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India may oppose Taliban ‘reintegration’ initiative

LONDON: One day after the trumpeted international Afghanistan conference here, doubts have emerged a

By Murtaza Ali Shah
January 31, 2010
LONDON: One day after the trumpeted international Afghanistan conference here, doubts have emerged about the fate of the new and ambiguous Afghanistan package by the world to achieve peace and stability in the war-torn country in the backdrop of entrenched rivalry between India and Pakistan.

The purpose of the Afghanistan conference, which follows the unveiling in December 2009 of President Obama’s revised US strategy towards the conflict, was to develop wider international agreement on measures needed to advance the goal of a stable and secure Afghanistan but a panel at the leading think tank International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) acknowledged that Pakistan’s concerns vis-a-vis India had the potential to derail the stability efforts and further exacerbate the situation.

The IISS panel discussed the outcome of the conference at a briefing chaired by Sir Hilary Synnott, Consulting Senior Fellow and author of Transforming Pakistan ñ ways out of stability. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow for South Asia, told the audience that the lack of a regional consensus, because of the lack of peace dialogue between India and Pakistan will overshadow the international efforts to bring peace in Afghanistan.

The London conference was represented by Foreign Ministers Shah Mehmood Qureshi and SM Krishna Menon but they didn’t meet on the sidelines of the conference and stuck to their usual policy lines of hostility towards each other.

Both countries have high stakes in the stability and security of Afghanistan but their differing priorities and mutual suspicions in relation to their activities in Afghanistan, exacerbated by bilateral tensions, have led to competing interests in the country.

The audience heard from various speakers that Pakistan and India had differences over every single issue of Afghanistan and it was contributing to the plight of Afghanistan as both countries were exercising their influence.

Rahul Roy-Chaudhury assessed that it was clear during the London conference that for Pakistan, India’s influence in Afghanistan is a clear threat and it has openly stated that India should be excluded from any regional effort towards Afghanistan on the grounds that it is not an “immediate neighbour”. But, he said, this has been countered by India that it is very much a part of the regional framework for Afghanistan being in the “immediate neighbourhood”.

Over the reintegration of Taliban, he said, India was opposed to the very idea as it saw the coming back of Islamists in power and rise in Pushtun representation as a direct threat to its influence and its allies in Northern Alliance. This view puts India at odds with the current international thinking on Afghanistan where it wants to give priority to opening dialogue with most ranks of the Taliban. The senior fellow for South Asia said Pakistan is keen to train Afghan security forces but India remains opposed to it and doesn’t want to send military forces to Afghanistan for operational purposes.