Despite little or no prospect of stability in sight, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is now starting to pack its bags for various destinations in Europe and the United States. It will leave behind the Hamid Karzai regime in a parlous state because it failed abjectly to militarily subdue the Taliban and its allies.
Nor, for that matter, have the fitful attempts at negotiations with the Haqqani network proved any more fruitful. Finally, Pakistan, despite U.S. pleas, blandishments and occasional threats of an aid cutoff, remains as intransigent as ever. Against, this disturbing backdrop, India, the country that’s most likely to be adversely affected if a neo-Taliban regime returns to power, is finally taking a handful of decisive steps to protect its own security interests in the country.
To that end, it concluded a strategic partnership with Afghanistan in October. Under the aegis of this partnership it has agreed to train company size (about 120) units of the Afghan forces. According to Indian sources, they will be trained in a number of military institutions including the Army War College in Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, the Counter-insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Vairengte in Mizoram and the High Altitude Warfare School in Gulmarg, Kashmir. It’s also reported that India plans to supply the Afghan military rifles, rocket launchers and artillery. Finally, Afghan air force pilots will also be brought to India and allowed to train on flight simulators.
The Indian decision to step up its security role in Afghanistan isn’t without its critics. Pakistan, quite predictably, has protested India’s limited foray into the security realm arguing that this will be inimical to Pakistan's security. Worse still, some Washington, DC-based analysts have also started to sound the same tocsin.
Interestingly enough, the entirely expected Pakistani misgivings aside, those U.S. commentators who are so critical of the Indian role expansion have little to proffer in the way of alternative policy options. These criticisms notwithstanding, the very limited and circumspect – albeit belated – Indian offer to train and arm the Afghan military should actually be welcomed. If the world doesn’t wish to see the return of a religiously obscurantist, politically truculent and socially repressive regime in a post-ISAF Afghanistan, the Indian efforts to ensure a modicum of stability in this war-ravaged nation should be applauded.
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Yang zi
Perhaps the auther should explain the importance of Afghanistan to India. It is separated by Pakistan in the middle. I don’t see the importance.
PrinceFarahi
India is keen to throw off any comparison to Pakistan — a state it views as its diminutive and less consequential neighbor. Thus while India’s presence in Afghanistan has Pakistan-specific utility it is also about India’s emergent ability to influence its extended strategic neighborhood.
There are at least three principle reasons why India has direct interests in Afghanistan.
First, India has had to contend with many significant security challenges that stem from the Taliban’s regime in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Pakistan has raised and supported several militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen/Harkat-ul-Ansar, and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami among others, which operate in India. However, all of these groups have trained in Afghanistan, with varying proximity to the Taliban and by extension al-Qaeda. Thus India is absolutely adamant that Afghanistan should not again become a terrorist safe haven.
Second, India is interested in retaining Afghanistan as a friendly state from which it has the capacity to monitor Pakistan and even, where possible, cultivate assets to influence activities in Pakistan. While India is keenly interested in cultivating a significant partnership with Afghanistan, Pakistan busies itself trying to deny India these very opportunities.
Third, developments in Afghanistan and Pakistan have important and usually deleterious effects upon India’s domestic social fabric as well as its internal security apart from the well-known problems in and over Kashmir. Indian interlocutors have explained to me that Islamist militancy coexists with a burgeoning Hindu nationalist movement that seeks to re-craft India as a Hindu state. Hindu nationalists and their militant counterparts live in a violent symbiosis with Islamist militant groups operating in and around India. Islamist terrorism in India and the region provides grist for the mill of Hindu nationalism and its violent offshoots.
yang zi
Thanks for explaining @PrinceFarahi, it seems to me the interest is actually in Pakistan. a good relationship with Pakistan will fix everything. I am puzzled by your statements about Hindu Nationalist though, do they actually hate each other (Hindu Nationalist and Muslim Extremist)?
