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Abstract
Nine years running, the Afghan war is by now the longest in U.S. history. It is also one in which Canada has paid a high price in human lives, with some 150 fatal casualties, proportionately one of the highest of any North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) country. The widely used term “AfPak”, now discarded, reflects the extension of the war theatre to both countries. This article explores India's interests in Afghanistan, the policy she has followed since 2001, and the triangular relationship between Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. We argue that India's role in Afghanistan is critical not just in terms of India's own foreign policy objectives, but also for the long-term stability of the larger Central and South Asian region. For that to obtain, however, significant changes need to occur in terms of how India's role is perceived by the United States, Canada and other NATO powers, and in Indian policy towards Afghanistan itself.
Avec neuf ans d'existence, le conflit afghan est désormais le plus long de l'histoire américaine. C'est aussi l'un de ceux qui a fait payer au Canada un lourd tribut en vies humaines - quelques 150 soldats morts au combat - c'est à dire proportionnellement l'un des plus élevés parmi ceux des pays de l'OTAN. Largement utilisé et aujourd'hui abandonné, le terme « Afpak », reflète l’étendue du théâtre de guerre des É tats-Unis et du Canada. Cet article explore les intérêts de l'Inde en Afghanistan, sa politique depuis 2001, et la relation triangulaire entre elle, l'Afghanistan et le Pakistan. Nous soutenons que le rô le de l'Inde en Afghanistan est critique, non seulement du point de vue de ses propres objectifs politiques, mais aussi de la stabilité à long terme, dans le périmètre plus large des régions d'Asie Centrale et du Sud-Est. Cependant pour en arriver là, de profonds changements sont nécessaires dans les perceptions des É tats-Unis, du Canada et des autres puissances de l'OTAN sur ce rô le de l'Inde, de même que dans la politique indienne elle-même, vis-à-vis de l'Afghanistan.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Ashok Kapur, William Maley, Mark Sedra, and Ramesh Thakur for comments on an earlier version of this text, and Joe Turcotte for research assistance. Usual caveats apply.
Notes
In an MOU with Iran, India has also agreed to construct a railway line to link up Chabahar with the main Iranian rail network. Chabahar could thus become Afghanistan's main port and trade outlet. (Rashid Citation2003).
Thus, up to December 2009, the US government had appropriated US$ 51.01 billion for the Afghan Government and Development, of which the bulk came from the Department of Defense (US$ 6.3 billion in 2009) (Livingston et al. Citation2010, p. 21, 1.38). In 2009, the U.S. Departments of Defense and State allocated US$ 4.0 billion to train and equip the ANA and US$1.5 billion for the Afghan National Police (ANP), with a total of US$ 14.2 billion for 2002-2009 in the case of the ANA, and US$ 7.0 billion in that of the ANP (Livingston et al. 2010, p. 21, 1.37).
In a somewhat perverse dynamic, the attacks on Indian civilians working in infrastructure projects have made it necessary for India to deploy security personnel, in the form of Indian troops, to protect them. Pakistan has raised objections to this as well, considering it provocative.
Islamabad recognized the new regime in May 1997, some eight months after the Taliban took Kabul.
Out of a population of 32.7 million, the Pashtun comprise 13.7 million, or some 42%, the Tajiks 8.8 million (27%), the Hazara 2.9 million (9%) and the Uzbek 2.9 million (9%), with various smaller ethnic groups like the Aimak, Turkmen and Baloch making up for the rest (Livingston et al. 2010). Eighty per cent of the population is Sunni, and 20% Shiite, many of them Hazaras. This said, the precise numbers of the Afghan population continue to be in dispute. The number of Pashtuns in Pakistan is estimated to be around 40 million.
Still, it has been argued that recognition was contained in the 1919 Treaty of Rawalpindi and the 1922 Treaty of Rawalpindi. See Qassem Citation(2010).
For a standard Pakistan Army view of the Afghanistan conflict, see Janjua Citation(2009).
Some defence analysts consider that, given the nature of modern warfare, this concern should have been rendered obsolete by today's weapons and military tactics, but this does not mean it does not continue to permeate the views of the Pakistani Army.
These objections have not only been of the verbal kind. The CIA has found the Pakistani intelligence, that is, the ISI, was involved in the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on 7 July 2008, in which one of the victims was military attaché Ravi Datt Mehta, an Indian Army officer with vast experience in counterterrorism operations in Kashmir (Wafa and Cowell Citation2008, Lodhi Citation2008).
These allegations have not been corroborated by independent sources.
Personal conversation of one of the authors (Jorge Heine), with Bruce Riedel, Waterloo, April 2010.
In 1990 there were about 45,000 Indian in Afghanistan most of whom had become naturalized Afghan citizens. But after the Taliban takeover soon thereafter they were persecuted, leading to their exodus to India. Some took shelter in Pakistan. By 2001 only 500 were left in Afghanistan (Ministry of External Affairs Citation2004).
The most visible of the those attacks was the one on Mumbai on 26 November 2008, undertaken by the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Toiba, which left 166 casualties, but there have been many more, including one on the Indian parliament in December 2001. From 1994 to 2005, the total number of civilian casualties from terrorist attacks in India, excluding the Northeast and those from Left Wing extremist violence, reached 10,864, while the security personnel casualties were 4750. Most, if not all, of these can be attributed to jihadi groups financed by Pakistan, and, from 1996 to 2001, often trained in Afghanistan. The majority of these incidents took place in Kashmir, but cities like New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Jaipur have also been targeted. Mumbai at this point has the dubious distinction of being the most attacked city in the world. To refer to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks as “India's 9/11”, as John McCain and other have done, is somewhat beside the point, as Mumbai has been the target of so many jihadi attacks since 1993. See South Asia Terrorism Portal. Available at: http://www.satp.org
One of the released, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, later took part in the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan (BBC News Citation2002).
This particular attack, and some of the others, have been attributed to Lashkar-e-Toiba, the same Pakistan-based jihadi group responsible for the 26/11 attack in Mumbai; “some Lashkar members have said only a thin line separates the group from its longtime bosses in the Pakistan security establishment “(Rubin Citation2010).
On the nuclear dimension of Indo-Pakistani relations, something beyond the purview of this paper, see Sridharan Citation2007.
<http://www.mofa.gov.pk/Maps/PAK_Administrative.jpg, accessed on 11 September 2009. Strangely, however, the ‘Political Map’ provided by the same Website does not include the two areas.