کابل پرس

The Kabulis of India

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2009-09-13T18:01:26Z

The recent threats of kidnapping and killing in the Swat Valley of minority Sikh community members by the Taliban was a throwback to various periods in history when Afghan Hindus and Sikhs have, like the rest of the population of Afghanistan, had to face displacement brought on by violence. With the ransom demand, or “Taliban Protection Tax” as it was called, agreed at Rs.20 million the Sikh leader was released and the Sikh families were allowed to return to their homes and businesses. But for the Hindus and Sikhs from Afghanistan the issue remains an emotive one bringing back memories of their own flight into India from Afghanistan in the 1990s against the backdrop of the internecine civil war followed by Taliban threats. Today in India Afghan Hindus and Sikhs constitute nearly 90 percent of the Afghan refugee population.

The partition of India in 1947 defined the lives of not just those who made the tumultuous passage to India and Pakistan but also those who sought refuge in Afghanistan. These were the Sikhs and Hindus for whom the journey from the western fringes of Pakistan to India would have been far too arduous and dangerous, and Afghanistan provided what they perceived as a temporary safe haven. That is when another generation of this minority from Afghanistan made the country their home. Others had settled in Afghanistan centuries earlier. They call India their ancestral homeland as their ancestors first went to Afghanistan in the nineteenth century during the time of King Ranjit Singh.

This minority group left at different times in history just as they had gone to Afghanistan at different times in history. Many left Afghanistan just before or during the Soviet war when incessant bombing destroyed the lives of many. Even as ethnic Afghans joined the war with their livelihood destroyed, these groups came to India. The hope was that when things quieted down, they would return to their homes and small businesses. But the short return to their homes was as traumatic as leaving it the first time. Many found their homes occupied by warlords. Ninety five percent of their property was lost during the war years.

In eastern Afghanistan, some members of the community owned large houses and farm lands and were a thriving business community. The relative prosperity of this group can be gauged from the fact that despite being barely two percent of the population in Jalalabad, they controlled a large part of the economy. Over time they were also accorded a reasonable level of religious freedom. But now, post 2001, many have sought refuge in India after clashes with some hostile local communities over cultural practices and rituals. The attempt to cremate a body in 2007 in Kabul led to major tension between the Sikhs and the local community as the ritual of cremation was considered blasphemous.

Sikh refugees from Afghanistan who have come to India are granted a stay visa, which needs to be renewed every 18 months. In the absence of citizenship, these refugees find it hard to secure employment and the absence of relevant documentation gets in the way of admissions to educational institutions. The jobs they find are in the huge informal sector in India. With few avenues for earning many male members do make the journey back to Afghanistan. This means that they leave behind their women who often are ill-equipped to deal with the alien environment in the absence of formal education and language skills. A provision available for this group of refugees from the Indian government is that after 12 years of continuous residency in the country they can apply for an Indian citizenship. Over 500 Afghan Hindus and Sikhs have so far been naturalized through this process even as another 4,000 wait for their turn.

Afghanistan is believed to have had a population of over 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs before 1992 in areas like Jalalabad, Kandahar, Khost, Kabul, Ghazni and Laghman. Today there are just about 1,500 Sikhs in Afghanistan. The ones who remained are either those who had no relatives in India or lacked resources to migrate.

For those in India, while dreams of their homes in Afghanistan are yet to desert them, hopes of returning have. Everything has been lost to the war and the rest snatched by warlords. Besides, many see their return as a huge price to pay as it would mean sacrificing the freedom their children, especially daughters, enjoy in India, many of whom were even born there. And as they reminisce about the lives they left behind in Afghanistan for these ‘kabulis' of India – as they are locally referred to - the hopes for peace in the country they remember as home are still alive.

16-year old Afghan girl victim of 'honor killing' in Germany

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2009-05-14T05:13:00Z

The month of February saw the sentencing of an Afghan-German man for the May 2008 “honour killing” of his sister, Morsal Obeidi. Following the verdict the scene in the courtroom was one of mayhem as family members screamed, assaulted journalists and attempted suicide – yet another grim reminder of the violent life that Morsal led behind the supposedly secure walls of her home. Even as the irony of the brutal death of a sixteen year old girl born in war ravaged Afghanistan and brought to Germany in the hope of a better and more peaceful life refuses to fade out, the incident itself raises some very critical questions.