Capitalist77
@yang zi, perhaps you should dig into why the relationship between India and Pakistan cannot be mended under the current power structure in Pakistan. The Pakistani military-ISI need hostility with India in order to justify their disproportionate share of budget, privilege and power. Furthermore, western analysts who think a resolution of the Kashmir issue will solve India-Pakistan relationship problems do not consider that both the Pakistani military and terrorist groups like LeT have said they want their flag flying over the Red Fort in Delhi…illusions of past history, and a global ideology that cannot be geographically contained.
sandy
@ yang zi
India has tried numerous times to go the peace route, in 1966,1999 and 2007 and the results are there for all to see. all the battles with pakistan were initated by pakistan with overt and covet support of China and US. another attempt to go the same route amounts to Insanity as the famous quote of Albert Einstein says
“doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is Insanity”
Hope that helps you understand why even if india desires, it can never get a good relationship with a country solely existing on the basis of Indo phobia.
Vipin
BJP is samhelessly taking credit for development restricted to a handful of states, mostly in the south. These states were on a growth trajectory even before the BJP government came to power at the centre. Most of the feel good can actually be attributed to growth in the knowledge industry and states which had in the past placed greater emphasis on professional education had the numbers to take advantage of it. While BJP takes credit and pride in a Bangalore or Hyderabad, why does it shy away from taking responsibility for a Patna or Lucknow or even the rising naxalite problem? What about the growing North/South divide and the rising Naxal menace especially in AP, East UP, MP, Jharkand and Bihar.
Thomas
“Indian efforts to ensure a modicum of stability” LOL India’s government cannot stabilize their own country yet now offers help stabilizing Afghanistan? LOL Indians are very opportunistic and self serving. They have no role in Afghanistan now that their new Western Master have decided to leave.
Harish C Menon
In a region that is pockmarked by dictatorships, pseudo-democracies, violent military struggles and borderline-failed states, India with all its internal problems, portrays a magnificent picture of stability and progress. It may not be picture perfect. But it is most certainly on the path to better days. As one of the countries to emerge out of centuries of colonialism, India is perhaps the only one that adopted democracy and nationhood simultaneously. This would obviously slowdown progress to a certain extent — but nothing compared to what’s happening in India’s neighbourhood. So yeah, India remains the lighthouse for the region’s turbulent seas. Or perhaps you prefer the badlands of Pakistan’s North Waziristan…
Mazo
It’s ironic that the same people who bent over backwards and know toed to every whim and fancy of the US now call
India, which now shares a common interest with the US, as being subservient to the US. Unlike Pakistani policy for the last 40 years, India doesn’t have American troops on its soil, doesn’t wage proxy wars for the US and hasn’t resorted to shallow sycophancy and duplicitous manipulations to extract everything that it can from the US.
India is the most stable country in South Asia, more than 500 million Indians participate in Indian elections and Indian’s freedoms and civil liberties continue to be upheld despite the problems of corruption, class issues and poverty, unlike India’s neighbors that fall in and out of democracy at the whims of generalissimos and feudal lords.
Joseph
@Thomas
You mean to say internal situation in India is the same as in Afghanistan?
Harry Khan
Since 2001, how much money America and NATO have spent in Afghanistan? They have trained hundreds of thousands of Afghan soldiers and provided them with sophisticated weapons and air support in fighting with the Taliban. But, what happened? Did they succeed in their mission? No, they are going home with their dirty trousers on their shoulders. Now, if Indians want to get kicked in their butts, then Afghans and Pakistan are ready and waiting for them. The day Americans leave Afghanistan, Karzai and Indian Ambassador will be fleeing in the same plane. Sitting in armchairs and writing stuff about Afghanistan is quite different than practically facing the ground realities. Culturally, Afghans hate foreign occupation so much that even if their God (Allah) tell them to lay down their arms, they will not, and will pursue their enemies and attack them even in New Delhi, as they have done it history.