US shouldn't factor in India-Afghan Ties

The New Indian ExpressFirst Published : 16 May 2011 10:35:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 15 May 2011 11:37:31 PM IST

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s two-day visit to Kabul has raised India-Afghanistan relations to the level of ‘strategic partnership’. The visit — the first after Osama bin Laden was killed — was indeed special. That he was invited to address Afghanistan’s parliament and was accommodated at The Arg, the residence of Afghanistan’s last king Zahir Shah, showed how much importance Kabul attached to the visit. In fact, President Hamid Karzai did everything possible to make the visit a grand success. The Prime Minister’s announcement of $500-million assistance in key social sectors like agriculture is in addition to the $1.5 billion commitment India has already made.


The warm response Manmohan Singh’s address to the Afghan parliament evoked is reflective of the public mood in the warn-torn nation. All this cannot be to the liking of Pakistan, which has all along been trying to sabotage Indo-Afghan relations. In the post-Osama situation in which the US will hasten its retreat from Afghanistan, Pakistan hopes to wean Kabul away from India. Nobody knows Islamabad’s sinister motive better than Afghan leaders, who were shocked that Pakistan had been virtually hiding Bin Laden while the Americans were searching for him in the mountains of the land-locked nation.

US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake has welcomed the strengthening of India-Afghan relations. The Americans are yet to recover from the shock that their ‘closest ally’ in the war on terror had been sheltering their ‘enemy No. 1’ all these years, until Operation Geronimo was successfully carried out. Given the ‘use and throw’ policy of the US, India cannot depend on Uncle Sam to free Afghanistan from the influence of Pakistan, which control sections of the Taliban. Experience has taught India that the Russians can be relied better to insulate Indo-Afghan ‘strategic partnership’ from Pakistan’s extraneous influences.