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A Flurry Of Diplomatic Activity On Afghanistan

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Article for Observer Research Foundation on 21st March, 2021

A flurry of diplomatic activity on Afghanistan has begun, catalysed by the approaching May deadline for the U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan under the agreement signed on 29 February last year by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban co-founder and Deputy Leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader in Doha.

The problem is that a year later, the Doha agreement is in shambles. The intra-Afghan dialogue that was supposed to begin in March finally began in September and has not made progress. Taliban had committed to cut their ties with Al Qaeda but recent statements by Afghan and U.S. officials indicate that this has not happened. Meanwhile, violence levels in Afghanistan have risen sharply in recent months. A recent UN report indicated 3035 civilian deaths and 5785 injured during 2020 with Taliban held responsible for 45 percent of the casualties.

Biden’s options

President Biden’s options are limited. He can stick to the original withdrawal date but it is a foregone conclusion that the Kabul government will not be able to last very long and the country will descent into a civil war. The option of extending the stay unilaterally means that the Taliban may resume targeting U.S. troops, something they have refrained from since the Doha deal. A third option is to negotiate a short extension with the Taliban by offering them a share in governance in return for a reduction in violence.

Khalilzad has been asked to stay on to explore the third option and kickstart the intra-Afghan peace negotiations by suggesting that a Transition Government, including the Taliban, replace the current regime in Kabul, and the UN convene an international conference with key global and regional players, and the Afghan groups, a kind of Bonn 2, somewhat reminiscent of the Bonn conference convened in November 2001 where the post-Taliban political arrangements were concluded.

Diplomacy picks up

The rationale for the U.S. approach was spelt out in identical letters by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to President Ashraf Ghani and Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Dr Abdullah. It expressed concern about the growing levels of violence and shared the bleak U.S. assessment that after a U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban were likely to make rapid territorial gains unless there was a serious attempt to restart and accelerate the peace process. The new peace plan was shared by Khalilzad with Afghan leaders and Taliban in early March in Kabul and Doha respectively. It contains a roadmap to an inclusive transition government, the terms for a significant reduction in violence leading to a comprehensive ceasefire and drafting a new constitutional framework. In the larger interest, President Ghani is expected to make the sacrifice and step down. UN has been requested to convene a Foreign Minister level conference inviting the Afghan groups, China, India, Iran, Russia and the U.S. to discuss a unified approach to a durable peace.

Turkey has conveyed willingness to host the UN convened conference, possibly in April, and also a March conference between Afghan government and leaders from Kabul and the Taliban to arrive at an agreement on the transition arrangements. UN Secretary general has announced the appointment of veteran French diplomat Jean Arnault as his Personal Representative. Arnault was in Kabul from 2002-06, first as Deputy and then as Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Those were the hopeful days, though by 2006, Taliban had announced their return with a spate of suicide attacks and IEDs.

Moscow added to the diplomatic activity by convening a conference of the ‘expanded troika’ – China, Pakistan, U.S. and Russia together with Afghan leaders and the Taliban on 18 March, with intra-Afghan talks continuing on 1the following two days. The highlight was a joint statement by the four Special Representatives – Ambassadors Khalilzad, Wang Yu, Sadiq Mohammed and host Zamir Kabulov on the first day declaring that they “do not support the restoration of the Islamic Emirate” system that the Taliban had introduced. The joint statement recognised that the Afghan people desired peace, called for reduction in violence from all sides, asked the Taliban not to launch the Spring offensive and reiterated their call for a negotiated settlement. The Afghan government has reacted positively emphasising the Islamic Republic is the only inclusive and acceptable structure that can ensure equality and pluralism and accommodates the diversity of Afghanistan and provides stability. Taliban have responded, saying that peace talks should be expedited and U.S. should stick to its withdrawal date.