Ahmad-Sobair Obeidi is believed to have lured his sister to a parking lot in Hamburg and brutally stabbed her following a brief altercation. Twenty three stab wounds, inflicted with such force that Ahmad would later wear a bandage on his forearm, is how the young life was snuffed out. The verdict described the murder as a “treacherous and premeditated bloodbath” after all attempts to “discipline” his sister had failed. Ahmad is believed to have retorted that had the trial taken place in Kabul, Afghanistan, he would have been released long ago.

While Morsal was killed in May last year she already had a very volatile relationship with her family with a history of beatings by various members of the family, reports of this physical abuse to the police which were invariably retracted and rescues by the child and youth emergency cell. Morsal and her brother came to Afghanistan when she was three so in a sense Germany is the only home she knew. Her father, once a combat pilot left Afghanistan in 1992 when the civil war started. While the Obeidis were not an overtly conservative family the friction between the family and the rebellious teenager appeared to stem from her comfort with her ‘western' lifestyle, a life she watched her peers have, which included uncovered hair, makeup and short skirts. And yet even as her clashes with the family might appear the rebellion of a pubescent teenager for someone who left behind a country at a time where the swathe of blue burkas was the only colour in a war-ravaged backdrop the life she was living might have appeared anything but normal.

Following her death what was commonly said of her was that she did not ‘act according to the prescribed moral concepts' and was often referred to by sexual pejoratives. The only time the violence stopped in Morsal's brief life was in 2007 when she was believed to have been sent to Afghanistan to reform her ways, learn a little more of about her own native culture and appreciate the freedom she enjoyed in Germany. Not surprisingly it was also insinuated that perhaps she was actually pregnant during the time and that was the reason she was sent away. It can hardly be missed that details like this gain importance when a certain message needs to be sent out about the victim in the context of and subsequent to an honour killing for greater social (if not legal) sanction.

What makes this case even more crucial is how it was represented in some of the local media - as a clash between two very different cultural systems. And in this clash Morsal, the murdered victim, was seen as this young heroine fighting against the tribal culture of her parents while her brother, who fatally stabbed her, represented the evil rejecting the “superior” value systems of this more evolved culture and society. The sixteen year old was eulogised as a martyr for both the women's cause and that of more modern, civilised values. The parents seen as the obstacles to her integration only corroborated this view by being critical of the judge and saying that their dead daughter bore some of the guilt of her own murder. Thus, Ahmad, who already had a long history of several assaults, was dubbed as the “executioner” of their “parenting methods.”

The problem with the oversimplified argument of assimilation versus alienation, Morsal versus Ahmad is that even though Morsal had a sense of where she really wanted to belong in the context of social and cultural identity she returned repeatedly to this abusive family. Why did she feel a false sense of security even in this violent set-up? And that in itself is a statement on her torn teen life between the public and personal domains, between perhaps social acceptance on the one hand and family security (however misplaced) on the other.

The term ‘honour killing' is controversial in itself, in that it places the burden of the family's honour and reputation on women – and girls as young or younger than Morsal - paving the way for their further victimisation. The fact that it could be used in a country like Germany to snuff out a young life only makes this trend more disturbing as it gives male members of society space to reinforce their control over women. Violence in the name of honour is nothing but disguised domestic violence and death in the name of honour is nothing but murder. It is rooted in the gender imbalance existing within communities which is what needs to be addressed more immediately, even by institutions within the host nation when dealing with immigrant groups.

And even as some German politicians and other groups used the murder to relook at the failed experiment of “multiculturality” in German society the question is that can cultural identity, when it clashes with basic human rights of an individual, be placed over the valid legal order?. While Ahmad's action delivered the perfect excuse for a resurgent discourse on ‘the other' it is a potentially dangerous argument as evidenced from the violence that many women in diasporas endure before they have the courage or requisite avenues to seek help.

