top of page

By:

Correspondent

21 August 2024 at 10:20:16 am

Grim Reckoning

The heckling of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee during the latter’s visit to Sonarpur is a stark reminder that fear has an expiry date. For years, West Bengal’s politics has been defined by intimidation. First the Communist, and later during Mamata Banerjee’s TMC regimes, the state’s political discourse has been overwhelmingly accompanied by violence, cadre dominance, partisan policing and a culture in which dissenters were expected to keep their heads down and their opinions to...

Grim Reckoning

The heckling of Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee during the latter’s visit to Sonarpur is a stark reminder that fear has an expiry date. For years, West Bengal’s politics has been defined by intimidation. First the Communist, and later during Mamata Banerjee’s TMC regimes, the state’s political discourse has been overwhelmingly accompanied by violence, cadre dominance, partisan policing and a culture in which dissenters were expected to keep their heads down and their opinions to themselves. Whether in villages, municipalities or university campuses, countless Bengalis, especially the Hindu community, have complained that political power was exercised not only through the ballot box but through fear during the TMC rule. Against this backdrop, the scenes that unfolded during Abhishek Banerjee’s Sonarpur visit was a symbolic moment. The TMC political class that once inspired fear suddenly found itself confronting fearlessness and the ire of ordinary citizens. Trinamool leaders accustomed to hectoring and threatening the public were forced to face its ire as Abhishek was heckled and pelted with eggs. The Trinamool Congress would be mistaken if it dismisses the episode as an isolated incident. Across West Bengal after the polls, there is a palpable anger against TMC leaders and their henchmen. That simmering rage appears increasingly difficult to contain. For years, Abhishek Banerjee had projected himself as the heir apparent to Bengal’s ruling establishment, speaking haughtily with the confidence of a man convinced that power was permanently on his side. Now that the TMC is out of power, Sonarpur offered a starkly different picture. It showed what happens when politicians who are accustomed to commanding the public are suddenly confronted by it. From the horrors of Sandeshkhali to the public fury unleashed after the R.G. Kar outrage, West Bengal witnessed episode after episode that laid bare the TMC’s intimidation and moral corruption. The crowd that confronted Abhishek Banerjee at Sonarpur was venting years of accumulated resentment against a political culture many Bengalis had come to associate with arrogance, patronage and strong-arm tactics. They reflected what a significant section of the public has increasingly come to see as the moral bankruptcy of a political order that believed it could rule indefinitely through fear and organisational muscle. Abhishek Banerjee, more than any other TMC leader, had became the face of that system. The hostility he encountered in Sonarpur was political payback delivered by a public no longer willing to whisper its anger. While no civilised society should endorse mob violence, no politician can expect public sympathy after years of bullying and intimidating citizens. He or she must realize that political arrogance has consequences and that public anger, when it finally erupts, grinds even the most powerful dynasties to dust. Abhishek Banerjee’s reception in Sonarpur may therefore prove to be more than an embarrassing political episode. It may become the defining image of Trinamool’s final decline and fall.

The Blunder of the Past

For two decades, Bagram symbolised U.S. might—until it became a monument to surrender.

Approximately 40-50 km from the capital of Afghanistan, in the shadow of the Hindu Kush, lies one of the world’s largest air bases, Bagram. Built in the 1950s by the Soviet Union to strengthen its communist roots in Central Asia, Bagram was captured later and expanded by Americans in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and to dismantle Al Qaeda.


From 2001 to 2021, for over two decades, Bagram served as a command centre for U.S. and NATO troops, housing a large arsenal and heavy aircraft. It witnessed a stark demonstration of how a trained, well-equipped military could not counter the guerrilla tactics of the Taliban. It saw the militants celebrating the very weapons the deserters had left behind. Bagram unmasked the torch-bearer of human rights as they turned their backs on the Afghan people, abandoning the counterterrorism commitment they professed to uphold for so long. The base is a symbol of surrender, a history that America is now seeking to rewrite.


In July 2021, just a month before the fall of the US-backed Afghan regime, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) had identified a new Chinese missile base in the Xinjiang region across the Afghan border. The FAS report claimed that nearly 250 nuclear missile silos are under construction in China, which is more than half of the size of the entire U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile strength. Bagram air base is one hour away from China’s nuclear base.


Trump realised the biggest blunder of the past: the abandonment of Bagram Air Base, their strategic military asset in Central Asia. Now he wants Bagram back. “We gave it away for nothing,” he says, blaming Biden for the misstep. However, it was Trump who signed the poorly negotiated Doha Agreement, which Biden did not renegotiate. But how could a real estate mogul-turned-politician miss the politics of place? Despite all this, Bagram is called “Biden’s failure” and Trump’s promise to Make America Proud Again. For debt-ridden Europe, reclaiming Bagram means another burden of being a U.S. ally.


“Bad things are going to happen” is another threat by Trump to make the enemy foresee the worst and rush to the negotiating table. “They need things from us. “We want that base back,” he asserted. The Taliban seeks recognition to lift economic sanctions, unfreeze $9.5 billion in assets, and secure international aid for the rebuilding efforts. Meanwhile, by blocking India’s access to Iran’s Chabahar port, Trump has not just hampered India’s trade, but he has also choked off essential supplies to Afghanistan, too. The United States clearly gained leverage over the Taliban. However, reclaiming the base once lost is no cakewalk.


The Taliban sits atop vast untapped natural resources, including copper, iron, gold, rare earths, and significant oil reserves. The latest geological surveys seem to have reignited Trump’s interest in the land America once abandoned. Doing business with the Taliban is not that easy, as the heavily sanctioned, cash-strapped Taliban now runs the world’s biggest opium trade. Illiteracy, rampant corruption, and widespread crime further complicate any potential undertaking. Re-operating Bagram would require billions of dollars of investment, which brings in significant risks. Since the West’s exit, the geopolitics of Afghanistan has changed drastically. China has invested heavily in Afghanistan, securing over 200 mining contracts to extract Afghanistan’s natural wealth.


This investment dynamic positions China as a key player, resistant to any U.S. presence in Afghanistan. The resistance is especially strong given Bagram’s proximity to a Chinese nuclear facility and regions of ethnic unrest involving Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities.


For Iran, too, a possible return of U.S. control over Bagram would constitute a threat to the so far uninterrupted Iran-China trade, the revival of its nuclear programme, or the carrying on of other economic activities sanctioned by the West. The U.S. would use Bagram to monitor Iran, given its proximity to the Iranian border—closer than the Pakistani air base from which the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear facilities during the peace dialogues. As a response, Iran had then fired a few missiles in Qatar’s skies, but now operating Bagram airbase would put the U.S. troops within striking range of Iranian missiles.


Russia would also not want NATO to re-enter its sphere of influence, whether in neighbouring countries or lands afar.


Reclaiming and operating Bagram would not only expose the United States to significant challenges and resistance from both within and around Afghanistan, but it would also highlight the blunder of the past.


(The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page