan for supporting the NRFA. This will later have the option of being expanded, i.e. the UK will be able to operate its MALE-UAVs for ISR missions over northern Afghanistan from air bases approved for such use by Tajikistan. Lastly, the UK, which had since late 2020 wanted to train its fully-funded Afghan-manned Units 333 and 444 in high-altitude irregular warfare, now wants to access the expertise of the R & AW-owned Special Frontier Force (Establishment-22 or Vikas Regiment) and to this end, wanted to institutionalise the sharing of such expertise and experiences. Separately, the UK wants to exfiltrate through Tajikistan the 400 remaining members (and their families) of Unit 333 that are still in hiding throughout northern Afghanistan.

Northern Afghanistan includes the provinces of Baghlan, Balkh, Kunduz, Samangan, Sar-e-Pol, Takhar and Badakhshan. Kunduz province is located north of Kabul and shares an IB with Tajikistan. The province also borders with Baghlan, Takhar, Balkh, Samangan and Badakhshan provinces and covers an area of 7827 sq km. In the northeastern part of Afghanistan, there is the Wakhan Corridor, a narrow panhandle of mountainous territory in the Hindu Kush mountain range, squeezed between Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan-occupied Gilgit to the south, which extends to the grassy valley of the Little Pamir and all the way to Xinjiang. The entire Wakhan corridor was established as Wakhan National Park in 2014. The corridor borders the Pamir mountains to the north and the Karakoram mountain range to the south. In the western part of the strip are some of Afghanistan’s highest peaks, the Kohe Urgunt, the Kohe Shakhawr and the Noshaq Mountain (Naw Shakh). The Noshaq, Afghanistan’s highest mountain and the second highest peak of the Hindu Kush mountain range, is situated on the border between Badakhshan province in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province. The major ethnic groups living in Kunduz province are Pashtuns and Tajiks, followed by Uzbeks, Hazaras, and Turkmen. Gilzhai Pashtuns comprise 33% of the population of Kunduz and are the majority ethnic group in the province. Uzbek people of Afghanistan are found north of the Hindu Kush in Afghan Turkistan. In Afghanistan, they number approximately 1.6 million and comprise around 27% of the population of Kunduz province. Tajiks are a significant minority ethnic group in the province and represent 22% of the population. 11% of the population of Kunduz is classified as ethnically Turkmen, who are another Sunni Turkic-speaking group whose language has close affinities with modern Turkish. They are of aquiline Mongoloid stock. The Hazara comprise approximately 6% of the population. The Pashai represent only 1% of the population of Kunduz province, but are present in small numbers throughout northeastern Afghanistan. The term ‘Pashai’ refers to the language itself, the people who speak it, and the area they inhabit. Pashai speakers live in the area north of the Kabul River, extending about 160km from Gulbahar on the Panjshir River in the northwest to Chaga Serai in the east. The Pashai were members of the classic Gandhara culture and were pushed out of their original homeland in the lowlands into the valleys of the Hindu Kush by an invasion of Pashto-speaking Afghans from the Sulaiman Mountains. There are 11 named mountains to the northeast and southwest of Kunduz province: Koh-e-Seh Talah, Koh-e-Pasrah, Gory Ambarkoh, Koh-e-Chuchal, Koh-e-Qarah Batur, Tash Qutan, Koh-e-Qurtab, Koh-e-Yakah Badam, Koh-e-Zow-e-Zard, Koh-e-Albur, and Koh-e-Sur Baytal. It is there that combatants of the Islamic Jihad Union (Uzbek/Turkish), East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have established themselves and they exercise control over three districts in Kunduz, namely Chahara Darra, Imam Sahib, and Ali Abad. The local political parties active within Kunduz province are the Jamiat-e Islami led by Salahuddin Rabbani, Shuria-e Nazar that was founded by the late Ahmed Shah Masooud, Hezb-e-Wahdat led by Mohammad Karim Khalili, Hizb-e Wahdat-e Islami-ye Mardum-e Afghanistan led by Mohammad Mohaqeq, and the Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HiG) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

September 4, 2021: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director-General Lt Gen Faiz Hameed arrived at Kabul’s Serena Hotel.