Morsal's, as also her brother's would then appear as a classic tussle between two worlds that the second generation diaspora very frequently experiences. A world she lived in and a world she was forced to adopt to as her real one – but one she was far removed from physically. Quite ironically, even as her death becomes a document of this tussle to fit both worlds into one – the host culture without conflicting with the moral diktats of the paternal culture men and women in her native homeland risk death by challenging these very traditional perceptions of Afghan women. And in her death the even greater irony remains that Hamburg turned out to be a more dangerous place for young Morsal than Afghanistan itself.

The year that was…in the subcontinent and what does it mean for Afghanistan

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2009-01-11T08:47:37Z

November 26, 2008 is being now commonly referred to as India's 9/11 in the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks on that day. It is ironic that India should need to borrow a label from an America tragedy - which truly and quite horrifically claimed thousands of lives in a matter of hours; but India has a longer history of such attacks and today ranks amongst the highest victims when it comes to casualties of terror. And yet what really has been the true import of Mumbai 26/11?

The Mumbai strikes – irrespective of who masterminded them - were the culminating attacks of a series in the subcontinent; the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, the Indian embassy in Kabul apart from the numerous bomb blasts in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last year. What this has effectively meant is a derailing of a peace process between the countries, especially India and Pakistan, which is important to most countries in South Asia and the larger Asian region, not to mention in the immediate neighbourhood of Afghanistan.

The traditional history of finger-pointing had returned with the Indian embassy attacks and the more recent arrests and counter arrests of ‘spies' is only a reminder of the 1990s when being a member of the Indian or Pakistan consulate was not without its implications whenever relations between the two countries deteriorated. The Kargil War of 1999 barely a decade ago happened immediately after the peace process between Pakistan's PM Nawaz Sharief and his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It took ten years to get the process back on track.

The Indian government implicated the ISI in the Kabul embassy attacks and the banned Lashkar-e-Taiyabba in the more recent Mumbai attacks. The links between the two have long been established. LeT's founder, Maulana Masood Azhar – one of the men freed during the Kandahar hijacking (Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu) of December 1999 in exchange for the plane load of hostages quite suspiciously (and hardly surprisingly) disappeared from what was first reported as his house arrest in Pakistan.

And meanwhile even as the two countries started by playing down the possibility of a war the American administration jumped in by stating that they would support India's right to defend herself. On the other side, the well wishers, this time for the Pakistani side have been the Pak Taliban who have stated that they would join Pakistan's war effort against India, having tired of the skirmishes with the Pakistani army. More importantly, the Afghan Taliban leadership, like Mullah Omar, distanced themselves from groups like that of Baitullah Mehsud for carrying on attacks against fellow Muslims.

A war with India would help them reclaim their position amongst the Taliban brethren at a time where there are signs of many of the Afghan Taliban moving towards a more political agenda from a militarized one.

As early as 2002 the US administration had wanted India to play a more direct (military) role in Afghanistan which the Indian government very staunchly declined even going to the extent of issuing directives asking Indians to avoid contracting with private agencies operating in Afghanistan or Iraq. It is only recently with India's humanitarian aid and the infrastructural activity in the country that Indian presence in the country has increased.

The last thing, amidst all the violence the region needs is a war between India and Pakistan. While it would help to shift the focus from the Pak-Afghan border and if the Pak Taliban do join the war against India then possibly even de-escalate the violence there given that President Karzai has constantly blamed attacks from across his eastern neighbour for the constant instability in the country. Besides, it would certainly serve the immediate interests of groups engaged there. But a war will not help to dismantle terror networks as has been the experience of the NATO in Afghanistan.

he Jammat-ud-Dawa (JuD), now a front organisation of Lashkar-e-Taiba, banned by the US several years ago is already believed to be preparing to revive under a new name in the wake of the UNSC ban on it after the Mumbai terror attacks. The presence of senior JuD cadres at a recent rally in Pakistan under the banner of Tehreek-e-Hurmat-e-Rasool points to this possible development.

The American President-elect, Barack Obama started his first visit to Afghanistan last year on the wrong foot with President Karzai when he insinuated that Afghanistan was yet to get ‘out of the bunker.' Now, as he gets ready to take over office he has reiterated his earlier commitment of aid to Afghanistan. But the scenario in the region has become far more complicated post 26/11. India and Pakistan are engaged in a second guessing game with both looking to avoid confrontation and yet looking for adequate reasons to blame the other if such a situation does become unavoidable. India goes to the polls this year.

