India stepping up to the challenge of post-2014 Afghanistan
Interesting analysis of what India has been doing right. Of course the Indians did this in part because Uncle Sam and the Brits did a lot of the heavy security, but the Indians have had considerable success forging bonds and working long-term to improve the situation.
Probably the only place in the world where that is true.



While the Indians have been applauded for helping build roads, getting power lines into the capital, running hospitals and arranging for hundreds of students to pursue higher education in India, the Pakistanis are accused of the violence that Afghans see all around them, from the attacks in the capital to the fighting on the border and the export of militant Islam. It's become reflexive: minutes into an attack, the blame shifts to Pakistan. "They must have done it."



Since that opinion poll, things have only gotten worse for Pakistan, with the breakdown in its ties with the United States, principally over the sanctuaries that American officials say militants enjoy in Pakistan's northwest, adding to its sense of isolation.


Both India and Pakistan are in Afghanistan, not out of any sense of altruism, but their own strategic interests, and it just so happens that India's are more in line with what the Afghans and the Americans are seeking than Pakistan's. India's biggest fear is that Afghanistan will again become a base for Pakistan-supported militants to launch attacks in India or against Indian interests elsewhere including its embassy in Kabul which has been targeted twice, the only one to be done so until the U.S. embassy attacks of 2011. A Taliban return to power could place Afghanistan back in Pakistan's orbit and effectively put an end to Indian aid, investment and trade in the country, and cut off its own bridgehead into resource-rich Central Asia, a key potential source to feed the demand of a massive expanding economy, deficient in energy.

To this extent, New Delhi has sought to support a stable, democratic, multi-ethnic Afghan government. It's been doing everything it can to open up its vast domestic market to Afghan exports to bolster the weak economy, but the routes run through Pakistan. It's been trying to integrate Kabul into regional political and economic structures, so it doesn't depend entirely on Pakistan, pushing its entry into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Last year, it held an Afghanistan investment summit in New Delhi to attract not just India's vast entrepreneurial class, but others too in the region, virtually taking on the role of a promoter for the war-torn country as an investment destination. Ahead of the 2014 pullout, the idea was to change the "narrative from that of anxiety to a narrative of hope," Indian ambassador Gautam Mukhopadhaya said at the time.

Which pretty much ties up with the U.S. aspirations for Afghanistan post 2014: a stable, strong and independent nation, which won't become a base for militants and with an economy strong enough to pay its own bills.

Pakistan's goals in Afghanistan, are in contrast, seen as more India-driven, and hence security-focused. It has sought "strategic depth" in Afghanistan against an Indian invasion from the east, counter New Delhi's efforts to project influence there and beyond into Central Asia, and prevent it from using Afghan soil to support Baloch separatists. Separately, it cannot also have the emergence of "Pashtunistan" straddling the disputed border with Afghanistan which can only exert a further centrifugal force and threaten its very identity as a nation-state.


With its economy in stress, neither is Pakistan in a position to invest in Afghanistan on a scale India's fast-growing economy can.





Islamabad still remains key to any effort to bring the Taliban to peace talks and any solution to Afghanistan's conflict looks unlikely without settling with the resurgent Taliban one way or the other.

Indeed, so volatile are the politics of the region that much can still change between now and the NATO withdrawal in 2014. The situation may deteriorate and New Delhi's policy options may be reduced dramatically. In that event, India may put its development and commercial operations on hold and try and provide support to the elements of the Northern Alliance, like it did during the civil war and the 2001 war against the Taliban, says Daniel Norfolk in a paper on India's engagement in the book "Afghanistan in Transition, Beyond 2014?" edited by Shanthie Mariet D'Souza from the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore.

If in case a friendly government emerges or an India-neutral government retains power in most big cities and in the north while a low-intensity conflict rages in other parts of the country, India's greatest challenge will be to maintain its engagement without over-stepping the boundaries and squandering away the goodwill.

Posted by: Steve White 2012-11-17