Sumit Ganguly and Paul Kapur: The Unrecognized Benefits of India’s Role in Afghanistan
Stabilizing Afghanistan has emerged as one of the Obama administration’s top priorities. The president has expended significant effort to forge a new Afghan strategy, even firing the general in charge of the campaign in search of a fresh approach. Most discussions of the conflict focus on four actors: the insurgents, the Afghan government, the United States, and Pakistan. In fact, however, there is another important player in Afghanistan that receives much less attention: India.
India has historic ties with Afghanistan and a long-standing relationship with its current leaders. Indian interests in Afghanistan largely converge with those of the United States and the international community. And India has invested considerable resources in helping to develop Afghanistan in the wake of civil war and Taliban rule. Thus India could potentially play an important future role in helping to stabilize the country.
Such a role would not be without risk.
Greater Indian involvement in Afghanistan could threaten Pakistan, thereby building support for the Taliban within the Pakistani military and security services. A greater role for Indian in Afghanistan might raise alarm in Islamabad, diverting Pakistani resources away from Afghanistan toward the border with India and increasing the likelihood of outright Indo-Pakistani conflict. Some basic diplomatic and military steps, however, would reduce these dangers and could help India to emerge as an important part of future efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.
Indo-Afghan Ties
The Indo-Afghan relationship goes back centuries. Long before the advent of British colonial power, the region that is now present-day India had extensive cultural and trade links with Afghanistan. The British launched several expeditionary efforts into the country from India, usually with disastrous consequences. In 1893, a formal border between Afghanistan and India, known as the Durand line, was drawn. British colonial rule in South Asia lasted for another 60 years. When it came to a close in 1947, the nascent state of Pakistan came to abut Afghanistan in the east. In the aftermath of Britain’s departure from the subcontinent, the Afghans repudiated this border, causing considerable tension with now-neighboring Pakistan. New Delhi, for its part, established close ties with Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah after independence, and maintained these links until the king’s overthrow in 1973.
Even after Zahir Shah’s ouster and the emergence of a communist regime, India managed to keep close ties with subsequent Afghan governments. The Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan surprised and displeased New Delhi. But the Indians proved unable to cooperate with Pakistan on a solution to the problem. In addition, India was concerned by substantial United States military and economic assistance that began flowing to Pakistan—initially, $3.2 billion from 1981 to 1986. New Delhi also cared little for the Islamist mujahedeen groups that Pakistan was supporting to battle the Soviets. Finally, India did not wish to jeopardize its easy access to advanced Soviet weaponry. India therefore avoided any public censure of the U.S.S.R.’s occupation. Instead it chose to work with successive Soviet puppet regimes in Afghanistan. It also subsequently supported Ahmed Shah Massoud’s Northern Alliance because of its hostility towards the Pakistan-supported mujahedeen groups.
India’s ties to Afghanistan were sundered when the Taliban seized power in 1996. The Taliban victory, which owed much to Pakistani support, enabled Islamabad to achieve an important goal: the establishment of a pliant regime in Afghanistan, which would give Pakistan “strategic depth” against India. New Delhi abandoned its embassy and withdrew its diplomatic personnel from Afghanistan. It did not, however, relinquish its ties to the Northern Alliance, and provided Massoud’s forces with a range of military and logistical backing.
After September 11, 2001, India quietly supported the American-led effort to dismantle the Taliban regime. New Delhi was also pleased by U.S. efforts to promote the presidential bid of Hamid Karzai, who had lived and studied in India.
After the Taliban’s fall, India moved quickly to reestablish its presence in Afghanistan. It re-opened its embassy in Kabul and its consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, and established two new consulates in Herat and Mazhar-e-Sharif. It also became deeply involved in Afghan development, spending approximately $750 million, and pledging a total of $1.6 billion, to help rebuild the country—making India Afghanistan’s sixth-largest bilateral aid donor. Specific projects include efforts to rebuild the Afghan national airline, Ariana; construct telecommunications, power transmission, and road networks; improve sanitation; build a new Afghan parliament; and include Afghanistan in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
A Possible Backlash?
New Delhi believes that its extensive involvement in Afghanistan will help to stabilize the country, thereby reducing the likelihood of a Taliban resurgence, limiting Pakistan’s regional influence, and facilitating Indian ties with the energy-rich states of Central Asia. India’s wish for a stable, Taliban-free Afghanistan, and a demonstrated willingness to invest significant resources in developing the country, align closely with the interests of the United States and the international community. Indeed, a larger role for India could be an important component of the new strategy that the Obama administration is attempting to devise for Afghanistan.
