The global fight against coronavirus is being complicated in India's western neighbourhood. Its well-meaning Saarc (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) COVID Fund can be of little use against serious diplomatic and military moves that appear to ignore the intensity of the pandemic.
 
India can be of little help to Afghanistan, a SAARC member, when the United States, keen to quit before the corona pandemic gets to American forces stationed there, is desperately pushing the peace pact signed at Doha with the Taliban, well before the presidential elections in November in which President Donald Trump will seek a second term.  

Another SAARC member Pakistan, deeply involved in making the Doha Accord work to facilitate the US’ withdrawal and hoping to extend its influence in the region, wants to play the Kashmir card, going by Jammu and Kashmir police chief, Dilbgh Singh’s statement, that corona-affected militants are being sought to be pushed into India.  

 Even if this does not happen, Pakistan poses a serious threat to the region. Relatively better placed to combat corona, with USD 8 million from the US and 1.4 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it has frittered away its advantage.  An inefficiently handled “total lockdown”, for which Prime Minister Imran Khan had publicly expressed reservations, has been replaced by what is being touted as “smart lockdown”.

 Without effective social distancing, one of the basics prescribed for fighting corona, Pakistanis will continue to congregate at mosques during the holy Ramzan. This is when Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, that is home to Islam’s highest shrines, have asked their people to pray at home. The Khan government has given in to pressures from the ulema, while also placing on them the onus to ensure that the mosques and the devotees take precautions. Doctors have written to Khan expressing alarm, warning of a serious spike in cases by the end of the holy month.  But no one seems to be listening, as religion controls politics, and dictates terms and conditions, including over pandemics.    

A common thread that runs through the AfPak region is of COVID-19 taking the back seat in the plans and actions of various stakeholders in the region working at cross-purposes. A vast region, sorely short of medical facilities to combat the pandemic, has the potential of becoming the world’s worst hotspot.

Credible reports are that the US and Pakistan are both worried that Taliban militants. in the custody of President Ashraf Ghani's government in Kabul, could succumb to the coronavirus, angering the Taliban and jeopardizing the Doha peace pact. While the Kabul regime wants to retain the prisoners as a bargaining chip, the Taliban are stepping up attacks to wrest more military and territorial gains.  

All three are worried about the Taliban prisoners but show little concern for the suffering of the Afghan people. The Ghani government is seriously short of hospitals and medical facilities needed to combat corona. That only 840 cases have been detected with 33 deaths as on April 20 would seem a gross under-reporting of the pandemic. Afghanistan has the least testing facilities in the region and cannot really prevent the spread.      

The ground situation is worsened by the US attitude. Instead of helping Afghans fight coronavirus, it has threatened to withhold USD one billion aid to somehow get Ghani and his principal political rival, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, to work together, talk to the Taliban and make the Doha pact work.

When Kabul can hardly govern and is constantly fighting the Taliban, fighting COVID-19 would perforce be a low priority. The three-week lockdown was effective, if at all, only in Kabul, not much in the rest of the country. Shia-majority Herat, bordering Iran, is the pandemic’s epicenter, making Tehran restless.

All those who were on the negotiation table at Doha, from all sides, are 50-plus.  It is now or never to gain power for the Taliban who fought the Russians and then the Americans -- coronavirus be damned.

Coronavirus could be deadlier than the war, Ezatullah Meherdad, Lindsay Kennedy and Nathan Paul Southern, in a report dated April 17, 2020, said. Ten thousand prisoners the Ghani government plans to release could carry the disease home. Sowing poppy continues to be a lucrative activity irrespective of war or corona and this is sowing time in parts of Afghanistan. Worse, the end of the spring season marks the resumption of the military offensive.

Afghanistan’s internal and external power stakeholders, desperate to further their respective and conflicting interests, are in no mood to call even a temporary halt to coordinate a fight against the deadly virus.   

There are no takers of the United Nations’ warning that the spread of the pandemic could cause a global humanitarian disaster. Its appeal for a global ceasefire in all conflict zones has fallen, predictably, on deaf ears.

(The writer is President, Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA).  The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at    mahendraved07@gmail.com)