The Pakistani administration is fresh from polls last year and is struggling with an economy in shreds and an army that wants to remain all powerful. President Karzai too has to go back to the electorate for a mandate on his five years of presidency. The political situation in the region remains very fluid and what happens between India and Pakistan could very well shape the future for many actors in the region including Afghanistan.

Shakeb Isaar update— life in Sweden

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2008-08-31T19:33:52Z

by Deepauli Gaur Singh

A 24-year old Afghan young man who had to leave his home after being cooped up inside a television station following the murder of his colleague and threats to his own life hopes for an Ataturk style secular Afghanistan. This comes at a time when Afghan democracy is stumbling for stability amidst major security concerns and there's a rising intolerance to Ataturk's Turkish model in Turkey itself.

If you have grown up on a post-Taliban diet of Afghanistan, then Shakeb Isaar is difficult to picture in your visualization of the mine-stitched country, war-embattled, AK-wielding mujahedeen-turned-warlords-turned-politicians and a landscape now peppered by blue burkhas.

A youthful dream of free speech

Shakeb Isaar, a name he adopted to protect his family, was the young vibrant face of what an Afghan youth could be at a time when the average person was still recovering from the aftershocks of the Taliban. His programs on TOLO TV, a private channel showcased music and music videos from across the world including local artists in his country, which was forced to deafen itself to any sound that was remotely in rhythm.

An extremely radical program by Afghan standards, it is hardly surprising, especially for those who have witnessed so many attacks on Afghan media workers, that Shakeb now lives in exile in Sweden, a country he might have known very little about while in Afghanistan. In the almost two and a half decades of his young life he has lived in and out of his native country so many times that nearly half has been spent in asylum.

Vivid memories of the violent 1990s with warring mujahedeen and utter chaos - “a time of rampant fighting, killing, robbing, stealing, bombing and million other crimes against humanity” as he puts it only to be replaced by a regime worse than the earlier is what marked Shakeb's return to Afghanistan each time, and the subsequent flight out. For a young teenager “life under the Taliban was the darkest ever,” but it was also the time that taught him not just the basics of survival but also of living. A life that appeared different when viewed through his father's hidden satellite dish, the hope of another world lived through political books, and dreams of a more open society; this was the teenager waiting to live his teenage years.

Trained to be a journalist at Kabul University, Kabul's Arman Radio, was Shakeb's first opportunity to connect with Afghan youth and music. A music countdown show, which was an instant hit, opened doors to more programs as producer and presenter of a musical program called HOP, and another one on - believe it or not - makeovers called ‘Mujha' or Waves at TOLO TV.

The price of free speech

This is where his life changed at a speed even Shakeb found difficult. Instant stardom and an accompanied fan base, infused by quotable lines like “why look like Mullah Omar when you can look like Ricky Martin,” brought its share of threats, attacks, violence, self arrests (for safety reasons), and eventual escape from Afghanistan. Until last year, he continued to make program segments for TOLO TV as the European entertainment correspondent for a travel program, ‘Message from Far Away.”

Among the incidents documented, Shakeb was attacked while getting a haircut, resulting in 12 stitches to his hand while shielding his stomach against the assault; he was assaulted and humiliated by local police; his mother's car was vandalized; he received numerous threat letters; the Taliban and Al Qaeda called for his immediate death; he was expelled from Kabul University; his car was forced off the road and crashed into a tree; co-host was found dead with a gunshot to the head, and he received an anonymous message threatening him with the same end. Eventually he had to live inside the editing room of TOLO TV till he could leave the country.

Today Shakeb lives thousands of miles from Afghanistan in Sweden, the country he chose to make home. There is little of the life he left behind, but more significantly he has left the violence behind him. Though not a musician himself, music remains his connection with people as he jams on his guitar with bands in Stockholm.

For a nation of people tired of unending violence spurred by constantly changing politics, the need to forget the three decades of war is what Shakeb's brand of entertainment was a response to. “Like food for hungry people,” he attempted to use it as a weapon against the “current dictatorship.”