A larger Indian presence in Afghanistan poses a significant problem, however; it could threaten Pakistan.
THE INDEX — May 28, 2009
As fighting among Somali rebel groups and the government has escalated, President Sharif S
Dr. Sulaiman Al-Hattlan: It’s the Age of Obama!
If you have ever lived in Washington, DC, you will clearly see, if you visit these days, that America is living in a new era—the Obama era. America is changing, and American society, with its lively and ever-renewing nature, is renewing itself yet again. Today, you barely can find a table in a restaurant or café that doesn’t have a political discussion underway with Obama’s name in it. Sharp criticism of the last administration is now explicit optimism for the new administration. There is a consensus, in most of the circles I visited in Washington, that “change” is the theme of the current period.
This change, led by Obama from the moment he launched his campaign, “Yes, we can,” was not purely a political need for America necessitated by the circumstances of world affairs. It also has resonated with the transformation of American society—stages of change, renewal, and self criticism. America’s demographic composition is also different than ten years ago. Spanish is forcing its way next to English in most of the places I saw in my recent visit. Americans’ colors, features, and accents are diverse but harmonious in daily life, as if Barack Obama formed a new symbol for uniting America in face of the internal and external challenges.
In the 1990s, I lived for six years in Washington, whose corridors continue to witness the creation of the most important world decisions. Back then, there was seldom a day that passed without someone asking me, “where are you from”? In my recent visit to Washington, for a whole week, not a single person asked me that question or about my ethnic heritage. With the current economic crisis and the optimism about the Obama era, which has just begun to unite the America body politic, it’s as if this society today is constantly challenging itself, to prove for itself and for others that America can rise again, rid itself of and solve the crises of the previous administration.
Chuck Freilich: Engage Iran with a Big Stick
I am all for engaging with Iran. In principle, negotiations are always preferable and it is certainly worth a try. But, there is a big problem. Actually, a few.
Last week, Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indirectly put his finger on the big problem, when he stated that the timeline to a first Iranian nuclear bomb (a “calamitous” outcome, in his words) is now thought to be just one to three years. If the shorter assessment proves correct, there simply may not be enough time for effective engagement; if the longer, then we may still have time, but the question remains over Iran’s basic willingness to make a deal.
President Barack Obama recently said that the end of 2009 is his target date for assessing whether Iran is serious about making progress. (He left himself wiggle room, however, as this is only the target date for assessing the prospects for progress—not for a deal). All of the candidates in Iran’s forthcoming presidential elections have expressed explicit support for continuing the nuclear program, although there has been some talk of possible change in the gratuitously confrontational strategy Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has adopted.
As the elections are in June, it is unlikely that engagement with the United States could begin before July or August if Ahmadinejad wins. If one of his rivals wins, it may take a few more months to get a new policy into place. There is no doubt that the Iranians—masters of the “draw-out-the-negotiations-as-long-as-humanly-possible-and-even-longer” school of diplomacy—will seek to use engagement and negotiations as a means of gaining as much time as possible to complete the nuclear development process, even if there is a basic willingness to cut a deal. The stalling will make President Obama’s end-of-year timetable problematic, at best, which is critical if, as Mullen warned, we might only have until next spring before Iran has the bomb.
Iran is most likely to respond only to a combined “stick-and-carrot” approach. The Obama administration, however, has opted for a middle-of-the-road approach, with sticks in the form of heavy sanctions as a consequence only in the event that the talks fail.
This would be appropriate if we had more time, but we do not.
Effective engagement must thus be accompanied, from the beginning, by a clear stick—a comprehensive package of sanctions to which U.S. allies will have signed on to from the start as part of a united Western front intended to leverage Washington’s willingness to engage. The upcoming few months could also be used in a further attempt to reach a deal with the Russians and Chinese for Security Council sanctions, but this is, in all likelihood, a forlorn hope.
Jonathan Power: Do a Deal on Kashmir
With parliamentary elections behind it, India shouldn’t be back at square one in its quest to settle the bitterly divisive issue of Kashmir, one that has led to three full-scale wars with Pakistan and that nearly brought the two countries to the brink of nuclear combat.
India missed its great opportunity to resolve the burning dispute with Pervez Musharraf before he was overthrown from the Pakistani presidency last year. According to the British and American diplomats I talked to 18 months ago in New Delhi and Islamabad, a deal was tantalizingly close. One British ambassador told me that India had to make very few concessions to strike a final deal and that the main barrier to the agreement was merely “psychological.”
