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India to make itself economically useful in Afghanistan

NEW DELHI: India is not out of the Afghan game yet despite being excluded from the four-country talks in Beijing last week, said sources here.

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Sandeep Dikshit
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 16

India is not out of the Afghan game yet despite being excluded from the four-country talks in Beijing last week, said sources here.

India’s self-interest lies in moving forward with its plans for economic development in Afghanistan, an initiative that will go down with any new government in Kabul since it will have to immediately start looking for additional revenues for mobilisation to ensure greater stability and legitimacy for itself.

The US pressure on Iran has stalled work on Iran’s Chabahar port, an important gateway to Afghanistan that was under development by India. While India can hope for a favourable tide of events in the future to restart work, it can prepare for such an eventuality by examining the second leg of this project in Afghanistan, said the sources. An Indian-owned concession for an iron ore mine near Bamyan could be the economic raison d’être for the Chabahar-Afghanistan link.

Commentary here has highlighted how India may have lost its place in Afghanistan after the troika of US-Russia-China chose to invite only Pakistan to join them in Beijing on July 10 to assess the progress in peace talks after meetings between the Taliban and the US. This was preceded by confabulations among Afghans themselves for a ceasefire.

Apprehensive of being left out in the cold, pro-Indian Afghans have joined this chorus while raising fears about setback to women’s empowerment and modern education to children if the Taliban was allowed to share power in Kabul.

Sources said talk about India having been excluded is partly correct in the sense that July 10 meeting in Beijing appears to be crystallisation of a core group on Afghanistan. But like India, there are many other countries that have invested men, material and money in Afghanistan and will need to be consulted on the shape of a final settlement. “In that sense, India is not alone,’’ said the sources. The Arabs, the Europeans, Turkey and Iran in addition to India will be indispensible in case of a final settlement.

Now that it is clear the Americans want to wind down in Afghanistan by mainstreaming the Taliban, any new Government, whether interim or through polls in September or later, India needs to look at ways to being useful in its scheme for the country.

Afghanistan has one of the poorest per capita international aid among conflict countries and once the peace settlement is reached, it will further come down. In order to make up for the loss in revenues, India’s economic approach for the region will be an extremely attractive example for the government in Kabul, said the sources.

 

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