Afghan war:India to be Kingmaker?

[Guest guest]

Afghan war: India playing a more open role

Udayan Namboodiri

(New Delhi, September 28)

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For the first time since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 1996,

India seems to be playing an open role in the Afghan civil war.

 

Contrary to reports, New Delhi's decision to emerge from its

erstwhile shadowy role was not prompted by the incidents of

Sept. 11 but by the assassination of Northern Alliance

Commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

 

High level sources said today that New Delhi is firmly behind

Russia in the latter's attempt to pick up the pieces in the Panjshir

Valley which is under the control of the United Front, the formal

name of the Northern Alliance. In fact Indian government's

experts working on the Afghan front are now actively promoting

the candidature of Uzbek general Rashid Dostum as successor

to Masood.

 

Why Dostum, whose track record is not exactly credible, given

his proven vulnerability to the 'cheque book diplomacy' tried by

the multinational oil companies to manipulate the course of

events in the civil war in the early 1990s? Sources said both

Russia and India believe that only Dostum has the stature

matching that of the late Masood's to unify the ethnic groups. He

also has experience in leading from the front and, above all, is

not overtly anti-Indian.

 

Lest it be forgotten, most of the tribal leaders nurse a deep

hatred for India. This is a spillover from the 1980s when India

brazenly supported the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan despite

the fact that Afghanistan was a fellow non-aligned nation.

Brajesh Mishra, the present National Security Adviser, had

resigned from the Indian Foreign Service in protest against the

Indira Gandhi government's stand on the invasion.

 

India has also stepped up its 'humanitarian support' for the

Northern Alliance. The Indian Air Force planes have been flowing

in food; medical equipment and spare parts for Soviet-made

military hardware for quite some time now. Pakistan also noticed

the gradual build-up of Indian participation over the years.

 

The final straw was the presence of MEA official Arun Kumar

Singh at Dushanbe on September 14 for a meeting of

intelligence officials of countries backing the Alliance. Though

India had decided to send its representative for this meeting

which was convened by Russia to take stock of the situation

arising out of the September 9 assassination of Masood, the fact

that it took place after Terrible Tuesday, raised hackles in

Islamabad.

 

President Musharraf mentioned this in his speech last week. He

said India was interested in seeing an anti-Pakistan regime

installed in Kabul. "Lay off" he told the Indian leadership. Finally,

Pakistan realised that the tide had changed. India had decided

to come out of the shadows and gung- ho about pursuing its

own interests in Afghanistan.