The unimportance of Hamid Karzai is a fact of life. Civilities still need to be maintained. India’s prime minister, therefore, politely accepts the Afghan head of State’s assurance that fullest security would be provided to Indian citizens temporarily resident in the Taliban-infested country. Karzai is in no position to ensure even his own security or that of his regime. For both, he has to depend upon American grace. Afghanistan, for all purposes, has been reduced to a colony of the United States of America, just as Iraq has been.

Unfortunately, for the Americans, again, as in the case of Iraq, the newly acquired property too has a fragile quality about it. The writ of the administration presided over by Karzai and shored up by US military prowess runs only in Kabul; its hold on the rest of the country is tenuous, the Taliban are swarming practically all over the rocky hills and valleys; it is a vast stretch of no man’s land. In Kabul, too, the Islamic fundamentalists have their underground cells and often launch sniper attacks, targeting foreign embassies and government buildings. So, apropos of the concern expressed by New Delhi, all that President Karzai is capable of doing is pass it on to the top brass of the US joint special operations command in Kabul for whatever action or non-action is deemed fit.

Indians generally love the colour of money; whatever the shade of that colour. Americans are making huge outlays in Afghanistan aimed at setting up a solid defence infrastructure against the Taliban. They are building airstrips, helipads and army barracks, widening highways and laying new ones and installing sophisticated communications networks, apart from constructing structures for hospitals and schools. Technologists and technicians of diverse backgrounds, civil and mechanical engineers as well as skilled and unskilled workers from India have crowded in Kabul and sometimes fanned out from there, under military protection, to the outlying provinces to participate in such works in progress. When the Taliban strike, they have no particular programme to spare Indians; it would not be logistically possible to do so either. There is, of course, also the theory that whoever supports the heathen Americans deserve to perish along with the Americans. Casualties are therefore mounting among Indians, a development New Delhi cannot afford to ignore. India’s prime minister communicated his government’s sense of disquiet over the matter to the Afghan president, who in turn will, it is expected, convey the substance of it to the American authorities.

The Americans will be full of sympathy, but will also be ready with a riposte. Yes, adequate security must be provided to the Indian personnel who are, in their own manner, offering ground support in the war against global terror in Afghanistan soil. To attain full success in that war, it is however necessary to induct troops and more troops. The bulk of the forces fighting the Taliban are Americans. The US administration is also contributing enormous funds and rendering strategic advice. Certain collateral issues nonetheless deserve consideration. A pre-election half-pledge apart, President Barack Obama is currently under intense domestic pressure to bring the boys back home from the minefields of West Asia, including from Afghanistan. The Indian government should appreciate the predicament the US is in and kindly do a bit more to assist in the fight against their common enemy. In addition to sending workers, technicians, doctors and scientists to Afghanistan, could not India despatch some troops too? India’s armed forces could then directly assume responsibility for the security of Indian citizens at work there.

The Americans, in fact, have been at it for several months, but without success. New Delhi has continued to be evasive on the proposal to deploy army units against the Taliban. Indian public opinion is not yet broad-minded enough. In its reckoning, armed infiltrators in Kashmir from Pakistan across the line of control are the principal, if not the only, terrorists who are candidates for confrontation and liquidation. The jingo fringe in the country would love the idea of teaching Pakistan a proper lesson by ordering troops to cross the LoC and chase would-be infiltrators all the way to Islamabad. Enthusiasm is pronouncedly much less when US diplomats suggest deployment of Indian army contingents in the rocky wilderness of Afghanistan. The mismatch between Indian and American concepts of the war on terrorism fails to dissolve.

The Americans, besides, have to negotiate another awkward roadblock. The Pakistani establishment are already most unhappy with the large Indian presence in Afghanistan. They would, of course, love to see the total extermination of the Taliban. But if the price to be paid for that were arrival of Indian troops in large numbers, they would have intense second thoughts.

This, then, is the great American dilemma. Foggy Bottom’s several initiatives have paid off, India has abandoned its pretensions about non-alignment and is now as loyal a camp-follower of the US as Pakistan has always been. The common ground of fealty to the US cause notwithstanding, the animosity between these two major south Asian nations refuses to wither away, thereby thwarting the dream of a combined US-India-Pakistan offensive against the Taliban.

The India-Pakistan imbroglio has a number of other dimensions as well impinging on US policy planning. For one, the American administration would dearly love the Pakistan army to move the bulk of its forces, currently posted along the long stretch of the Indian border, to the Afghan front. As long as the Kashmir issue keeps boiling, Pakistan would flatly refuse to comply with this request. American diplomacy is at the moment focused on persuading Islamabad and New Delhi to be ‘practical’ and agree to a permanent solution of the seemingly intractable Kashmir problem. The formula the Americans have in mind is for both sides to accept the LoC as the permanent border, shake hands and devote their energy and resources to other issues of equally grave, or even graver, import, specifically, the war on global terror.

Pakistan, weighed down by many other troubles, will conceivably not be averse to a compromise along these lines. India, however, will have problems; decision-makers in New Delhi will have to worry about adverse domestic reaction, given the fact that for more than half a century, the country’s politicians have been claiming Kashmir, the whole of it, to be an inalienable part of India. There is also very much the crucial reality: militants in the valley will hardly endorse an India-Pakistan entente that leaves them in the lurch. They will stay adamant in their demand for Azad Kashmir; turbulence in the valley may actually intensify. And the furore in the valley could rekindle dormant pro-Kashmir emotions in Pakistan too. Quiet American intermediation will be infructuous, internal developments in both India and Pakistan will frustrate the vision of a grand South Asia concordat against the abominable Taliban.

The disappointed Americans will go back to the drawing board and attempt to develop a fresh road map to induce the two crony countries to see reason. While they keep trying, India and Pakistan will go on with their little games, either to embarrass each other or to gloat at each other’s misfortunes. The fact that one party has discovered a mole within its own precincts — and a woman at that — will cause much jubilation to the other party. Ajmal Kasab’s being sentenced to death by a court of law will evoke frenzied satisfaction in the Indian media. Proceedings of this kind will not prevent a Pakistani sports personality from picking a bride from India or a scholarly journal in India according pride of place to contributions by Pakistani social scientists. Civil liberty and women’s lib groups from the two countries will visit each other and exchange earnest notes. Musicians from Lahore will cast a spell on an audience in Lucknow; film stars from Mumbai will be mobbed in Karachi. Sensible things will keep happening on the individual plane, decisions at the national level are an altogether different matter. Americans, stymied in their attempt to implement their agenda, will lament at their failure to unravel the mystery of the India-Pakistan thesis-antithesis phenomenon which appears to approach a synthesis and yet does not.