If Musharraf wasn’t prepared to give away the store, the Pakistani compromises came close to it. But despite the seemingly friendly diplomacy of Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the unwarlike prime minister Manmohan Singh and, in the background, (another peace-loving figure) the chairwoman of the Congress Party Sonia Gandhi, India couldn’t bring itself to go the extra mile.
Observers had different explanations for Indian intransigence: that Musharraff was trying to force the pace; that the Indian army, the intelligence services, and senior bureaucrats in the foreign ministry were resisting an accord; that the leadership had not made an effort to educate the electorate as the Pakistan government had done; that the prime minister was weak and only focused on the economy; that his (successful) attempt to lower the grinding poverty in the rural areas was also a preoccupation; that the time consuming nuclear deal with the U.S was critically important; and that India rather liked the status quo, since stubbornness fitted in with its self-image of being the subcontinent’s super power.
There was also the failure of the Bush administration—it pushed a deal through Congress that lifted the long-standing embargo on selling nuclear materials and reactors to India—that was, in Singh’s words, “loved” by his country. America could have used the muscle afforded by the nuclear deal to instead help push India to sign on to Musharraf’s magnanimous offer.
Mira Kamdar: “Our Man in Kerala” — World Policy Journal and India’s 2009 General Elections
Long-time World Policy Journal editorial board member Shashi Tharoor has been elected to India’s parliament in the country’s fifteenth general election. Running from his home town of Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor garnered a historic margin of victory of more than 100,000 votes. “I am truly humbled by the extraordinary level of trust the voters of Thiruvananthapuram have placed in me, and I am conscious that now is when the real work begins,” wrote Tharoor, a man on the move, from his Blackberry.
Tharoor’s success helped the Congress Party, on whose ticket he ran, win a landslide victory. Trouncing predictions of a fractured and fragile coalition as the most likely outcome of an election in which more than 400 million of India’s 700 million-plus eligible voters cast ballots in five phases over one month, India’s grand, old Congress Party won outright 262 of the 272-seat majority required to form a government. The stunning victory by the party that came to power with the birth of the Republic of India more than 60 years ago has left both India’s Left and Right in tatters.
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Such a clear mandate by a party that has positioned itself as a force for religious tolerance and economic growth tempered by concern for India’s very poor majority has been hailed by business leaders around the world as a welcome outcome. India’s stock exchanges shot up on the news.
But as Tharoor points out, Congress has little time to waste on celebration. India is facing a gauntlet of serious challenges, and the ability of the new government to chart a course through a widening wealth gap, a deteriorating environment, a growing water and agricultural crisis, and hemorrhaging cities—while dealing with a region fraught with conflict and insecurity—is not made easier by the current global economic and climate crises.
Caroline Stauffer: Cambodian Justice — Too Little, Too Late
Wednesday, May 20, marks the annual “Day of Anger” for Cambodians remembering the victims of the brutal five-year reign of the Khmer Rouge. The five defendants to be tried in Phnom Penh are accused of crimes against humanity relating to the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodian lives in 1975-79.
It has been more than three months since the ceremonial start of the trials in Cambodia on February 17, intended to bring the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. Witnesses were first called on March 30 and have only recently begun their testimony. Civil war ended in Cambodia in the 1990s, and Khmer Rouge chief Pol Pot died a decade ago. Justice is only now being sought, some 30 years after the Killing Fields era.
At this rate, it might be another 30 years by the time closing arguments roll around.
International news reports from the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia in February focused on the historic nature of the Khmer Rouge trials, but most articles mentioned the word “corruption” in their leads, if not in the headlines.
Disputes between the international and Cambodian judges who sit on the hybrid United Nations/Cambodian tribunal still remain unresolved, and charges of corruption are now coming from both sides. The Phnom Penh Post reported “a complete breakdown of trust between the two sides” on May 13.
The international judges hope to try even more Khmer Rouge members—something the Cambodian side of the court will not permit. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who was, coincidentally, a lower-level Khmer Rouge officer until 1977, has said that more trials could send the country back into civil war.
Funding for the tribunal from international donors is mostly frozen in a trust fund held by the United Nations Development Program, pending a commitment from Phnom Penh to ensure that proceedings will be free and fair—and that someone besides the Cambodian government can hear complaints. Frustrated by Hun Sen’s intransigence, Australia took the rogue step of calling for the release of its donations in April, a request the UNDP denied. The trials likely would not have started at all without a $200,000 bailout from Japan to pay Cambodian staff. Japan then went even further, upping its investment in the court with a $4.17 million donation in April.