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Vying for clout
Iffat Malik
Published in
Al-Ahram Weekly
on 20 - 12 - 2001
India and
Pakistan
, as if not content with their dispute over Kashmir, are now battling for influence in
Afghanistan
. So far,
India
is doing better. Iffat Malik writes from
Islamabad
The US decision to wage war on Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban has put
Afghanistan
firmly on the map. But one perhaps surprising source of interest is
India
. Lately, New
Delhi
has been actively establishing links to the post- Taliban government.
India
has no shared border with
Afghanistan
, nor does it have any obvious religious or ethnic affiliation to its people. What it does have is a considerable history of political interaction. New
Delhi
was close to the government of former king Zahir Shah in the early 1970s.
Indian
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee recalled recently how he visited
Afghanistan
twice during that decade. Later, the Soviet occupation and civil war made thousands of Afghans refugees; many travelled to
India
where they still live today.
India
's strongest contemporary link to
Afghanistan
is its relations with the Northern Alliance.
India
closed its mission in
Kabul
following the take-over of the city by the Taliban in 1996. In the next five years, it bitterly opposed the student militia, while actively supporting the Northern Alliance. New
Delhi
gave the Alliance money and arms, and sheltered the families of its leaders. Many of those families, including the widow of executed president Najibullah and her three daughters, still live in
India
. Hamid Karzai, the head of
Afghanistan
's new interim government went to university in north
India
. He has maintained a warm relationship with New
Delhi
.
Little wonder, then, that Vajpayee's government welcomed the transfer of power in
Kabul
. Its opposition to the Taliban had one main cause: the closeness of
India
's old rival,
Pakistan
, to the Taliban.
Indian
and
Pakistani
relations tend to operate in a zero-sum manner: any third country friendly to one is almost inevitably the enemy of the other.
India
also believes that the Taliban's
Afghanistan
was a "training ground for
Pakistan
-sponsored terrorists" operating in
Indian
Kashmir.
Islamabad
vehemently denies this claim, maintaining that the Kashmiri separatist movement is wholly indigenous. Nevertheless, New
Delhi
is optimistic that the Taliban collapse will remove a major catalyst of its troubles in Kashmir.
But
India
hopes for more out of its relations with
Afghanistan
's new regime than just an end to terrorist activity. Vajpayee recently announced in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the
Indian
parliament), "We are making efforts so that we have the maximum possible role in
Afghanistan
." So far, those efforts have been considerable.
Indian
diplomats were among the first to enter post-Taliban
Kabul
. S. K. Lumnah,
India
's special envoy to
Afghanistan
, set up a liaison office there as a prelude to reopening the
Indian
embassy. He also attended the talks in Bonn.
Indian
planes have been busy flying aid to the country: a team of doctors and medical equipment, including thousands of prosthetic limbs that are cheaper and more versatile than Western ones, have already been sent. The team hopes to fit 1,000 limbs a month. Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh also announced that personnel would be sent in to reactivate the Indira Gandhi Hospital for women and children in
Kabul
.
Indian
films and audio-cassettes are also being supplied to
Afghanistan
's entertainment-starved populace -- and are proving a big hit.
This is only the start. The
Indian
government plans to supply a million tons of wheat to
Afghanistan
this year, and has promised to make available a 100- million-dollar line of credit to the new interim government once it takes power.
Indian
Airlines will also resume flights to
Kabul
and Mazar-i-Sharif.
India
's efforts are paying off.
Ariana
, the Afghan national carrier, announced that it will be starting flights to New
Delhi
. Younus Qanooni, the Northern Alliance interior minister who will continue in that post after the installation of the interim government on 22 December, was the first of several Alliance ministers to visit
India
. Significantly, he flew there straight from the Bonn Conference, returning to his homeland only after spending three days in
India
. He was followed by Mirwaiz Sadiq, the labour and local affairs minister, and Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister.
Indian
officials say they are expecting the head of the new government, Hamid Karzai, to pay a visit shortly.
Qanooni sought
Indian
help in establishing a police force and a legal and judicial system for
Afghanistan
; Mirwaiz Sadiq solicited help in setting up medical services and reopening schools and colleges. All of this bodes well for future relations. But what has surely pleased
India
most was Qanooni's warning to
Pakistan
not to interfere in
Afghanistan
or
Indian
Kashmir. That was the clearest possible signal that the new regime in
Afghanistan
has opted to befriend
India
over
Pakistan
.
There is another incentive guiding
India
's interest in
Afghanistan
: oil.
Afghanistan
is a gateway to the vast energy resources of the Central Asian republics. A big motive
India
has for cultivating
Afghanistan
's new rulers is to stop the country falling again into
Pakistan
's orbit, and letting
Pakistan
influence the region's petroleum future. The
Indian
rush to send aid and reopen its embassy is prompted by political necessity.
This has not escaped
Islamabad
's notice. In the Far Eastern Economic Review,
Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf claimed that
India
had just one aim in
Afghanistan
: "To do something that will be against
Pakistan
, that will damage our cause. That is their sole purpose." A major reason why
Pakistan
pushed for a broad-based as opposed to Northern Alliance government in
Afghanistan
was the Alliance's
Indian
connections.
Will
India
achieve its aims in
Afghanistan
? To some extent it already has, but situations -- in particular the balance of power -- can change fast in
Afghanistan
. Much will depend on how the new interim government performs, whether Karzai can assert himself, or whether the Northern Alliance will be dominant. The next looming question is who takes power after the interim government's six-month tenure is over. If a new government is Alliance-dominated, it will be good news for
India
, bad news for
Pakistan
. But if the new government has a strong Pashtun element, then the reverse will be true.
Geography, as President Musharraf has noted, may be a significant factor.
India
's lack of physical contact with
Afghanistan
will limit its interaction. Airlifting a million tons of wheat is no mean undertaking. Compared to
Pakistan
, with its road links and established transport routes,
India
is at a strategic disadvantage. So far, though,
Pakistan
has yet to make its advantage count.
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