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| Afghanistan |
| Asia Times: Now it's war against India in Afghanistan |
| 2008-07-08 |
| BANGALORE - The suicide bomber who crashed an explosive-laden car into the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday not only killed 41 people and injured more than 140, he sent a powerful message to Delhi that its significant presence and growing influence in Afghanistan through its reconstruction projects are now in the firing line. The Taliban issued a statement denying responsibility for Monday's attack. But few in India or Afghanistan are convinced. The Taliban generally claim responsibility for attacks against international or Afghan troops and deny their hand in attacks in which victims are mainly Afghan civilians. Most of the victims of Monday's blast were Afghan civilians; many had lined up for visas to travel to India. Indian experts say that the needle of suspicion points to the Taliban and its backers in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's intelligence agency. This is the view in Kabul as well. While Afghanistan's Interior Ministry said the 'attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region' - alluding to the ISI - Karzai said the bombing was the work of the 'enemies of Afghanistan-India friendship', an implicit reference to Pakistan. India is involved in an array of projects, ranging from providing food to children to improving infrastructure. It is constructing the 218-kilometer Zaranj-Delaram road, the Afghan parliament and a power transmission line from Pul-e-Khumri to Kabul and a substation in Kabul. It is repairing and reconstructing the Salma Dam in the western province of Herat at a cost of $109.3 million and building telephone exchanges linking 11 provinces to Kabul. It has supplied hundreds of buses and mini-buses. India is training bureaucrats and is providing over 3,000 Afghans with skills to earn a livelihood in carpentry, plumbing and masonry. Hundreds of Afghans have been given scholarships to study in India. India is providing food assistance in the form of high-protein biscuits to 1.4 million school children daily. 'India's reconstruction strategy was designed to win over every sector of Afghan society, give India a high profile with Afghans, gain the maximum political advantage and, of course, undercut Pakistani influence,' the BBC quoted analyst Ahmed Rashid as saying, India's role in road construction is improving its access to Afghanistan and beyond to Central Asia. The Zaranj-Delaram project, for instance, will run from the Iranian border to Delaram, which lies on Afghanistan's Garland Highway. The Garland Highway connects several of the country's key cities. India can offload shiploads of goods at Iran's Chabahar port and then send the consignments overland through the Zaranj-Delaram highway and the Garland Highway to cities across Afghanistan. Approximately 3,000-4,000 Indian nationals are working on reconstruction projects across Afghanistan. Pakistan, which has denied India overland access to Afghanistan, is annoyed that the road construction will provide India with a land route to Afghanistan. India believes that the ISI has used the Taliban to strike at Indian activity in Afghanistan. India's road projects - Zaranj-Delaram in particular - have come under repeated Taliban fire, the most recent being a suicide attack in April that left seven people, including four Indians, dead. Over the past few years, the ISI and its surrogates in the Taliban have sought to cut India's influence through intimidation and attacks on Indian engineers and construction workers. Now with the attack on the embassy, they have signaled that they are stepping up their battle against India. It marks a major escalation in terrorist attacks not only against India's presence in Afghanistan but against New Delhi's Afghan policy. And already there are calls in India for troops to be sent to Afghanistan. An editorial in the influential English daily, India Express, says, 'After the Kabul bombing, India must come to terms with an important question that it has avoided debating so far. New Delhi cannot continue to expand its economic and diplomatic activity in Afghanistan, while avoiding a commensurate increase in its military presence there. For too long, New Delhi has deferred to Pakistani and American sensitivities about raising India's strategic profile in Afghanistan.' A military presence in Afghanistan might increase India's profile and add to its stature as a growing power in the region. But it will end up being bracketed with the Americans in Afghanistan, an image it would do well to avoid. It would work against the country's long-term interests in the region, jeopardizing the enormous goodwill it has earned to date. |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #4 Another one for 2008-2012. OSAMA BIN LADEN's threat agz the VATICAN + SAVING THE JIHAD + NO US-IRAN WAR 2008-2010 or 2012 > "THERE CAN ONLY BE TWO", i.e. US-Allies versus [Nuclear?]ISLAMIST CENTRAL ASIA + Peripheries. OSAMA, ZAWI, etal. + RADICAL ISLAM DID NOT START THEIR JIHAD TO LOSE NOR FOR [permanent]]"PARITY". NEWS > NEW ISLAMIST THREATS AGZ NORTH ASIA [Russia, China, Japan], PHILIPPINES, BANGLA, and now INDIA again. ISLMAIST THREATS > already causng POPULATION DISPLACEMENT = EMIGRATIONS FROM SOUTH ASIA TO AUSTRALESIA/AUSTRANESIA, AND IS GONNA WORSEN OVER TIME. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-07-08 21:09 |
| #3 Pak would go apeshit if 2-3 Indian mountain divisions got deployed there Mountain Divisions are by nature tough-as-nails and the Indian Army version can be some pretty 'Nasty Boys®' I understand. |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2008-07-08 15:34 |
| #2 I think that one of the terms for Pakistan assistance is that Indian troops be kept out of any coalition in Afghanistan. Pak would go apeshit if 2-3 Indian mountain divisions got deployed there. |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-07-08 14:51 |
| #1 I think it would be positively grand if India decided to send about 50,000 troops to Afghanistan, both for training and payback. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-07-08 14:15 |