Having earned the ire of everyone from the government, secret Afghan agents, police, Mujahidin, local criminals and the Taliban, one of Afghanistan's most popular VJs sees his fight as one for real democracy and freedom of expression. Proud of what he achieved when he was in the country— from his haircuts to clothes to the entire youth culture— it was a peek into a world that lay beyond Afghanistan for many of the country's youth who had grown up with minefields, AKs and omnipresent death.

While he would like to return to Afghanistan, the maturity of a war-ravaged history tells him there is no immediate hope for a country that has today become a battleground “between powers in the world occupied by imperialists. ” He feels there is little hope even for the next hour because even today just “five percent of the population make decisions that fill only their own pockets.”

While his Hazara ethnicity would be important inside Afghanistan, in Stockholm Shakeb is just another Afghan in the small community of eleven thousand Afghans, making him quite easily invisible in a 9 million strong multi-cultural Swedish society. It's mostly Swedish friends who have helped him re-build his life. And yet this former Afghan icon of Westernized lifestyle, who was condemned for peddling an alien culture, unabashedly feels responsible for his home country, and tries to figure out the ways to be a cultural ambassador for it.

The real Afghanistan, stifled by a media-propagated perception of a country at war, where drugs and terrorism come easy, is what he aims to promote. So while a Swedish government's loan takes care of his academics and living expenses, Shakeb takes time to travel as a freelance journalist on seminars and conferences throughout Scandinavia to clear the myths and misconceptions surrounding his homeland.

While Sweden might not be paradise for him, it comes with its opportunities. He does miss the spiritedness of his own people amidst a more restrained Swedish society, but he is happy for the life he has and the freedom it offers. This self-proclaimed Enrique Iglesias of Afghanistan is a sobered man now. Concerts, coffee, cooking, and soccer with friends is what a regular day is like for him today. And while he dreams of a secular country in his heart, it is with a song on his lips that this young man does hope to return to his country someday…to the smell of Afghan kebabs, the sound of his native tongue, and the sight of his mother.

Interview and article by Deepauli Gaur Singh

Bombing of Indian Embassy in Kabul — The back story

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2008-07-19T07:47:00Z

by Dr. Deepali Gaur Singh - Kabulpress.org correspondent in India

The Indian presence in Afghanistan received another body blow in the early weeks of July with the bombing at the Indian Embassy, shattering, with it, the lives and dreams of many visa-hopefuls lined up outside. The third this year alone, it was one of the most lethal attacks on a 3,000-strong presence of Indians working here at various missions and development projects.

It was probably the first one in seven years of international troop presence, directed at a diplomatic mission. The death toll claimed 54 lives amongst whom were the Indian defence attaché, a political counsellor and two other Indian officials. The bulk of the victims were those lined outside the embassy for visas and people going about their daily chores in the neighbourhood market.

Believed to be one of the most guarded places in Kabul, the street houses the Afghan Interior Ministry which had already been targeted once in 2006 killing 13. The latest attack brings India's growing role in rebuilding and rehabilitation efforts in Afghanistan into focus as one of the largest aid providing countries with a non-military presence.

At a time when the new Pakistani administration is negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban, and the fragile democracy is coming to terms with growing insurgent violence within its own borders, fingers have been pointed both overtly and covertly by Indian and Afghan authorities alike to the Inter-Services Intelligence's (ISI) role in this particular attack.
Vox populi from the streets of Kabul seems to have echoed similar thoughts - thoughts that are an indication of a fatigued populace's tired resignation to what has now become a daily occurrence assuming a larger significance only when a dear-one is lost.

The Afghan Interior Ministry has blamed the attack on support from “active intelligence circles in the region.” The last high profile attack was the assassination attempt on President Karzai in April which, too, was followed by thinly veiled allegations of the ISI's involvement. Once whispers, these accusations have become loud noises reflected in the Afghan President's outright threat on the fringes of the Donor's Conference in Paris recently.

But more than anything else it really has been the frequency, sophistication and acuteness of the recent attacks that indicates to a more organized network with both logistical and operational expertise. And even as accusations and counter-accusations flew freely between the Indian, Pakistani and Afghan administrations amidst the rising body count from the previous attack another sophisticated remote-controlled bomb was discovered on a bus carrying road-workers of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in Nimroz.