A limited consensus

However, there is a growing momentum behind the call for Ghani’s departure. Within Afghanistan, many leaders like Karzai, Qanooni, Hekmatyar, Ismail Khan, Sayyaf etc would be happy to see Ghani go. Among the international community, U.S. sees Ghani now as an obstacle to peace and Russia, Iran and Pakistan have always seen him as too pro-U.S. Ghani has responded by suggesting that he is ready to hold early elections (these are due in 2024) and hand over power to any elected government. However, the 2019 election saw an abysmal turnout of 20 percent and the current situation is no better. Moreover, Taliban are not inclined to go the electoral route.

However, the limited consensus breaks down thereafter and Bonn 2 is not like Bonn 1. There are fundamental differences and internal changes. At Bonn 1, the four groups invited (Rome, Cyprus and Peshawar groups and the Northern Alliance) were not fighting each other; Bonn 1 only sought to set up a road map for political normalisation with these four groups in a post-Taliban Afghanistan. For Bonn 2, there are essentially two parties, Taliban and the Afghan government who are fighting a bloody war. Taliban have gained legitimacy, expanded their presence and are militarily strong. The Kabul government is internationally recognised but has lost considerable legitimacy because of its disunity, consequent fragility and incompetence.

The most important internal factor is Afghan demographics – a median age of 18.4 years with 46 percent of Afghan population below 15 years and another 28 percent between 16-30 years. This large cohort has come of age post-2002 and is used to living in a conservative but open society. If the Doha agreement generated concerns among youth, women and minorities (and the Afghan government), the new proposal confirms their worst fears and they are united in not accepting an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

India’s role

Since 2002, India has undertaken an extensive economic cooperation programme at a cost of $ 3 billion. The absence of a shared border and focus on using ‘soft power’ reflects the reality that India lacks the leverage to play ‘spoiler’, unlike Afghanistan’s other neighbours. At Bonn I, India was invited because it had been a key supporter (along with Russia and Iran) of the Northern Alliance. Today, India is invited because it has acquired the distinction of being the preferred development partner. This realisation is not lost on the Taliban either who have been supportive of India’s developmental role.

The Biden administration realises that it needs diplomacy to ensure a managed exit from Afghanistan. It needs Russia, Pakistan and Iran (as well as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar) to lean on the Taliban to agree to a short U.S. extension; it needs Russia to lean on Ghani to make the sacrifice, and it needs the UN to come back and take over the peace process, thereby enlarging the number of stakeholders. Once the Taliban join a transitional government, they should wind up the Doha office and move to Kabul so that future Afghan talks will be Afghan led, Afghan owned and Afghan controlled. 

However, whether this flurry of diplomatic activity can bring lasting peace to a country that has experimented with monarchy, a socialist republic, a communist rule, an Islamic Emirate and an Islamic Republic over the last 70 years, remains  difficult to predict.

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https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/flurry-diplomatic-activity-afghanistan/

Stress Test For American Democracy

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Published in The Hindu on 20th January, 2021

The oldest democracy has been subjected to its most severe stress test; it came to the brink, stared at the abyss and just managed to clear it. The U.S. may have survived the test but considerable damage has been done; defining pictures of 20000 National Guard troops deployed in and around the Capital and an outgoing President who has been impeached a second time in his term, a week before he relinquishes office, have hurt US self-image as also its global standing. It is a grim reminder that democracy, however deeply rooted, can’t be taken for granted and needs constant nurturing and protection to prevent its descent into populism and mobocracy.

A Polarising Election

The stress test began two months earlier when incumbent President Donald Trump refused to accept the election outcome, alleging that his victory had been stolen through fraudulent means. The 2020 election was the most polarising the U.S. has seen and what happened on 6 January was its reflection. The certification of the results by Congress will get Mr. Trump out of the White House but Trumpism will be a much tougher challenge to deal with. In an election that saw the highest turnout (nearly 67 percent) since 1900, if Joe Biden won over 81 million votes, Mr. Trump managed an impressive tally of 74 million. The county wise election map of the US reveals that Mr. Biden won in 509 counties that account for over 70 percent of US GDP, while Mr. Trump won in 2547 counties that provide the rest.

