India also has differences with Iran, especially over its weaponization ambitions, while Iran for its part has generally maintained friendly ties with Russia and China, relations that have made both reluctant to sanction it over its nuclear activity. However, these ties have not, so far, extended to making Iran a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as doing so would bind them to the uncomfortable position of having to rally to Iran’s defence in the event of a military strike on it by Israel and/or the United States.
But although differences remain, there are also signs of co-operation between these regional powers–including over Afghanistan–which offer a glimpse of what could be achieved. India has built a highway from Iran’s Chabahar port into Afghanistan, while earlier this month Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao was in Teheran discussing the London Conference, among other issues.
India, Iran, Russia and the Central Asian republics already have form co-operating on Afghanistan. They did, after all, create and collaborate with Ahmed Shah Masoud’s Northern Alliance, which fought a civil war against the Taliban. Even the United States had shown signs of working with Iran on backing a new Afghan democracy (the subsequent deterioration in Iran-US relations and the decision by to Teheran to supply IEDs to the Taliban was aimed more at warning the US against backing any moves in Iraq or Afghanistan that would undermine Iran, rather than actually altering the military balance in the Taliban’s favour). And there are signs that India, for its part, is attempting to cool Teheran-Washington nuclear-related tensions to allow the focus to shift to co-operation on Afghanistan.
If this is so, India must also look at its own bilateral ties, and should consider setting aside its differences with China in the interests of preventing a crisis in Afghanistan. The SCO is not the forum for such a thaw as India is not a full member, in part due to its long-standing reluctance to be aligned with any single bloc. If the two can set their differences aside, it would pave the way for more intensive four-way dialogue between China, India, Iran and Russia. If a consensus could be reached on sidelining the Taliban and al-Qaeda, it would put enormous pressure on the United States to abandon the dangerous idea of a good and bad Taliban.
It has largely been the major powers’ distracting bilateral differences and conflicts that have allowed the Taliban and al-Qaeda issues to grow as they have, and which have enabled Pakistan and Wahhabist Saudi Arabia to set the agenda. It is therefore essential that the four work together now to oppose the good-bad Taliban plan. After all, the Afghan people braved deadly intimidation by the Taliban to vote last year and ensure their voices were heard. The results may not have been perfect, but if these four like-minded powers fail, a return of the Taliban–and return to bloody civil war–is how Afghans will be rewarded.
N.V. Subramanian is editor of www.NewsInsight.net and writes regularly on strategic affairs.
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