Translation: He had a two-fold agenda: 1) Compelling the Taliban to officially extend support to the BRI and CPEC. 2) As a carrot, offer the Taliban the benefit of offensive airpower against the NRFA forces holed up throughout the Panjshir river-valley.

September 5, 2021: Both the Pakistan Army (PA) and Pakistan Air Force (PAF) activated two static air-defence sites for housing both LY-80E LOMADS and FM-90A SHORADS in Rawalkot and Kotli near the LoC in PoJK. At the same time, the forward air bases at Dalbandin and Shamsi were also activated that day.

Translation: These were pre-emptive precautionary measures aimed at deterring the IAF’s Rafale M-MRCAs and Su-30MKIs from interfering with the PA’s air-to-ground strikes, which were planned for execution on the following day. While Dalbandin was used to ferry members of the Quetta Shura to Kandahar, Shamsi has been/is being used as the ammunition storage warehouse for the Taliban combatants.

September 6, 2021: National Resistance Front (NRF) of Afghanistan's leader Ahmad Massoud claimed in the early hours that Pakistani armed drones were launching precision-guided munitions in the Panjshir river-valley and helping the Taliban to crush the armed resistance. Later that day, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh stated: "We would like to inform our friends, and those who might make the strategic error of entering Afghanistan with different intentions, that Afghanistan is not a country which accepts the enemy or an aggressor on its soil. I strongly warn that all red lines and obligations under international law must be observed. Iran is closely following developments in Afghanistan. Iran considers inter-Afghan talks as the only solution to Afghanistan problem." In the afternoon, Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said that the group “desires to join the CPEC”. Mujahid also confirmed an upcoming meeting between Lt Gen Faiz Hameed and Taliban senior leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. After sunset, PM Modi chaired a three-hour meeting of the CCNS in which Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, EAM S Jaishankar, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) Gen Bipin Rawat and NSA Ajit Doval. The agenda for discussion was the ongoing situation in Afghanistan and India's future course of action in this regard.

Translation: A synchronised military option involving India and Russia was formally given the go-ahead, with the Indian Army and IAF being given the green-light for expediting their respective taskings.

September 7, 2021: Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Gen Nikolay Patrushev began a two-day visit to India on September 7, 2021 to hold extensive talks with NSA Ajit Doval on the situation in Afghanistan, following its military takeover by the Taliban. India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that Patrushev is expected to call on PM Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. Patrushev is visiting India at the invitation of NSA Doval for high-level India-Russia inter-governmental consultations on Afghanistan.

Translation: Finishing touches were given to the joint Russia-India effort to militarily shore up the NRFA while concurrently finalising details of an announcement regarding the formal recognition to the Afghan government led by Acting President Amrullah Saleh, while denying recognition to any Taliban-instituted interim government for as long as the Taliban’s leaders remain sanctioned by the UNSC.

September 7, 2021: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh approved the expansion of financial powers to India’s three armed services in order to cut delays in making emergency procurements of ‘war-like stores’ for operational preparedness and quickly meet the requirements of the field formations. The delegated financial powers of Vice Chiefs of the three armed services were increased by 10% subject to an overall ceiling of Rs.500 crore. New CFAs have been added, namely the Deputy Chief of Army Staff, Master General Sustenance, ADG (Procurement)/DG Air Operations/DG Naval Operations, etc in the respective Armed Services HQs and in the field formations on account of re-organisation/re-structuring/functional requirements. In addition, a new schedule on the hiring of aircraft and associated equipment was introduced for the Indian Air Force (IAF), which included the hiring of air-to-air refuellers (that have been offered by the UAE Air Force). Also, the financial powers of Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs Of Staff Committee (CISC) as CFA has been enhanced substantially and aligned with that of the three Vice Chiefs.