Even though media channels including Fox News had called the results by 5 November, Mr. Trump refused to make the traditional concession speech, insisting that the election had been rigged. Legal challenges were mounted by his supporters in many states. By end-November, the recounts had been completed and legal challenges disposed of. The election result remained unchanged. Attorney General William Barr, a known Trump supporter, announced on 1 December that the Justice Department had not uncovered any significant fraud that could have affected the results of the presidential election. On 14 December, the Electoral College met in each of the State capitals to formalise the Biden victory by casting 306 votes for Biden/Harris versus 232 for Trump/Pence.

The results were conveyed to the Congress for certification, but Mr. Trump had still not given up. He continued to urge Vice-President Pence, who was to chair the Congress session on 6 January, to use his authority to question the returns submitted from the swing states. Mr. Pence demurred, pointing out that he had no “unilateral authority” to overturn the electoral votes submitted.

Mr. Trump had been urging his supporters to stage a protest in Washington against the certification, sending out tweets, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild”. On that day, addressing his protesters, he sent them to Capitol, urging, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore”. Hours later, the mob had stormed Capitol, disrupting the proceedings. The dedicated Capitol police force proved inadequate and the National Guard was called in. Five people died. After a day that will be remembered as one of the darkest days in U.S. history, Congress certified Mr. Biden’s victory clearing the way for him to be sworn in the 46th President of USA on 20 January.

Yet, the shock at the events and Mr. Trump’s role in inciting his supporters led to growing demands for him to step down. Mr. Pence was reluctant to invoke the 25th Amendment (it was designed to deal with a president suffering incapacitation) leading to the House passing an impeachment motion on 13 January. The charges framed included “threatening the integrity of the democratic system, interfering with peaceful transition of power and imperilling a coequal branch of government”. While many Republicans did hold Trump responsible, they were reluctant on impeaching and finally, only 10 of them supported the motion that was carried by 232 votes against 197.

The fate of the impeachment motion is uncertain in the Senate. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell though privately supportive of impeachment, has not indicated how he would vote. Given the requirement of two-thirds majority for conviction and the Senate at fifty-fifty, it is difficult to gauge if there will be 17 Republican Senators needed. In 2019, Mr. Trump was impeached by the House over his dealings with Ukraine but cleared by the Senate. For the Democrats, the impeachment is as much about Mr. Trump as it is about indicting Trumpism. For the Republican Party however, it is a polarising moment. The question its leaders need to introspect over is why they allowed Mr. Trump to take over the GOP. A recent poll suggests that 64% of the Republican voters remain convinced that the election was stolen. GOP’s challenge is how to reject Trumpism while retaining the Trump supporters.

The brutal reality is that in 2016, Republicans held the House, the Senate and won the White House but in the last four years, they first lost the House and now have lost both the White House and their Senate majority. This is despite the record turnout and in the process, the country has been badly divided. Purging GOP of Trumpism will not be easy especially if Trump does plan to run again in 2024. That is why there is talk of invoking the 14th Amendment provisions by which a simple majority in the Congress can bar Mr. Trump from running for any federal office.

Populism and Social Media

Somewhat belatedly, Twitter and Facebook removed Trump’s accounts and along with a number of other right-leaning platforms linked to QAnon. Apple and Google stopped carrying the right-wing chat group Parler App while Amazon declined to host its data on its servers, effectively killing it. This has led to legitimate questions about free speech, the monopoly of social media platforms, the viability of their economic model and who should determine policy in the digital public domain. The European Union is accelerating consideration of new rules to guide content moderation policies of social media networks.

In How to Lose A Country (2019), Turkish writer Ece Temelkuren writes about how a democracy descends into populism, majoritarianism and finally authoritarianism. Opposition is delegitimised, the leader claims to represent the real people, who claim title to victimhood thereby aggressively claiming their dignity; and the elites become either irrelevant or, worse, instruments of oppression. Terms of political discourse shift, secular liberals become “sickular libtards”, facts are questioned and an alt-reality takes shape firing up the believers. This risk is not new but social media is a tool that aids such manipulation.

