Shanthie Mariet D'souza: New Delhi-Kabul pact- A ground-level view
Critics of India’s aid-only policy in Afghanistan have been silenced with the unveiling of the Agreement on Strategic Partnership (ASP) between New Delhi and Kabul on 4 October. Far from being a routine friendship agreement, the formalisation of the ASP is an affirmation of the maturing of India’s foreign policy. It had tremendous impact in terms of strategic communications in the region and outside.
The ASP is a natural corollary of India’s constructive role in Afghanistan’s stabilisation — amounting to pledged aid of $2 billion. India, the fifth-largest bilateral donor in the country, has won many accolades from the local population for its aid and developmental projects. There is little doubt that such developmental projects have helped Afghanistan in capacity- and institution- building. The ASP is an attempt to extend such cooperation even beyond 2014.
Of the whole range of cooperative mechanisms that the ASP unveils, the decision to expand the training of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) has received much attention. However, far from being India’s so-called direct foray into the military sphere, the agreement will help build local capacities for providing security, particularly of the police. Bereft of reciprocity, the trade and economic agreements are a reiteration of India’s commitment to Afghanistan’s economic progress and its development as a land bridge between South Asia and Central Asia.
The capacity-building and educational initiatives included in the ASP are signs of India’s deepened commitment to invest in the future Afghan leadership, in sync with India’s long-term vision in that country. India is looking beyond merely engaging the present political dispensation or indulging one ethnic or political grouping. The ASP will ensure continuity of India’s initiatives, by making them free from personal choices and orientations of future leaders. It will set up an institutional mechanism, thereby developing a range of stakeholders in Afghanistan. A complete reversal of gains thus made, therefore, would be a remote possibility.
The day the ASP was inked, I travelled from Kabul to Kandahar, getting a glimpse of the Afghan perception of India’s aid and development activities. The positive image of India in Afghanistan is almost a given; what is striking is the constant yearning by Afghans for India to do more in that country. Responding to the governor of Kandahar’s 2003 request for Indian assistance in construction of a cold storage for fresh fruit and dry fruit, a 5,000-tonne facility was built by India’s Central Warehousing Corporation in 2005 at a cost of $1.5 million. Six years on, there is demand for more such facilities, while other countries want to emulate India’s model of aid assistance and even work with India.
Afghans want an increase in the number of scholarships for Afghan students to study in India. Visa application lines mainly for medical tourism are expanding. There is no way that a rising global power can ignore such petitions for engagement.
India’s engagement in Afghanistan has been painted by many western analysts as a zero-sum game vis-à-vis Pakistan. Simplistic and narrow analyses have linked the signing of the ASP to the worsening of US-Pakistan relations following the attack on the US embassy in Kabul, and of Afghan-Pakistan relations following the assassination of former President Rabbani and the suspension of the peace process with the Taliban thereafter. What has missed the eye is that the ASP was long in the making to address the Afghans’ long-standing demands.
It was in the summer of this year that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated India’s commitment to help Afghanistan through a strategic partnership agreement. In a direct reference to it, Dr Singh, in his address to the joint session of the Afghanistan Parliament on 13 May 2011, had said, “President Karzai and I have agreed on a Declaration of Strategic Partnership. This will be a long-term partnership. A Partnership Council will be set up under the two Foreign Ministers.”
It has been clarified umpteen times that both India and Afghanistan are willing to accommodate Pakistan’s genuine interests. The ASP itself notes that it is not directed against any country or group of countries. One hopes that in spite of its initial criticisms of the ASP, Pakistan will see reason in adopting a mature Afghan policy, particularly in view of the gains that would accrue to it through trade, transit and energy pipelines. As a senior Afghan political leader told me in Kandahar, “If Pakistan has to compete with India in gaining the goodwill of Afghans, it has to be on the plank of reconstruction and development, and not acts of subversion and selective assassinations or providing sanctuaries.” Pakistan’s strategy of use of proxies in regaining its ‘strategic depth’ has indeed met with a dead end. It has cost the country the goodwill of the Afghans, even in the traditional Pushtun heartland.
Can India sustain or even expand its activities beyond 2014? The ASP has provided a much-needed institutional mechanism to sustain the process beyond the cut-off year for the draw-down of American forces, without being subjected to the vagaries of the political dispensation in Kabul or the prevailing regional security environment. For the Afghans, it is a sign that India is a reliable partner that has stepped in firmly when the west seems to be in an ominous hurry to quit.
The author is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. She can be reached at isassmd@nus.edu.sg. The views expressed here are personal