Translation: Such funds will be utilised for procuring weapons from Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria for use by the NRFA, and for storage at Ayni air base in Tajikistan and possibly Termez Airport in Uzbekistan. In addition, Russia, India and Iran will financially contribute towards the MRO requirements of all those Afghan Air Force Mi-17s and Mi-25s that had escaped to Termez Airport in Uzbekistan, and towards the upkeep of the Afghan special operations force personnel who were trained by the US and the UK for conducting irregular warfare against the Taliban since 2007 and the bulk of whom have either joined the NRFA or were evacuated by air by the US and UK between August 16 and 31. It may be recalled that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had begun raising and fully funding four Counter-Terrorist Pursuit Teams, institutionalised with the acronym CTPT, since 2007. By 2010, this force numbered 3,000. Their mission was to hunt and kill “terrorists.” In 2015, the CIA helped its Afghan counterpart, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), to take command and control of these units for targetting combatants aligned with the Islamic State Wilayat Khorasan (IS-WK) who were active in the Kunar and Nangarhar provinces of Afghanistan. The four units numbered NDS-01, NDS-02, NDS-03 and NDS-04, with each having a regional area of operation: NDS-01 operated in the Central Region, NDS-02 in the Eastern Region, NDS-03 in the Southern Region, and NDS-04 in the North. All of them existed in a regulative twilight zone and each of the four units had 1,200 combatants. The UK on the other hand raised two units since late 2001—Unit 333 and Unit 444. These units comprised 7% of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), but conducted 80% of the fighting.

September 7, 2021: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns was in New Delhi on a two-day visit to discuss a number of issues arising from Afghanistan. 

Translation: Foremost, under instructions from the Biden Administration, the CIA wants to transfer from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan all the Afghan Air Force fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft that had defected in mid-August. Next, the CIA will fully finance the task of restoring the serviceability of all such aircraft. Following that, the CIA wants India to provide product-support for all the Russia-origin platforms like Mi-17s and Mi-25s by sourcing their rotables and consumables from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and also providing IAF ground service crew-teams to ensure the helicopters’ continued serviceability. This is because post-April 2014 (when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine), US laws have prevented US-based MRO contractors from having any business dealings with Russia-based OEMs and since then the US has been funding the procurement of product-support for all Afghan Air Force Mi-17s and Mi-25s via India, i.e. the IAF procured the spares from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and then handed them over to the Afghan Air Force and in return got paid by the US under a government-to-government arrangement.

By any measure, the Afghan Air Force on paper is far more capable than the deteriorating, 20-aircraft force of 2007. By 2019, about 265 US-trained Afghan pilots flew 118 aircraft supplied by the US. The fleet was then projected to double by 2023. In June 2019, Afghan pilots flew their first night-attack missions and conducted the first combat airdrop. In March 2020, it fired its first laser-guided bomb in combat, with 600 more fired since. In July, the United Nations said that the Afghan Air Force had been responsible for 52% of civilian casualties caused by air-strikes in the first half of 2018. However, of the 47 Mi-17s assigned to the Afghan Air Force, only 20 were operational in 2018. Mi-17s flew half the fleet’s 28,000 sorties in 2018, but the first S-70 Black Hawk did not fly until May 2019. The plan to provide 81 Black Hawks will not be complete until 2030. According to Afghan pilots, the Mi-17s are more powerful, but the Black Hawks are more manoeuvrable and have performed better in dusty landing zones.  The Mi-17 is “the perfect helicopter” for Afghanistan because it can carry more troops and supplies than the S-70 Black Hawk and is less complicated to fly. The Taliban had been on a campaign to assassinate Afghan Air Force pilots to diminish the air strategic advantage. At least six have been killed to date.

The US Defense Department had for long struggled to make the Afghan Air Force self-sufficient, with its pilots sometimes deserting during training in the US, and private contractor MRO support being required to achieve the required readiness-levels. By June 2021, availability dropped from over 90% in March/April for the AC-208 and 77% for the S-70s to about 30% across the force. A total of 46 aircraft, including 22 fixed-wing and 24 helicopters, and 585 Afghan airmen and soldiers, had fled to Uzbekistan by air after the fall of Kabul. By September 1, overhead satellite imagery revealed that Bohktar (Qurghonteppa) International Airport in Tajikistan was hosting 16 of the utility/transport attack aircraft previously seen at Uzbekistan’s Termez International Airport.  Afghanistan had about 120 S-70 Black Hawk crews before the fall of Kabul. It is not known how many crews fled across the border or are in hiding.