The U.S. is not the first democratic society to face this threat and even as Mr. Biden tackles the challenges of COVID-19 and economic recovery, his real challenge will be rebuilding the traditions of democratic discourse aimed at enlarging the centrist consensus. With Ms. Harris casting the tie-breaker in the Senate, Democrats control the Congress, though taking recourse to this thin majority will only exacerbate divisions and mutual recriminations. That is the legacy of Trumpism that must be undone if U.S. democracy has to successfully graduate from its stress test.

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US To Withdraw From Open Skies Treaty

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Publication for Observer Research Foundation

On 21 May, US President Donald Trump announced that US was serving notice of its intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty (OST). Concluded in 1992, the OST entered into force in 2002 and currently has 35 members (1) (Kyrgyzstan is a signatory but hasn’t yet ratified). Canada and Hungary are the depositary states. The reason provided is continuing Russian non-compliance with the OST which has led US to conclude that it is no longer in US interest to remain a party. Trump added that the US decision will take effect after six months (as provided in the treaty text) but US can reconsider if Russia returns to full compliance.

Unravelling Arms Control
The US decision had been anticipated and is in keeping with recent US decisions to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPOA, signed between US, UK, France, Russia, China, Germany and EU and Iran) on 8 May 2018, followed by the withdrawal from the US-Russia Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) on 2 August 2019.

Two more nuclear related treaties are at risk. The New START treaty between Russia and the US imposes a ceiling on operational strategic nuclear weapons of 700 launchers and 1550 warheads each, was concluded in 2010 and is due to lapse in February 2021 unless extended for a period of five years. President Trump has indicated that he is not in favour of the extension.

The second is the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which was concluded in 1996 but has not entered into force. It prohibits countries from carrying out nuclear test explosions but earlier this year US voiced suspicions that both Russia and China were carrying out low yield nuclear tests in violation of the understanding on zero-yield threshold. US has signed but not ratified the CTBT and there are indications that it may be planning to test.

Negotiating the OST
The concept underlying the OST is aerial reconnaissance flights by unarmed aircraft over each other’s territories as a means of promoting confidence, trust and stability between potential adversaries. It was first proposed by US President Dwight Eisenhower in mid-1955 in Geneva to Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin but found no traction. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the idea was revived in December 1989 by US President George Bush and accepted by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Negotiations commenced between NATO and Warsaw Pact members supported by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE, which continues to host the Open Skies Consultative Commission in Vienna) and were concluded on 24 March 1992. It entered into force on 1 January 2002. Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in mid-1991, months before the break-up of the Soviet Union and 27 out of 29 NATO members are party to the OST.

The OST establishes a regime for conduct of short notice flights by unarmed aircraft over territories of States Parties in accordance with established “quotas” spelt out in the treaty taking into account the size of the country. For example, US has a quota of 42 flights, the same as Russia (it is a joint quota with Belarus) while Portugal has a quota of 2 flights. The quota defines both the number of flights that a country can mount as also the number of flights it can host. The latter is called a “passive quota” and the former, “active quota”. States Parties can form groups to redistribute their active quotas as long as the absolute ceilings are observed. Since 2002, nearly 1500 flights have been undertaken by member states. In recent years, US has mounted an average of 14-16 flights a year while Russia has mounted between 4 and 9 flights annually.

Time frames are stipulated for providing notice to the observed state with flight plans and possible refuelling stops which are needed, particularly across the large territories of US, Canada and Russia. The observed state can propose changes and there are rules regarding deviations. The kind of aircraft to be used by each state are already agreed upon as also the sensors to be mounted on the aircraft. Four kinds of sensors are authorised – optical panoramic and framing cameras, video cameras with real time display, infra-red line-scanning devices and sideways looking synthetic aperture radar. A copy of the data collected is provided to the observed state and other countries can also obtain access to the data. Periodic review conferences have been held where technical issues regarding developments in sensor technology are discussed to redefine approved lists.