While Pakistan's administration at varying times has had a role to play in Afghanistan ever since the anti-Soviet jihad, it really has been the ISI that has strategised the real politik of the region vis-à-vis Afghanistan. From the logistics to the actual implementation of the jihad, from the procuring to the distribution of resources during the Afghan war, they, in collaboration with the CIA, are now known to have played an extremely important role.

The same was true during the internecine civil war when the mujahideen groups were at each others' throats and subsequently when the Taliban came to control over ninety per cent of the country; Pakistan was among the only three countries in the world to recognise the militia group as Afghanistan's legitimate government. This was around the time that India, after having supported the Soviet-propped regime, lost most of their influence in the country with their role restricted to the Afghan government-in-exile in New Delhi. The Kandahar hostage drama of 1999 leading to the release of the Jaish-e-Mohammad's commander, Maulana Masood Azhar only deteriorated the relations between the two countries with the Indian government scalding its fingers during the last negotiations with the Taliban in Kandahar.

The American intervention in 2001, albeit with the support of their only friend in the region, changed much of that for the Indian government as well. For years having backed the opposition Northern Alliance against the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime the ouster of the militia group and installation of President Karzai in power changed the dynamics in the immediate neighbourhood.

With the Taliban gone, it actually opened doors to opportunities of rekindling cultural and historical ties between the two countries many of which had been captured on celluloid decades ago. And more recently, evidenced in the near-obsessive demand for Indian television soaps, which were eventually banned for being against Afghan culture. While Afghanistan has been an important agenda in Pakistan's foreign policy it is now that the two sub-continental powers are directly competing for influence in Kabul. India has pledged about $850 million in reconstruction aid to the Afghan government.

India's commitment is not just for building roads but also laying electrical lines. It is involved in a collaborative construction effort of a building which at a later date is going to house future Afghan Parliamentarians. The 218-kilometre Zaranj-Delaram road for which the BRO has been repeated targeted is nearing completion and would serve as an important connecting trade route to Iran for India and Afghanistan.
The Indian government with its Afghan counterparts is involved in a joint working committee which will assist the latter in issues of local self governance in line with the Panchayati Raj system in the country which is based in grass-roots democracy.

But more crucial to other national interests in the region might be the news of Afghanistan seeking India's help in training its troops to fight insurgents, believed to have been made during Afghan Defence Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak's visit to the country in April this year. While New Delhi maintains its stand of a non-military engagement in the country, the Indian government is believed to be considering training Afghan military personnel at Indian institutes.

In addition, Afghanistan is keen to get its air force personnel trained in India even as India is expecting an order from Kabul for its Advanced Light Helicopter. Afghanistan also hopes to get training and maintenance support from India for its military's 10 Russian-made Mi-35 helicopter gunships.

Incidentally, the Afghan minister's itinerary included a visit to the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, where Indian troops are fighting an insurgency which India believes is fuelled from across its western border. And all this comes amidst reports that the Afghan administration believes that the faster it builds its own national armed forces, the sooner NATO-led ISAF will be able to begin withdrawing its soldiers.

An Indian IL-76 transport plane flew to Kabul in the first week of July to retrieve the bodies of the four diplomats killed in the Indian embassy bombing amidst reports of the slain defence attache's growing linkages with senior officers in the Afghan national army. He even accompanied the Afghan defence minister on his trip to India and was playing a key role in India's military and logistical help to Afghanistan in countering prospects of Pakistan regaining influence there through a resurgent ‘Taliban-al Qaida-ISI' nexus.

India has some army officers in Afghanistan to teach basic military field-craft and English skills to the Afghan army. Several military doctors have already been assisting at hospitals in and around Kandahar. But it is because of the increased use of IED in blasts and suicide bombings, as opposed to the earlier face-to-face confrontations, that Kabul is interested in sending its officers for specialised training to various defence institutes in India. Was the defence attaché then the direct target of the attack? Speculations are rife given the nature of the allegations.

Pakistan has constantly accused the Indian intelligence of mounting attacks into Baluchistan from inside Afghanistan, a charge denied by both Indian and Afghan authorities. The hot and cold relations between the two countries are evident in that while Pakistan allows the transit of Afghan goods through its territory for Indian markets it does not allow a reverse transit of Indian goods to Afghanistan.

