US, EU ignoring India on Af-Pak to appease Islamabad, says expert

NEW DELHI: The US and Europe are ignoring India on Afghanistan to appease Pakistan, according to an article in the Foreign Policy magazine. Warning against keeping the only “stable, secular democracy” in the region out of the Afghan strategy, Kapil Komireddi in an article titled, Indian Motion, published in Foreign Policy wrote that the US has been wary of openly embracing India as a partner in Afghanistan due to Pakistan.

The article referred to General Stanley McChrystal assessment of the war in Afghanistan and his conclusion that a larger role for India in Afghanistan would ``exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan and India.’’
Taking this assessment as central to the US approach, Mr Komireddi said: ``What this means is that India, the only stable secular democracy in the region, is being actively prevented from helping in Afghanistan in order to appease the Pakistani regime, lest it re-enact the carnage that was visited upon Mumbai in 2008 and the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008 and 2009.’’

He also said that this raises questions about the US objective in Afghanistan about whether it would wanted to oust the Taliban or secure the country for Pakistan. ``To New Delhi, the answer looks increasingly like the latter,’’ the article said.

India’s initial opposition to the engagement with the Taliban was also noted in the article. Calling India the only ``voice of dissent’’ at the London conference on the issue of engaging the Taliban, the article said, ``as representatives from more than 60 countries convened at the historic Lancaster House, New Delhi’s representative to the summit, external affairs minister S M Krishna, emphasised to his British counterpart that it would be a monumental folly, at this juncture, to make a distinction “between a good Taliban and a bad Taliban” or to legitimise the former through reaching out,” it said. Mr Komireddi concluded that for India the Taliban was originally an extension of Pakistan’s intelligence agency as it has been used by Pakistan to launch attacks against India. He further said the Taliban is not a remnant of the Cold War but a creation of Pakistan. ``It was during the 1990s that the Taliban — actively backed by Pakistan — seized control of Kabul. Since then, New Delhi has witnessed Afghanistan become a launching pad for anti-India terrorism,’’ according to the article.

With the West deciding to go down the path of least resistance, New Delhi has had little choice but to support the Afghan government’s bid to reach out to the `good’ Taliban. But unease continues over the West strategy. India has also poured in money into the reconstruction of Afghanistan and the current direction has put question marks over these large investments.

Referring to India’s role in Afghanistan, the article said that India, due to the popularity of Indian cinema and TV shows, also enjoys a soft-power edge over every other country currently engaged there with a recent opinion poll endorsing India’s role in Afghanistan. “Yet in the endless debates focusing on Afghanistan, India’s role in the region had usually been ignored by United States and Europe, often deliberately, as New Delhi was quick to point out, in order to appease Pakistan,” Mr Komireddi argued.

“Washington was keenly aware of the benefits that New Delhi brings to Afghanistan. But so far it has been wary of openly embracing India as a partner,” he said.