With Pakistan’s hostility towards India a fait accompli and China having a huge stake in a weakened India, regardless of pretensions of great bonhomie, Afghanistan is crucial to India’s influence as a regional power and to its overall strategic interests. The manner and extent to which the new Afghan president, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, swerves towards or away from India will indeed be crucial to New Delhi’s geopolitical interests.
Ghani inherited a relationship with India from Hamid Karzai that was heavily loaded in its favour vis-a-vis Pakistan. But the initial signals from Kabul after Ghani’s assumption of power have been disconcerting. Ghani has demonstrated a clearly visible goodwill towards Pakistan describing Pakistan as an important pillar of his country’s foreign policy but the redeeming feature for India is that the closeness is dictated by the desire for Pakistan to help resolve the Afghan leadership’s troubles with the Taliban.
That Ghani chose to visit Islamabad, Beijing, and Riyadh and, for form’s sake, even the US before he visited India could hardly have been overlooked. But Ghani was prepared to rub it in not just to convince Islamabad that he was better disposed towards it than Karzai was but the purpose was also to send a signal to India that Afghanistan under him could not be taken for granted.
That Ghani has finally made his much-awaited New Delhi visit is an indication that it is now ready to do business with India provided the terms of engagement are not loaded in the latter’s favour. That Ghani is a hard bargainer and plays his cards with tact and guile is a fact that India will have to live and adjust with.
Considering that Ghani would not like to alienate the US, while befriending China, it would be in the fitness of things if India continues to maintain a relationship of considerable leverage with the Americans. In any case, the US would prefer to have India as a counterpoise to a China-supported Pakistan in the region.
One view is that Ghani is only playing games with Pakistan to ensure that he steers clear of the Taliban insurgency with Islamabad’s help for the time being. He knows better than anyone else that his long-term interests lie in a strong economic relationship with India but he also wants a durable relationship with Pakistan to keep terrorism at bay.
Besides, Ghani aims to use China’s influence over Pakistan and wants Beijing to exert pressure on Islamabad to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Indeed, unlike Karzai, President Ghani seems to have a more China-centered foreign policy.
But Ghani’s rebuff to Pakistan soon after his India visit when the Pakistanis refused to allow transit facilities through the land route for Indian exports to Afghanistan points to the fact that he is a hard bargainer. He told Pakistan that in that event, he would be compelled to deny to Pakistan passage to Central Asia through Afghanistan, a threat that must leave the Pakistanis pondering.
The bones of contention between the two countries are apparently terrorism, violation of the Durand line (disputed Pak-Afghan border) and four decades of persistent intervention and interference in Afghanistan. Both sides blame each other for supporting and nurturing Taliban on their soils.
The 2,200-km Durand line, the ‘porous border’ demarcating the virtual border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, has always remained focal point of dialogues between the two sides. Both also blame each other for loose control that enables the militants to sneak cross the border.
Pakistan has always blamed Afghanistan for this ill-managed border mechanism.
To India, which was wondering if Ghani’s ‘closeness’ to Pakistan was at New Delhi’s expense, reassurance came on the Afghan president’s recent visit through his wife Rula Ghani when she said that India was “very much in the second circle”. She was referring to the “five circles” that her husband, who after becoming President in September last year, had listed as critical for peace in Afghanistan.
“The foreign policy of Afghanistan that my husband has come up with is a series of concentric circles. The first one is local within Afghanistan, the second has our neighbouring countries and India is very much into that circle,” Rula said. The other circles included western countries besides the UN and donor agency countries. The Afghan first lady was addressing a gathering of members of India Women Network, an initiative of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
It would indeed be futile for India to complain about terror being exported to India by Pakistan. Instead, it is economic interests that India would do well to crow about. Fast tracking projects in Afghanistan, announcing new ones and clearing stalled investments would be a good route to take for building a relationship with Ghani. The release of long-overdue Cheetal helicopters to Afghanistan in a low-key affair on the eve of Ghani’s visit to New Delhi was a good move.
However, India will eventually have to assume a bigger role in Afghanistan’s security structure. This could entail giving of non-lethal military equipment and imparting of training, including Indian experts being sent to Afghanistan for these purposes. This should be accompanied by a greater push towards helping Afghanistan to stand on its feet. The Afghan infrastructure needs urgent attention and there is a host of economic activity in which India can play a reconstruction role.
