Delhi must play in Kabul
Thirteen months after the then external affairs minister Salman Khurshid promised to deliver helicopters to Afghanistan “soon”, New Delhi is all set to transport three helicopters to Kabul. Cheetal is an upgraded Cheetah ( Alouette) helicopter with a newer Turbomeca TM 3332M2 engine. These choppers are capable of operating in remote and high altitude mountainous region with higher speed ( more than 200 km/ hr), range ( more than 600 km) and payload. The Cheetal can be used for personnel transport, casualty evacuation, reconnaissance and aerial survey, logistic air support and rescue operations.
Coming a few days ahead of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to New Delhi later in April, the delivery of helicopters is a significant development, going somewhat against India’s policy of seeking to influence Kabul through aid giving and avoiding getting directly embroiled in the conflict. At a time of the international drawdown of troops combined with President Ghani’s increasing tilt towards Pakistan, these supplies could be New Delhi’s last- ditch attempt to ensure its relevance in the changing power and security calculus in Afghanistan.
Following his inaugura- tion as the President of Afghanistan, Mr Ghani, a former World Bank official, had declared Pakistan to be his priority and relegated India to the outer rings of a “five circle” foreign policy. He visited Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China. During his visit to Pakistan in November 2014, Mr Ghani broke the protocol by calling on the Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif, an acknowledgement of the fact that cooperation with the military remains critical to the reconciliation process with the Afghan Taliban. Gen. Sharif and the head of the Inter- Services Intelligence ( ISI), Lt. Gen. Rizwan Akhtar, followed up Mr Ghani’s visit by making trips to Kabul. Since November 2014, Lt. Gen. Akhtar has made three trips to Kabul, each time to be received by Mr Ghani. In February, a five- member Afghan military delegation led by Afghan National Army director- general of training, education and doctrine, Maj. Gen. Nematullah Khushiwal, undertook a sixday visit to Pakistan.
Mr Ghani has maintained that he is cautiously optimistic about his relations with Pakistan. Following the Taliban attack on the Army school in Peshawar in December 2014, Pakistan is keen on expanding their counter- terrorism cooperation with Afghanistan amid efforts to eliminate the threat from Tehrik- eTaliban Pakistan ( TTP) who are able to cross the porous Afghanistan- Pakistan border. Mr Ghani has also sent Afghan cadets to enrol in Pakistan’s Military Academy in Abbottabad. The first batch of six Afghan cadets arrived at Pakistan Military Academy to undergo an 18- month long course. In addition, seen as a move to allay Pakistani anxiety over Indian involvement in the security sector, Mr Ghani has put a halt to his predecessor’s military aid requests to India.
In the face of Mr Ghani’s Islamabad tilt, policy wonks in New Delhi were ready to concede space to Afghanistan to repair ties with Islamabad.
There was an overwhelming feeling that the rapprochement with Pakistan is bound to fail and Mr Ghani will have to abandon his Pakistan policy for engagement with New Delhi, similar to the trajectory followed by his predecessor, President Hamid Karzai. While Mr Karzai’s repeated warnings against aligning with Pakistan and the former Afghan intelligence chief’s statement in the recently organised counter- terrorism conference in Jaipur have been well received by New Delhi, the diminishing window for engagement in the Afghan security sector and increased role of Islamabad in the reconciliation process with the Taliban has begun to raise concerns.
The timing of the supply of the helicopters comes at an interesting point of regional competition for influence in Kabul. The development of an Afghanistan-PakistanChina axis is clearly visible. Recently China offered to help broker talks with the Afghan Taliban, in addition to stepping up its security assistance to Afghanistan to counter the threat of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a Uighur separatist group with links to the Taliban, and to protect its economic interests in Afghanistan. An increased Pakistan- China influence would further offset India’s plans of maintaining its influence in Kabul. It will not only make India’s decade- long investments in Afghanistan a thing of irrelevant past, but could also jeopardise its own security in Kabul as well as at home.
The increased presence of the Lashkar- e- Tayyaba ( LeT) and its capability to strike was evident during the attack on the Indian consulate in Herat in June last year.
At a time when the Pakistan Prime Minister was in India for the inauguration of Modi government, these groups had planned to carry out a hostage siege situation. Moreover, the kidnapping of the Jesuit priest Alexis Prem Kumar from Herat in June 2014 and his subsequent release after eight months in captivity in Helmand, demonstrates the intent of the Taliban to use such techniques.
The delivery of helicopters and a much delayed visit by Afghan President may not be sufficient, but may be a beginning for New Delhi to recalibrate its policy of engagement. While Afghanistan makes domestic and regional alignments in the transformation decade ( 2015- 2024), India’s aid of more than $ 2 billion could have an enduring influence if it shifts away from high visibility projects aimed at asset creation to designing and helping implement development programmes that address poverty, illiteracy and systemic administrative dysfunction. The method of aid delivery through the Small Development Projects ( SDPs) in southern and eastern Afghanistan, in sync with local needs and ownership, needs to be expanded to other areas.
To deny the extremist groups the space to strike Indian interests and destabilise Afghanistan, New Delhi will have to work closely with the Afghans in training and capacity- building of the Afghan National Security Forces, particularly in counter- insurgency. Likewise, in the political sector, New Delhi will have to move away for its risk aversion policy and help Afghanistan in institution-building processes, take a lead in reviving the indigenous economic base and connecting Afghanistan — the “Heart of Asia” — with the rest of Asia. Economic interdependency would create a mutually beneficial mode of engagement in the region.
Ahead of President Ghani’s visit to India there is a need to have a clear roadmap of its engagement strategy. Delivery of helicopters can only be a launch pad for greater engagement with Afghanistan. The writer is a security and political analyst based in Delhi. She can be reached at shanthied@ gmail. com