Large parts of the world are in desperate condition which have fallen victims of super power rivalry or collateral damage, sometimes trying to benefit from them. The Central Asian, the Middle East reaching towards Afghanistan and Pakistan would be part of this cluster. They have been haunting global politics for decades.
Many of these areas were damaged by the final years of the cold war conflict. The last shadow of an ideological war was when Russia invaded Afghanistan and the US followed it up in the name of preserving democracy with its “war on terror” . Twenty odd years later, the results are terrible for all including the victims and the invaders. The Soviet Union is gone and the United States is a whimpering super power at its pits with its Afg departure on show.
Meanwhile, the never discussed China which was not even on any list looks like the strongest. The situation has changed but the world powers continue to struggle to adjust to new realities.
IS, Taliban and Islamist “fictions”
The problem with many of the strategic analysts today is that they still think in terms of a world that ceased to exist long ago, the cold-war dominated global binary. It was taken for granted that the traditional power analysis patterns would go on and on. But the fall of SU, though celebrated in the West, also showed its intellectual inefficiency in going beyond the Good-Bad matrix. It didn’t include other factors such as the rise of the intermediary powers and the long term impact of the cold war on various regions even after the cold war was over. Most importantly, it had no idea how to deal with the rise of a “socialist” power run by the engines of successful market capitalism, China.
The out of date approach led most analysts to see “Jihadism”/Islamic Terror as the new contest of “Liberal Democracy”. That the world had more interest in economics rather than ideology didn’t figure in discussions. The IS-K attack on the Taliban is another example of the same trend which took so many by surprise. That ideology including Islamic ones are more about territorial control in response to invasions rather than ideological is tough for policy makers to understand.
South Asian policy
South Asia should recognize that just because everyone lived under one colonialism doesn’t mean they form a region. Pakistan and Bhutan have nothing in common historically nor does Maldives and Nepal. Irritation with India is one thing but its only Pakistan that engages with India militarily. These two countries with Pakistan’s links with Taliban and India’s conflict with China are major problems for regional stability.
Till date, most of South Asia minus Pakistan is safe, a country which resembles Afghanistan more than it does Bangladesh. Meanwhile, India continues to play “big power” although it doesn’t resemble one. However, its position next to China and its US proximity makes it a matter of concern. This means its problems with Pakistan will affect India to some extent. And that may impact Bangladesh and Nepal and if the Afghan situation and related conflicts heat up.
Neither Pakistan or India have behaved responsibly in the past and have major problems within, Pakistan much more. This is why the weaker South Asian countries in the region, increasingly a fictional region, may have to learn to keep a safe distance from both in as many ways as possible.
Source: United News of Bangladesh