India Afghanistan relations: The Friday Times

India Afghanistan relations
Khaled Ahmed’s Analysis

In 1996, when the Taliban took Kabul, Pakistan together with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, were the only countries to have recognised the militia. India, which had close relations with the old pro-Soviet PDPA government and later with the Rabbani government, withdrew its mission from Kabul in haste. An angry Pakistan, whose embassy had been attacked by Ahmad Shah Massoud’s men in 1995, moved in and became the dominant influence on the Taliban government of Mullah Umar. India had the opportunity of expanding its contacts with the post-PDPA government of the mujahideen from 1990 to 1996. Its relations with the Central Asian republics were traditionally very good. They were on such sound footing that efforts made by Pakistan to penetrate the region in 1991 bore no fruit.

Pakistan contributed to the political division of Bangladesh by trying to establish its influence there as a kind of flanking move against India; India similarly stepped into a divided Afghanistan when it made its counter-flanking move in Afghanistan. When Pakistan moved to back the Taliban, the policy was driven by elements other than those who framed strategy in Islamabad. The PPP interior minister who masterminded the Taliban option, fell in with the transporters of Quetta who wanted the Taliban to reopen the road to Herat. Pakistan wanted a route through to Central Asia, especially Turkmenistan with whom Islamabad had signed a gas pipeline agreement.

Pakistan ousts India through the Taliban: But Mullah Umar had become powerful after storming Hekmatyar’s CIA-ISI ammunition dump in Spin Boldak across from Chaman. The Taliban fell on Herat in 1995 before taking Kabul. Islamabad could not have liked this as it exacerbated an already advanced rivalry with Iran. This was partly the result of the transporters’ funds-leveraged demand on the Taliban to open the lucrative Chaman-Herat smuggling route. The smuggling carried out across Chaman-Spin Boldak posts under the guise of a transit trade arrangement deprived Pakistan’s revenue department of 30 percent of its income, exactly the sum falling short of the 1999 revenue target. In 1998, Pakistan spent 30 million dollars on ‘micro-managing’ the Taliban, which contained a secret budget of 6 million dollars as salaries to the Taliban administration. This was additional to the funds provided to the Taliban by the transporters.

Iran had more influence in Herat than Islamabad had in Jalalabad. It reacted to Pakistan’s action with great determination. A cumulative rage over Pakistan’s treatment of the Shia community also played its role. In 2004, Iran was creating new ties with Afghanistan’s Karzai government. This initiative has allowed India to enhance its role in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Pakistan’s inability to handle the Afghan transit trade effectively has given an opening to India to collaborate with Iran in developing its Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman and constructing a road from it to the Afghan border. Journalist and author Ahmed Rashid has explained the kind of concessions the Iranians are willing to give to the Afghans on the port and related facilities to lessen Kabul’s dependence of the transit trade through Pakistan.

Iran offers alternative transit route: Afghan commerce minister Syed Mustafa Kazemi signed a deal with Iran in 2003 that will give Afghan exporters the right to use the port of Chabahar with a 90% discount on port fees, a 50% discount on warehousing charges while Afghan vehicles would be allowed full transit rights on the Iranian road system. At another meeting in Tehran, India, Iran and Afghanistan signed an agreement to give Indian goods heading for Central Asia and Afghanistan similar preferential treatment and tariff reductions at Chabahar, while India agreed to finance the upgrading of the road between the port and the Afghan border. (India to build Zaranj-Delaram 215 km road.)

India and Iran have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build a railroad from Chabahar, linking it to the Iranian railway network up country and to the Afghan border. Iranian officials said they wanted to develop Chabahar as the major port for Afghanistan and Central Asia, while reserving the port of Bandar Abbas for trade with Russia and Europe. Chabahar opens up Central Asia to the Gulf and Afghanistan becomes the hub. Both India and Iran are ready to invest in the infrastructure to develop this trade route which will benefit Kabul. One very important factor behind Pakistan’s failure to stop the ‘substitution’ of the transit trade is its inability to ‘normalise’ its large ‘buffer zones’ where the goods imported into Afghanistan find illegal markets. One problem with the Pak-Afghan transit trade agreement is Pakistan’s inability to allow goods not in demand in Afghanistan. These goods are sent back into Pakistani markets through ‘smuggling’.

Pakistan ‘buffer’ zones: The British annexed Balochistan from the principality of Sistan in 1857 and kept it as a buffer zone to counter the growing Russian influence in the Iranian court and in Afghanistan. They also created a buffer zone in the seven tribal areas in what is now Pakistan. These buffer zones were retained by Pakistan after 1947. Being insulated from the rest of Pakistan because of lack of proper administration and normal writ of the state, more than half of Pakistan remains literally outside the economic reach of Islamabad, subsisting on illegal trade with Afghanistan, mostly electronic goods and cars. To prevent this economic stab in the back Pakistan has to disallow import of goods by Afghanistan that Afghanistan doesn’t need. This is not a problem with Iran since Iran doesn’t have buffer zones abutting on its border with Afghanistan. With new concessions in Chabahar, goods not consumed in Afghanistan will still be imported at low cost and then smuggled into Pakistan.