Why US is leaving

While Russia and other countries have upgraded both the aircraft and the sensors, US surveillance aircraft modernisation has been held up for lack of funds. Part of the reason is that US is able to obtain equally good or better data from its satellites. No other country can match US’ satellite monitoring capabilities. Sharing of satellite imagery is restricted and accordingly managed bilaterally by US. For the US, the OST is not particularly useful as an intelligence gathering tool but the reality is that it was always intended as a confidence building and transparency measure. As tensions between US and Russia have grown, US has become more interested in restricting transparency over its territory.

Since 2015, US has voiced concerns about instances of Russian non- compliance in terms of either delaying clearances or imposing onerous restrictions. The recent report on compliance issued by the US State department cited instances of Russian non-compliance in 2019 by imposing a limit of 500 kms over Kaliningrad and creating highly restrictive flight corridors in the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. US has also cited undue restrictions on flights over eastern Ukraine Crimea. The stage was therefore set for the US withdrawal.

The US has been increasingly concerned that Russia is using its overflights over US critical infrastructure to develop actionable intelligence and possibly mapping it for possible future offensive cyber operations. In 2017, an overflight request over the Trump golf estate in Bedford (New Jersey) raised concerns in the White House. This led the US to conclude that Russia was converting the transparency measure into an intimidation measure by weaponizing it. Reacting with a tit for tat approach was not in US interest.

US allies have expressed regret over the US decision. Russia has bluntly rejected US allegations of non-compliance, calling it a pretext for US moves to turn its back on multilaterally negotiated arms control treaties, citing the JCPOA and INF Treaty as examples. However, it has refrained from any indications regarding its response. Clearly, the OST is of limited utility for Russia if US territory is excluded and limited only to Europe and Canada. The OST may limp along for a while even after the US withdrawal takes effect after six months but the countdown for it has begun.

NOTES

(1) Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States

At The Edge Of A New Nuclear Arms Race

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Published in The Hindu on 27th April, 2020

Last week, a report issued by the US State Department on “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Agreements and Commitments” raised concerns that China might be conducting nuclear tests with low yields at its Lop Nor test site, in violation of its Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) undertakings.

The US report also claims that Russia has conducted nuclear weapons experiments that produced a nuclear yield and were inconsistent with ‘zero yield’ understanding underlying the CTBT though it was uncertain about how many such experiments had been conducted.

Russia and China have rejected US claims but with growing rivalry among major powers, the report is a likely harbinger of new nuclear arms race which would also mark the demise of the CTBT that came into being in 1996 but has failed to enter into force even after a quarter century.

What does the CTBT ban
For decades, a ban on nuclear testing was seen as the necessary first step towards curbing the nuclear arms race but Cold War politics made it impossible. A Partial Test Ban Treaty was concluded in 1963 banning underwater and atmospheric tests but this only drove testing underground. By the time the CTBT negotiations began in Geneva in 1994, global politics had changed. The Cold War was over and the nuclear arms race was over. USSR had broken up and its principal testing site, Semipalatinsk, was in Kazakhstan (Russia still had access to Novaya Zemlya near the Arctic circle). In 1991, Russia declared a unilateral moratorium on testing, followed by the US in 1992. By this time, US had conducted 1054 tests and Russia, 715.

Negotiations were often contentious. France and China continued testing claiming that they had conducted far fewer tests and needed to validate new designs since the CTBT did not imply an end to nuclear deterrence. France and US even toyed with the idea of a CTBT that would permit testing at a low threshold, below 500 tonnes of TNT equivalent. This was one-thirtieth of the 15000 tonne Little Boy, the bomb US dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Civil society and the non-nuclear weapon states reacted negatively to such an idea and it was dropped. Some countries proposed that the best way to verify a comprehensive test ban would be to permanently shut down all test sites, an idea that was unwelcome to the nuclear weapon states.