As expected the bombing has already had regional ramifications. That relations between Indian and Pakistan have reached yet another wall was obvious in India pulling out of the Indo-Pak bilateral talks of their investigating agencies, the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan meant to combat crime, human trafficking, drug abuse and stepping up cooperation among police forces of SAARC countries.

But for the Afghans the more serious issue is bound to be whether Afghanistan is yet again going to find itself at the vortex of regional politicking; and are its national interests going to be determined by relations between the perennial sub-continental rivals, India and Pakistan.

India's presence in Afghanistan incites violence by Taliban

Deepali Gaur Singh — 2008-05-08T07:03:18Z

Even as the Indian and Afghan defence ministers met in early April it was a meeting soon to be overshadowed by the death of two Indian construction workers of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) in a suicide attack by the Taliban on their convoy in Nimroz province of south-western Afghanistan.

Amidst the continuing violence in the country - the mounting kidnappings which were followed by a higher number of suicide attacks - India so far had been a little removed from the volatile situation in the country, which has more to do with its conservative presence there since most engagements have been at the diplomatic level. Indians, mostly associated with BRO work, have lost their lives in the past few years beginning with a telecommunication engineer in 2006 believed to be a hostage situation gone wrong.

But suicide attacks do not come with such issues. This time the target was clear and the casualties irrelevant. The Indian BRO was engaged in the building of the strategic Zaranj-Delaram road that will connect the landlocked country to Iran and its seaports. This road is crucial to the trade in Afghanistan as it opens up routes for Indian trade in the region. These latest casualties for the BRO came in the final stages of road construction.

Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan Minister of National Defence met his Indian counterpart A.K. Antony to discuss ways to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries who have shared close historical, cultural and trade ties. These ties have frayed in recent decades, due to respective geopolitics, the Taliban's Islamic propaganda and other political factors.

More recently, India has been expressing concerns over the threat faced by Indian workers engaged in rehabilitation in Afghanistan. Despite the latest tragedy the government has said it would continue to help the reconstruction process, by ensuring the security of the Indians.

In the past a small contingent of Indian army doctors and male nurses are believed to have participated in humanitarian efforts by treating Northern Alliance troops at a hospital at Farkhor, close to the Afghan-Tajik border – a contingent believed to have been financed from Delhi.

The country's involvement in rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan totals nearly $700 million for as many as 60 projects ranging from infrastructure to the social sector. The commitment supports a return to stable conditions with accompanying economic progress, critical for sustainable growth and stability.

With common perceived threats, India's cooperation is sought even more on the issues of terrorism and extremism. The Indian government has reiterated support for rebuilding Afghanistan through reconstruction, rehabilitation and infrastructure, but there would be no military involvement. Ironically, the Afghan National Army was the first to receive Indian help.

It is against this background that the visiting Afghan contingent's request for India's help in training its troops to fight insurgents becomes significant. While New Delhi has ruled out direct involvement of its forces in Afghanistan, the government will consider training Afghan military personnel at Indian institutes.

The Indian government already burnt its fingers with the Taliban in 2000 with the Kandahar debacle – an incident that continues to haunt the political party in power then. This was the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight from Nepal and the subsequent swap of dreaded militants, amongst them Maulana Masood Azhar - the man who went on to raise the Jaish-e-Mohammed, for the release of the passengers at Kandahar airport. The airliner was surrounded by the Taliban militia in their now famous SUVs wielding their sophisticated weapons, ostensibly providing cover for the hostages. In reality it was a blatant show of strength to the Indian government. Clearly, Indian foreign policy experts are bound to suffer bouts of insomnia if the Taliban do move in to political power in the country.

The foreign troop presence in the country today is much higher than it was when the Taliban militia was being routed out in 2001. The fresh incidents come at a time when the United States are themselves sending an extra 3,500 Marines while simultaneously urging allies to redouble efforts in the face of rising violence. And even as the government was coming to terms with the recent violence there has been news of the kidnapping of yet another Indian road worker in Herat.

Reconstruction work in Afghanistan continues to come with the price of having to grapple with security in the country and Indian authorities are only struggling to reconcile this in the face of their commitments to their regional neighbour.