Empires in history have created ‘buffer’ territories as a war strategy against rival invading empires. The idea is to protect the tribal way of life in these territories and nurse the warrior traditions of the population living in them. When an invasion takes place, the first ‘engagement’ is to be with the tribal forces composed of ‘wild’ men of the frontier. This first engagement gives advantage to the regular forces of the defending empire. This kind of policy leads to the preservation of a pre-modern way of life in the buffers. The price the empire pays for this is the lack of the writ of the state in these areas. Also, the populations acquire a certain kind of ‘free’ character that despises normal municipal law. In the Balkans a large area was preserved by the Austro-Hungarian empire against the rising Ottoman empire. The ‘nations’ that were later formed in this buffer zone were the ‘wild’ Serbs, who committed genocide in the 1990s, and the ‘wild’ Albanians who were unable to run their own state because of the old tradition of smuggling.

India spends in Afghanistan: New Delhi currently spends around $100 million on various projects and $70 million on the reconstruction of a 213-kilometer road from Zaranj to Delaram in Afghanistan. This ‘new silk route’ road is the result of a project between India, Iran and Afghanistan to develop trade with Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The route will utilise the Chabahar port in Iran to send goods to Afghanistan and to Central Asian countries. New Delhi has gifted three Airbus aircraft along with crew to support Arian Afghan Airlines, and more than 270 Indian buses currently ply in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat. In 2002, 18 Afghan judges and lawyers were trained at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi. An IT specialist has been deputed to the Afghan government. In the foreign minister’s office in Kabul, a local area network with Internet access via an Indian company has been set up while Afghan bureaucrats are being trained in the use of computers.

Three Reserve Bank of India officials were deputed to the Central Bank of Afghanistan in July 2002. A team of 30 Indian doctors treats thousands of patients every week while $4 million has been allotted for the rehabilitation of the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health. New Delhi will gift 300 vehicles to the Afghan National Army once Pakistan allows their transit. Pakistan allows Afghan exports to India via Wahga, but not vice versa. Thus, every day, a large numbers of trucks cross Wahga carrying dry fruit and carpets but return empty. No country is spending in Afghanistan as much as India, except for the United States, which spends $900 million annually. So far, India’s efforts in Afghanistan have the backing of the United States and Russia. Indian analysts say India’s interests are two-fold: it does not want the Taliban to resurface; and it wants the new Afghan security structure to be free of anti-India elements.

Confusing patchwork alliances: The states in Afghan neighbourhood intervened in Afghanistan for a decade to protect their interests. Most of them were opposed to one another in their strategies elsewhere. The Central Asian states were wary of Russian presence in their region. They were also scared of the jihad radiating from Pakistan. Russia and the US were opposed in their policies elsewhere but cooperated against the Taliban. All the actors opposed to Taliban looked at India as a country where jihad had not made inroads. After 9/11, when the Afghan factions backed by these neighbours began to control Afghanistan, India got its chance. In 1999, the Taliban had ‘facilitated’ the hijacking of an Indian aircraft by allowing it to land in Kandahar. The exchange of Indian-held terrorists of Jaish-e-Muhammad for the Indian passengers of the aircraft was also supervised by the Taliban who subsequently gave safe passage to the terrorists into Pakistan. In 2001, India made a comeback after years of exile from the capital Kabul. Its support to theNorthern Alliance had paid off.

There is some parallel between Afghanistan and Bangladesh as the ‘flanking’ states of India and Pakistan. Both countries have become divided on the question of relations with India and Pakistan. If Pakistan hopes to counter India, it will have to be on the basis of this division in Afghanistan. There is however another parallel that should not be ignored, that between Afghanistan and Nepal as landlocked states. This parallel is limited because, unlike Nepal, land-locked Afghanistan is on the verge of finding an alternative outlet on the port of Chabahar in Iran. In the long run however it will have to weigh the advantage of trading through Gwadar. Pakistan should not view Indian presence in Afghanistan in military terms and should not think of a chessboard counter-move. The strategy must consider possibilities of collaboration – a kind of ‘joining them when you can’t beat them’ – as apparent in the Iranian pipeline project backed by Pakistan, and the extension of the Pasni-Gwadar road to Chabahar across the Iranian border. A look at the otherwise hostile regional and global states collaborating on Afghanistan will make the wisdom of such an approach clear.