Afghan Journal
Lifting the veil on conflict, culture and politics
India-Afghan strategic pact:the beginnings of regional integration
A strategic partnership agreement between India and Afghanistan would ordinarily have evoked howls of protest from Pakistan which has long regarded its western neighbour as part of its sphere of influence. Islamabad has, in the past, made no secret of its displeasure at India’s role in Afghanistan including a$2 billion aid effort that has won it goodwill among the Afghan people, but which Pakistan sees as New Delhi’s way to expand influence.
Instead the reaction to the pact signed last month during President Hamid Karzai’s visit to New Delhi, the first Kabul had done with any country, was decidedly muted. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said India and Afghanistan were “both sovereign countries and they have the right to do whatever they want to.” The Pakistani foreign office echoed Gilani’s comments, adding only that regional stability should be preserved. It cried off further comment, saying it was studying the pact.
It continued to hold discussions, meanwhile, on the grant of the Most Favoured Nation to India as part of moves to normalise ties. Late last month the cabinet cleared the MFN, 15 years after New Delhi accorded Pakistan the same status so that the two could conduct trade like nations do around the world, even those with differences.
And on Thursday, Gilani met Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on the margins of a regional summit in the Maldives and the two promised a new chapter in ties, saying the next round of talks between officials as part of an engagement on a range of issues will produce results. Afghanistan or the pact, was scarcely mentioned in public, although it is quite conceivable that the two would have talked about it.
Is there a shift in the ground, in both India and Pakistan ? Pakistan is battling multiple crises, including ties with the United States that at the moment certainly look worse than those with India. It is also struggling to tackle a melange of militant groups that have metastasized into a mortal danger for the Pakistani state itself and a deep economic downturn that a nation of 180 million people can ill-afford at this time. While it continues to invest time and energy in Afghanistan, a large part of the war has come home too and it is struggling to enforce its writ on its side of the Pasthun-dominated lands that straddle the two countries. A lessening of tensions with India can only help at this point.
India, meanwhile, has shot out of the blocks building a trillion-dollar economy that dwarfs everyone else’s in the region, not just in size but also growth rates even if it is slowing down now. It still has a long way to go to meet the aspirations of a billion plus people and realise its own potential, though. It needs peace within and on the borders and it needs closer economic ties with all its neighbours. Its economic stakes are rising across the region including Afghanistan where Indian firms, along with the Chinese who preceded them, are the only ones prepared to risk blood and treasure to exploit its mineral resources. Conversely if a pomegranate farmer in southern Afghanistan- the Taliban heartland – wants to sell his produce to the booming Indian market, New Delhi wants to do whatever it can to try and make that possible.
British army shoots itself in row over Afghan “mosque” models ?
The British Ministry of Defence has apologised after Muslims complained that it was using replicas of mosques at a firing range in northern England to train soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan.
Relations between Muslims and the military are already fragile, so what’s the point of testing them even more by suggesting that mosques were places of danger, the Bradford Council of Mosques said, according to The Independent. The green-domed structures erected at the end of the firing range in north Yorkshire must be taken down, the council said.
A British military source told Reuters that the one-dimensional hardboard structures are not used as direct targets but are intended to provide a more “realistic” background for soldiers training ahead of deployment in Afghanistan. Other “generic eastern silhouettes” used include palm trees and irrigation ditches to recreate the Afghan setting soldiers would face there. It was never the intention for the structures to look like or replicate mosques, the Defence Ministry said, offering an apology if any offence had been caused. It said it had sought a meeting with the representatives of the community to find a way forward.
It’s not like they recreated a whole Afghan village with a mosque in it to familiarise soldiers, says Ishtiaq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Bradford Council of Mosques. “If they had a replica of a street or a village in Afghanistan with a mosque as a kind of location point we would understand that, but these are simply six or seven structures in the direct shooting line which anyone looking at would come to the obvious conclusion that they are mosques.” Community leaders are even more angry because the provocation comes just when they were trying to help the army recruit more Muslims, the BBC said.
Is it really the best way to win Afghan hearts and minds for soldiers starting their tour of duty ? Or a staggering own goal ?
Some people think its a bit of an over-reaction and even misleading. Douglas Murray, writing in The Telegraph blog, said the fact is that British, and U.S. troops for that matter, are forbidden to fire at mosques or other places of worship under the rules of engagement. But that will be forgotten in the current uproar, he says and instead the idea that soldiers are trained to shoot at mosques will get embedded.
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Afghan Journal Expert
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People and nations will prosper only through trade and commerce and not through wars and conflict. When this is recognised there should not be any problem to move on a progressive path. Even now Pakisthan should realise that it is suffering more than India in development and growth and religion should not matter when language and customs are the same. I think both countries will gain with such a cooperation and both should not lose any more time in this regard.