President Joe Biden has announced that the United States will pull out all its troops from Afghanistan by 11 September. His predecessor Donald Trump had started the process in December 2018, committing to do the same by 1 May this year.
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In preparation for this, the US organized several rounds of negotiations between the Ashraf Ghani-led Afghan government and the Taliban, but hardly any progress has been made. A US withdrawal at this juncture could be disastrous for the people of Afghanistan, have negative consequences for the wider region, including India, and help the cause of Islamist jihad around the world.
There are only about 3,500 American soldiers left in Afghanistan. The last American hostile-fire casualty on Afghan soil was on 8 February 2020, some 14 months ago. Since 2015, the US role has been largely limited to training and support. The war against the Taliban is being fought by the Afghan army, not Americans.
Today, US soldiers in Afghanistan are more or less a non-combat military presence, like the 53,000 American troops posted in Japan, 33,000 in Germany, 26,000 in South Korea, and 4,000 in Bahrain. Yet, the departure of US soldiers from Afghanistan this year could have deleterious effects, since even a token number of US troops has high symbolic value. So will their exit.
The withdrawal is being seen and touted by the Taliban as a decisive victory. It already controls about 40% of the territory in Afghanistan, and within hours of Biden’s announcement, Haji Hekmat, the militia leader for Balkh province, was telling the BBC: “We have won the war and America has lost.” Kabul, the Taliban believe, is now well within reach.
The first stated objective of the US-sponsored negotiations was to set up a ‘transitional government’, which would oversee the country’s return to peace. This has not happened. One, as should have been expected, nobody can figure out how this transitional government will be able to balance the theocratic-state goal of the Taliban with democracy. Indeed, the Taliban have been quite clear that they want to restore the fully-Sharia-compliant Islamic state that they had run till they were ousted from power by the US military in 2001.
Two, the Taliban have promised a ceasefire several times and then promptly gone back on those promises. In fact, they escalated their attacks and seized more territory. Again, only the naïve or the desperate would not have expected this.
Three, the Taliban have insisted that Ghani has to resign for the peace process to make headway. Ghani, meanwhile, is in a strange position. The Taliban call him a “US puppet”, while the US seems intent on selling him and his government down the river.
On 11 March, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken wrote to Ghani; the letter’s tone has been described as “bullying” and “neo-colonial” by some observers. Blinken appeared to blame the Afghan government for the failure of peace talks. The letter takes no cognizance of the obstacles the Taliban have constantly raised during the negotiations, their repeated reneging on promises, or even the fact that they have done nothing to sever alliances with groups like Al-Qaeda. Blinken also pulled a rabbit out of his hat: the US is now asking Turkey, the Islamist leanings of whose President Recip Erdogan are well-known, to convene a meeting between the Kabul government and the Taliban. This is beginning to sound less like a troop withdrawal and more like an abandonment of Afghanistan to the medieval Taliban.
To top it all, the day before Biden’s announcement, the office of the United States Director of National Intelligence released its annual threat assessment report, in which it said: “(The) prospects for a peace deal (in Afghanistan) will remain low during the next year. The Taliban is likely to make gains on the battlefield, and the Afghan government will struggle to hold the Taliban at bay if the (US-led) coalition withdraws support. Kabul continues to face setbacks on the battlefield, and the Taliban is confident it can achieve military victory.”
The Biden administration’s Afghanistan decision will probably further shake the faith that American allies have in Washington.
Of course, the most terrible consequences will be suffered by the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban are now energized. When the group was in power in the 1990s, it imposed the strictest of Sharia regimes, depriving women of nearly all freedoms, even banning music and photography. There is no reason to believe that they will behave any differently this time around if they are victorious. They’re already claiming moral victory, and this will surely motivate jihadi forces across the world.
All this is not good news for India, which has steadfastly supported the government of Afghanistan and is the second-largest aid donor to the country after the United States. If the Taliban return to power in Kabul, they may start working with their long-time sponsor and ally Pakistan to foment Islamist terrorism in India.
Sadly, Biden does not seem to have learnt much from experience. As vice-president to Barack Obama, he had overseen America’s military exit from Iraq in 2011. But, by January 2014, the Islamic State had captured large parts of Iraq and become a global threat. The US had no option but to send its forces back. Biden has been there, done that, and had to undo.
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In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)