Balancing acts

Occurrences in Afghanistan and Taiwan demand vigilance

The two headline-grabbing developments involving the United States this week have indirect but significant implications for India. The first is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and the second is the killing of Osama Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Kabul. Both events have a bearing on India’s borders in the north and Northeast. China’s immediate response to Ms Pelosi’s provocative and high-profile visit to Taipei City has been to launch three days of military drills around Taiwan, using live ammunition. Beijing’s aggressive posture may have been expected in defence of territorial claims, to which it is particularly sensitive, given the manifest reality of Taiwan’s existence as an independent country with political systems that differ widely from China’s. Beyond a complex historical context, President Xi Jinping’s immediate political compulsions also demand a more muscular response. The Chinese Communist Party’s all-important 20th Congress, which dictates changes in the party’s constitution and has also been the venue for leadership changes in the past, is due later this year.

President Xi is already under pressure from slower growth and an imploding property market, which has sparked unprecedented popular protest. One standard template Beijing deploys for assuaging unrest is to raise the banner of nationalism and militarism, and Ms Pelosi has provided him a handy excuse to deploy it. For India, as a US ally in the four-nation Quad, which China sees as an “Asian Nato”, the response could well throw up consequences and opportunities elsewhere, even as it advisedly maintains its diplomatic stance of a “One-China” policy. Beijing’s occupation in the disputed South China Sea may offer India an opportunity to build and strengthen its naval and maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean. Equally critical, however, would be the urgent imperative for vigilance and military augmentation in the long North-eastern border in Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh, where India and China are involved in a military standoff since 2020.

In Afghanistan, revelations of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul, where he was killed by a US drone, have complicated relations with the Taliban regime just as a thaw in Indo-Afghan relations had set in. The knowledge that the Taliban was sheltering the head of al Qaeda in its territory could prove problematic not least because it highlights Afghanistan’s role as a holding and possibly training ground for al Qaeda and assorted Islamic terrorist franchises. This has obvious implications for stability in restive Jammu and Kashmir, which has already seen an expansion of terrorist activity this past year. After withdrawing diplomatic personnel from Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover, India had, in June, started exploring tentative moves to repair relations by resuming its traditional role as a supplier of humanitarian aid to the beleaguered country, sending wheat, Covid-19 vaccines, medicine, and winter clothing. This sort of aid has traditionally been one of India’s chief techniques of balancing Afghanistan’s “close” ties with Pakistan. But aiding a country that is known to be harbouring non-state actors with a capacity to damage Indian interests is scarcely appropriate. Balancing the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people against the extremist agenda of its rulers will require intricate diplomacy but also greater military and intelligence vigilance.