India drawn deeper into
Afghanistan By Sudha
Ramachandran
BANGALORE - India's presence
and influence in Afghanistan has come under fire
again. While an Indian road construction project
was attacked by suspected Taliban militants a
little over a week ago, Indian television serials
are being taken off the air in Afghanistan under
pressure from religious conservatives.
In
the years since the fall of the Taliban in 2001,
India's presence in Afghanistan has grown
dramatically. India does not have a military
presence in Afghanistan, but it does play a
significant role in the country's reconstruction
and has won support across Afghanistan's ethnic
groups.
India's proximity to the Hamid
Karzai government and growing India-Afghanistan
cooperation has raised hackles among the
Taliban and in Pakistan.
On Monday, an Indian working for a
Dubai-based firm was kidnapped in Herat province,
while on April 12 a convoy of India's Border Roads
Organization (BRO), which is engaged in a road
construction project, was attacked by the Taliban.
The suicide attack left two BRO personnel dead and
seven others, including two Afghans employed on
the project, injured.
BRO is building a
218-kilometer road linking Delaram to Zaranj,
which lies on Afghanistan's border with Iran.
The attack on the BRO came close on the
heels of Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim
Wardak's week-long visit to India, during which he
requested the Indian government to provide Afghan
soldiers with counter-insurgency training. He also
asked India for support in maintaining
Afghanistan's Soviet-era helicopter gunships.
Wardak visited the Indian Air Force's training
command at Bangalore and the army's 15 Corps
headquarters in Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir,
which would have undoubtedly ruffled feathers in
Islamabad, where the Pakistan government disputes
India's rights to that territory.
Even if
the attack on the BRO convoy in Afghanistan's
Nimroz province was not an angry reaction from the
Taliban to Wardak's visit to India, it was at the
least a reaction to India's growing influence in
Afghanistan.
The Zaranj-Delaram road
project has been in their cross-hairs for a while.
The project has come under attack at least a dozen
times and the recent one is the third in which
Indian personnel on the project have been killed.
In November 2005, Ramankutty Maniyappan, a
36-year old driver working with the BRO, was taken
hostage then beheaded. In January this year, a
suicide attack on a BRO convoy resulted in the
death of two personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border
Police, which are providing security to BRO
personnel in Afghanistan. About 56 Afghan security
personnel are said to have lost their lives
guarding Indian engineers and crew on this road
project.
There have been Indian casualties
in other projects in Afghanistan. In 2003, an
Indian engineer working for an Afghan telecom
company was shot dead. The same year, two Indians
employed by an Indian company and contracted by an
American firm on a highway construction project
were abducted and subsequently released. In 2006,
an Indian national working for a Bahraini company
was abducted and then beheaded.
Of all
India's projects in Afghanistan, the
Zaranj-Delaram road triggers the most unease in
Pakistan. This is because the route will reduce
Afghanistan's dependence on Pakistan and increase
India's land access to Afghanistan.
Goods
to landlocked Afghanistan, including supplies for
North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and
international non-governmental organizations
stationed there, currently come through Pakistani
ports and then wind their way overland through the
Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.
The
Zaranj-Delaram road will link Afghanistan's
Garland Highway to the Iran border through the
Milak Bridge and onwards by rail and road to
Iran's Chahbahar port, giving Afghanistan a
shorter option to that than through Pakistan to
the sea.
For India, the Zaranj-Delaram
road will provide it overland access though Iran
not just to Afghanistan but across Afghanistan.
It is this expanding Indian access that
the Taliban and its Pakistani backers are seeking
to end with their intimidation and violence.
What adds to the annoyance of the Taliban
and Pakistan is that India's involvement in
Afghanistan - unlike that of other countries there
- is winning it support among people.
India is Afghanistan's fifth-largest
bilateral donor and is involved in an array of
projects in the country. It is constructing roads
and setting up power transmission lines, sinking
tube wells and building schools, hospitals and
public toilets. It is constructing the Afghan
parliament building and is engaged in repair and
construction of the Salma dam project in Herat
province. It has gifted Afghanistan with buses and
is providing food assistance. It has trained civil
servants and police and is extending scholarships
to Afghan students to study in India.
Like
other donors, India has fallen short on handing
out funds it pledged, disbursing only a third of
the US$750 million pledged for the 2002-09 period.
However, its involvement in Afghanistan's
reconstruction has been quite different from that
of other countries, providing the kind of help
Afghans want and not merely extending assistance
it thinks Afghanistan needs or foisting on the
country projects New Delhi thinks are good for
Afghanistan.
While India's role in
Afghanistan's reconstruction has won it
appreciation among the locals, religious
conservatives do not seem to be impressed with its
impact. They have called for a ban on Indian
television soaps, which are hugely popular among
Afghans. Six Indian serials are currently being
televised, but the Afghan government - under
pressure from hardline clerics - has ordered
television stations to take them off air on the
grounds that they are "un-Islamic".
Neither the general deterioration in the
security situation in Afghanistan nor specific
attacks on Indian project personnel there is
likely to persuade India to reduce its presence or
to dilute its commitment to projects. On the
contrary, it could result in India stepping up its
role in Afghanistan beyond the current
reconstruction and development work.
Following his meeting with Wardak, India's
Defense Minister A K Antony ruled out military
involvement in Afghanistan. But India can be
expected to take up the counter-insurgency
training of Afghan soldiers. This will bring it
another step closer to military engagement of the
Taliban.
Thanks to Pakistan's objections
to an Indian military role in Afghanistan, India
was forced to stay out of the Afghan military
quagmire. But that could change.
There are
sections in India that are keen to sends troops to
Afghanistan to take on the Taliban, this at a time
when even the erstwhile Northern Alliance is
reaching out to the Taliban.
A bigger
military role will only put India in a tighter
embrace with the failed US-led military
misadventure in Afghanistan. It will make Indian
personnel in Afghanistan more vulnerable to
violence. And more importantly, it would erode the
many gains made over the past few years with
regard to earning public goodwill there.
Sudha Ramachandran is an
independent journalist/researcher based in
Bangalore.
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