Posted on 11/12/2012 9:49:00 PM PST by JerseyanExile
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.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in India this week and while the two countries will sign accords on mining and new development projects, the core message that he brings to New Delhi is that Kabul cannot be allowed to sink into chaos once the United States leaves, said the country’s envoy to New Delhi. Afghanistan is looking to a bigger Indian role in boosting training of security forces including police, ambassador Shaida Mohammad Abdali said. While a small number of Afghan army officers are trained in Indian military institutions under a long-running programme, a strategic agreement signed between the countries last year opened the door to a bigger programme. Some experts have called for training of officers at top Indian counter-insurgency schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...
Did it ever occur to our crack American strategists, that what happens in central Asia is of far greater concern to China, India and Russia, all predominantly non Muslim countries, and that a large American presence has never had much of a chance to alter long term trends. Oil producers will sell to anyone with the hard currency. If they don’t they will starve and wither politically. History will prove Ron Paul absolutely correct.
ping for further information on Afghanistan
Seems like a better alternative than allowing the Chinese to run the place...
I’m sure the Kenyan buffoon will piss off India too and destroy any progress.
During a time in history India included Afghanistan. At a point in the future it will be said that the U.S. included Texas and a few other states.
From the same article....
“Racing through the deserted streets of Kabul at nighttime, you are likely to be stopped at street corners by policemen once, twice or even more. If you are a South Asian, as I am, their guard is up even more. “Pakistani or Indian?” the cop barks out as you lower your window. When I answer “Indian”, he wants me to produce a passport to prove that, and as it happens, I am not carrying one. So I am pulled out of the car in the freezing cold and given a full body search, with the policemen muttering under his breath in Dari that everyone goes around claiming to be an Indian, especially Pakistanis.
To be an Indian in Kabul is to be greeted warmly wherever you go, whether it is negotiating a security barrier or seeking a meeting with a government official. There is an easing of tensions (in Afghanistan, the fear uppermost in the mind is that the stranger at the door could be an attacker and you don’t have too long to judge), Bollywood is almost immediately mentioned, and your hosts will go out of their way to help.
To be a Pakistani is a bit more fraught. The body search is rigorous, the questioning hostile, and, more often than not, you have to be rescued by a Western colleague especially if you are entering one of those heavily guarded, unmarked restaurants frequented by foreigners.
To the ordinary Afghan, India and Pakistan have followed two different paths in the country beginning from the ouster of the Taliban in 2001 when there was hope in the air and you could walk in the streets of Kabul (instead of trying to escape it) to the current time when the Taliban have fought back and hold the momentum as the West withdraws after a long and ultimately, unsuccessful engagement.
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.”
A Rand study into the differing strategies adopted by the rivals in Afghanistan quotes a 2009 BBC/ABC News/ARD poll which showed that 86 percent of Afghans thought Pakistan had a negative influence in Afghanistan, with only 5 percent saying it had made a positive contribution. India’s impact, by contrast, was seen as positive by 41 percent of Afghans and negative by only 10 percent. Overall, 74 percent of Afghans held a favourable view of India against 8 percent of those who had a positive impression about Pakistan.”
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