The CIA also wants India to explore the possibility of allowing USAF E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) platforms and combatant-elements of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to operate out of IAF air bases in Ladakh UT, like Leh and Thoise for conducting the so-called ‘over-the-horizon’ counter-terror operations. Such platforms, operating from Ladakh, will have to overfly Gilgit-Baltistan (with Pakistani concurrence) in order to operate over the Badakhshan, Kunduz, Kunar and Nangarhar provinces for targetting the IS-WK presence in these provinces. Essentially a modified Bombardier Global Express, the E-11A is an airborne Wi-Fi battlespace management platform that conducts ISTR missions, SIGINT missions, and also relays voice communications, ISR and video imagery, and other data between other ISR platforms (like UAVs) and ground troops that are often using different types of communications networks. The E-11As were developed in response to communications shortfalls that led to a 2005 battlefield disaster for US special operations forces in north-eastern Afghanistan. OP Red Wings—a joint mission involving US Navy SEALs, US Army ‘Green Berets’ special operations forces, and US Marines Special Force Recon—was meant to target Taliban combatants in the Pech district of Kunar province. But the mountainous terrain prevented a four-man SEAL reconnaissance team from establishing reliable communications with their ground-based command centre. Within hours of their arrival, the four-man SEAL team was attacked by the Taliban and three of them were eventually killed-in-action. Following this, a Taliban RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade struck a USAF CH-47D Chinook as it attempted to land a ‘Green Berets’ extraction team--killing 16 of them. One E-11A had crash-landed on January 27, 2020 on a remote plain south of Kabul in Ghazni province, killing at least two of its crew-members.

September 9, 2021: CIA Director William Burns travelled to Pakistan for meetings with the PA’s COAS Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa and ISI-DG Lt Gen Faiz Hamid to explore the possibility of counter-terrorism cooperation between the two sides.

Translation: In late April, when William Burns made its first trip to Islamabad and sought the usage of air bases owned by the PA and PAF for conducting over-the-horizon counter-terror operations inside Afghanistan, the Pakistanis had demanded a variety of restrictions in exchange for the use of such bases, and had demanded that they sign off on any targets that either the CIA or the US military would want to hit inside Afghanistan. This time, the US is taking a more hard-line approach by enlisting India’s support—meaning if push comes to shove, the US and India together will use military coercion (using both countries’ air force assets) to unilaterally declare no-fly zones over Gilgit-Baltistan for creating the air corridors required for accessing northern and north-eastern Afghanistan. This can well be another reason why both the PA and Pakistan Air Force PAF activated their air-defence sites in PoJK on September 5.

Meanwhile, matters are clearly not going well at all for China’s PLA Ground Forces (PLAGF) along the LAC. This has prompted a frustrated President Xi Jinping, 68, to appoint Gen Wang Haijiang, 58, as the new Commander of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command (WTC). He had earlier served as Commander of the Tibet Military District (TMD) since December 2019. Earlier, he also served in a number of positions, including Deputy Commander South Xinjiang Military District. Gen Wang is the fourth commander to head the WTC since the eastern Ladakh standoff began in May 2020. Xi in July 2021 had promoted Gen Xu Qiling, 59, to head the PLA’s WTC. Gen Xu was the third General to head the WTC after the Ladakh tensions began in May 2020. Earlier Gen Zhang Xudong was appointed on December 19, 2020 to head the WTC, replacing 65-year-old Gen Zhao Zongqi who retired from the PLA. In fact, a deeply worried Xi, who is also Chairman of the Central Military Commission, visited Lhasa on July 22 and 23 after a gap of ten years (he had visited Tibet as Vice-President in 2011) to find out for himself why the Tibetan natives were not joining the PLAGF’s combat branches in larger numbers, choosing instead to opt for recruitment in the People’s Armed Police and non-combat military branches like the Medical Corps. While in Lhasa, Xi met the PLA’s top brass of TMD as well as their Chengdu-based WTC leadership, both of whom have not even succeeded in hiring local Tibetan porters.