The one in the Middle East is heading towards what looks like a reasonable end – could even turn things around for the better.
The dice seemed heavily loaded against Iran. The US/ Israeli nexus was power-packed and no one besides China and Russia was expected to provide any help beyond semantics. The two honourable exceptions too had no intent to join the battle but did provide invaluable support to address the imbalance.
Tehran’s traditional non-state allies had apparently been defanged and some of the regional countries were very likely to act as the enemy’s fifth column. A few regional hands still rooted for Iran and gave the underdogs a fighting chance.
Two weeks down the line, if we were feeling a bit better in the guts, the credit must go to the proverbial Persian traits of enduring pain and the sprite of sacrifice. Did it start in Karbala! I’m not adequately equipped to comment on this aspect but could claim that these mad mullahs understood enough about warfare to order the nature of the battlefield.
They created conditions to minimise the pros of the enemy and optimise own assets. The American led coalition dominated the skies but was unable to neutralise Tehran’s use of unmanned projectiles. Subjecting its neighbours to a double whammy of hosting American bases and getting bombed by their local rival needed a toxic mix of Omar Khayyam’s forbidden fruits and Umro Ayyar’s bottomless bundle of wonders.
Geography works for anyone who understands its algorithm. The Strait of Hormuz could be a liability but these clever clerics used it to their advantage and one felt a sense of comic relief when the world’s top entertainer beseeched his colleagues for help but was stonewalled.
If the War continued on its present trajectory a positive outcome was very much on the cards. Nearer home another armed conflict, in case it didn’t undergo a course correction, didn’t have a chance to do us any good.
Wars in Afghanistan have so incisively been studied that we sardonically added to a long list of principles of war one more – don’t attack Russia or Afghanistan. The former uses its vast spaces and unfriendly weather to exhaust an invader or die of frostbite. Afghans do one better – play cat and mouse from behind a rock till the bewildered aggressor pays them to hit the road home.
No big deal therefore when in 2008 some of the old AfPak hands in Islamabad’s Marriot publicly declared victory on behalf of the Taliban. Did we care if it made our enlightened elites unhappy! For us the spontaneous applause by the backbenchers was the real reward.
Never thought for a moment that one day some of the cheerleaders might have to look at a round between own country and these South Asian giant killers, and that too within a familiar syndrome: the conventional weapons merely serving to replenish their ranks; every man they lost was replaced by ten suicide bombers.
Amongst much else that works for them in an asymmetric conflict, the low-tech warriors have wider choice of targets and time to strike. When was it last that a man-made arsenal overcame the one created by nature. In our Army we once upgraded an infantryman to be a fully autonomous weapon system.
When the Amis were bombing Afghanistan, their think tanks rolled in to Pakistan. They came in waves, listened us out with a grimace on their face, and reported back that the Afghans were evil; Pakistan their safe haven; and both deserved to be hanged by the neck. Our orchestra was now playing the Yankee Doodle – one more bombing run, and the terrorists would regret the day they were born.
Besides a minor change here or there, the big difference is that the foreign troops could press the exit button whenever they chose to. We may not like the two lumped together as conjoined twins, as Karzai once did, but the fact is that neither of us has anywhere else to go.
Hoping that this time the outcome would be different defies the Einstein’s Law of Insanity; how we got there could be talked about ad-nauseum; however, if already here the saner course was to take the road not yet taken.
Have heard time and again that one tried to talk but the insurgents were too stubborn. The problem is that we would rather hammer the Baluchis for seven decades than listen to them for a week.
Talking to Taliban would take much less if we knew someone who could reach the right nerve. The tribesmen not only have a tradition of seeking revenge but also of never refusing a peer who walked up to their door. Worth trying if the alternative was pitching what we believe was our irresistible force against a time tested immovable object.
PS: Only the other day I was trapped by a bunch of diplomats to talk about the two wars. Maybe they understood the linkage far better than a fired cartridge.
18 March 2026