Eventually, US came up with the idea of defining the “comprehensive test ban” as a “zero yield” test ban that would prohibit supercritical hydro-nuclear tests but not sub-critical hydrodynamic nuclear tests. Once UK and France came on board, US was able to prevail upon Russia and China to accept this understanding. After all, this was the moment of US’ unipolar supremacy. At home, the Clinton administration satisfied the hawks by announcing a Science Based Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship Programme, a generously funded project to keep the nuclear labs in business and the Pentagon happy. Accordingly, the CTBT prohibits all parties from carrying out “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion”; these terms are neither defined nor elaborated.

Why the CTBT lacks authority
Another controversy arose regarding the entry-into-force provisions (Article 14) of the treaty. After India’s proposals for anchoring the CTBT in a disarmament framework did not find acceptance, in June 1996, India announced its decision to withdraw from the negotiations. Unhappy at this turn, UK, China and Pakistan took the lead in revising the entry-into-force provisions. The new provisions listed 44 countries by name whose ratification was necessary for the treaty to enter into force and included India. India protested that this attempt at arm twisting violated a country’s sovereign right to decide if it wanted to join a treaty but was ignored. The CTBT was adopted by a majority vote and opened for signature.

Of the 44 listed countries, to date only 36 have ratified the treaty. China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and USA have signed but not ratified. China maintains that it will only ratify it after US does so but the Republican dominated Senate had rejected it in 1999. In addition, North Korea, India and Pakistan are the three who have not signed. All three have also undertaken tests after 1996; India and Pakistan in May 1998 and North Korea six times between 2006 and 2017. The CTBT has therefore not entered into force and lacks legal authority.

Nevertheless, an international organisation to verify the CTBT was established in Vienna with a staff of about 230 persons and an annual budget of $ 130 million. Ironically, US is the largest contributor with a share of $17 million. The CTBTO runs an elaborate verification system built around a network of over 325 seismic, radionuclide, infrasound and hydroacoustic (underwater) monitoring stations. The CTBTO has refrained from backing the US allegations.

A new nuclear arms race
The key change from the 1990s is that US’ unipolar moment is over and strategic competition among major powers is back. US now identifies Russia and China as ‘rivals’. Its Nuclear Posture Review asserts that US faces new nuclear threats because both Russia and China are increasing their reliance on nuclear weapons. US therefore has to expand the role of its nuclear weapons and have a more usable and diversified nuclear arsenal. The Trump administration has embarked on a 30-year modernisation plan with a price tag of $1.2 trillion, which could go up over the years. Readiness levels at Nevada test site that has been silent since 1992 are being enhanced to permit resumption of testing at six months notice.

Russia and China have been concerned about US’ growing technological lead particularly in missile defence and conventional global precision strike capabilities. Russia has responded by exploring hypersonic delivery systems and theatre systems while China has embarked on a modernisation programme to enhance the survivability of its arsenal which is considerably smaller. In addition, both countries are also investing heavily in offensive cyber capabilities.

The new US report stops short of accusing China for a violation but refers to “a high level of activity at the Lop Nor test site throughout 2019” and concludes that together with its lack of transparency, China provokes concerns about its intent to observe the zero-yield moratorium on testing.

US claims that Russian experiments have generated nuclear yield but is unable to indicate how many such experiments were conducted in 2019. It suggests that Russia could be testing in a manner that releases nuclear energy from an explosive canister, generating suspicions about its compliance.

The New START agreement limits US and Russian arsenals but will expire in 2021 and President Trump has already indicated that he does not plan to extend it. Instead, the Trump administration would like to bring China into some kind of nuclear arms control talks, something China has avoided by pointing to the fact that US and Russia still account for over 90 percent of global nuclear arsenals.

Both China and Russia have dismissed US allegations pointing to Trump administration’s backtracking from other negotiated agreements like the Iran nuclear deal or the US-Russia INF Treaty. Tensions with China are already high with trade and technology disputes, militarisation in the South China Sea and most recently, with the Coronavirus pandemic. US could also be preparing the ground for resuming testing at Nevada.

The Cold War rivalry was already visible when the nuclear arms race began in the 1950s. New rivalries have already emerged. Resumption of nuclear testing may signal the demise of the ill-fated CTBT, marking the beginnings of a new nuclear arms race.