India’s role in Afghanistan is hailed as a triumph of soft power. In fact, it has just made conflict with Pakistan more likely.
If the West has had any success in Afghanistan, it has been in encouraging India to make a massive investment there of economic aid, infrastructure projects and national prestige. New Delhi is the largest regional investor in the country, and ranks second among all donors. With the West’s looming defeat in Afghanistan, however, India’s success will prove Pyrrhic, and may well set the stage for another, perhaps nuclear, confrontation between Pakistan and India.
In their usual ahistorical manner, Washington and its NATO allies believed their 2001 occupation of the major Afghan cities signified not only the complete defeat of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but also an erasure of two millennia of Afghan history and religion that afforded an opportunity to start the country anew. In this context, they looked for other countries to share the enormous cost of nation-building, and India stepped up to the task without having to be asked twice.
And what has India been up to? Mostly infrastructure projects, such as a 250-kilometre highway from Zaranj near the Iran-Afghanistan border to the town of Delaram on the road that connects Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. Indian firms and Indian-government funding are also rebuilding the Salma Dam power project in Herat Province; building the new Afghan parliament house in Kabul; and constructing a power line that will use 600 transmission towers to bring electricity from Uzbekistan, over the Hindu Kush, to Pol-i-Khumri, and thence to Kabul. These and other projects now employ up to 4000 Indian nationals in Afghanistan. In addition, Indian firms are investing in Afghan agriculture and mining, and New Delhi is providing student scholarships, medical aid programs and training for Afghan police and civil servants.
Clearly, Afghanistan’s battered infrastructure needs this help and much more. Like all foreign aid, however, India’s aid has come with accompaniments the Hamid Karzai regime fully accepts, but which tend to drive Pakistan’s government—and especially its general officers—to distraction and deep strategic worry. New Delhi, for example, has built one of its biggest embassies in the world in Kabul, and with it has built four consulates—some media reports say as many as seven—two of which, in Jalalabad and Kandahar, face Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. In addition, New Delhi has deployed nearly 500 men from the Indian Army’s Border Roads Organization to assist in highway construction, and as many or more paramilitary soldiers from its Indo-Tibetan Police force to guard Indian diplomatic facilities and construction projects.
Photo Credit: Olof Werngren
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roxtggub
I’m not sure where you are getting your info, but good topic. I needs to spend some time learning more or understanding more. Thanks for wonderful info I was looking for this info for my mission.
John Smith
Here is a different approach India can take to win them all. Since Muslim nations are never at ease with each other when the external threat is absent. India can leave Afghan with NATO at the same time. After a while the quarrel about who is a good Muslim will break out between different branches of Islam, India can return to Afghan as a good mediator. This strategy will avoid the danger of nuclear flash point between India and Pakistan, as well as establish India as a good partner to all Muslim nations.
Fuzair
So the Pakistanis are paranoid, are we? How come there is no mention of Ayni Farkhor Air Base in this article? The only IAF base outside India? And the recent military training exercises carried out by the IA and IAF there?
And I’ve heard reports of a second IAF base being planned outside India as well.
Singh
Read the following link at pakistan defence forums of all places, for an answer on the Ayni airbase. Your information seems to be slightly outdated.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/india-defence/65021-why-indian-air-force-tajikistans-ayni-air-base-idle.html
As for India planning a second airbase outside India, without any concrete proof, you may as well say India is planning a thousand airbases. I sense a hint of paranoia here, what do you think?
Linda
It?s rlelay helpful for me which I have ever seen.Its presented well and nicely written which easy to understand.Thank you very much for the information
Anon
Michael Scheuer: “A good deal of the Indian media portrays India’s activities in Afghanistan as successfully winning Afghan hearts and minds and building a long-term welcome for India. This is unlikely.”
India is interested in preventing Pakistan, its longtime enemy, from gaining too much influence here.
Fortunately for India, that interest actually appeals to nearly three-quarters of the population, which has a somewhat unfavorable or worse view of Pakistan and tend to blame it for their country’s problems.
These Afghans tend to view India’s aid work here as motivated primarily to curb the interests of Pakistan, something they strongly support, further bolstering India’ s reputation as a benevolent neighbor.
India has managed to become one of the most-liked foreign countries in Afghanistan — with almost three-quarters of the population finding India somewhat favorable or better — after committing just $1.2 billion to the country.
Though some of India’s success in winning over Afghans has to do with historical ties between the two countries, when it comes to administering aid, India is often simply better than the U.S. at developing projects that locals find more tangible and effective.
Nine years into the war, the U.S. has now begun shifting toward an Indian aid model, focusing on projects that produce brick-and-mortar results.
India outdoes U.S. aid efforts in Afghanistan
Tom A. Peter GLOBALPOST 9 September 2010
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/afghanistan/100908/india-outdoes-us-aid-efforts-afghanistan