The Foreign Service Journal, September 2010

Competing Visions Since 2001, New Delhi has given the government of Afghanistan more than $1 billion in humanitarian and de- velopment assistance, making it that country’s fifth-largest donor. The Indi- ans are constructing everything from schools, wells, roads and other infra- structure to satellite transmitters and a new parliament building in Kabul. Paradoxically, such highly visible ef- forts could threaten the long-term via- bility of any government in Kabul that New Delhi supports. “Let’s be honest with one another here,” Defense Secretary Gates told reporters at a January news conference in NewDelhi. “[T]here are real suspi- cions in both India and Pakistan about what the other is doing in Afghanistan. And so I think that focusing each coun- try[’s] ... efforts on development, on humanitarian assistance, perhaps in some limited areas of training, but with full transparency toward each other in what they’re doing, would help allay these suspicions.” In his August 2009 assessment of the war, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — recently replaced by General David Petraeus as U.S. commander in Af- ghanistan — cited the adverse impact of India’s growing power in Afghan- istan. According toMcChrystal, Indian political and economic influence in Afghanistan is likely “to exacerbate re- gional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or In- dia.” He continued: “The current Af- ghan government is perceived by Is- lamabad to be pro-Indian.” Based on recent polling data, this author’s personal meetings with mili- tary officials, policymakers and politi- cians in Pakistan, as well as the tenor of that country’s vast media landscape, it is clear that the vast majority of Pak- istanis believe the Afghan war is part of a two-front military strategy concocted by India to encircle their country and seize its nuclear assets. As Pakistan expert Saeed Shafqat told Columbia magazine in 2008, “Peo- ple are haunted by the feeling that an 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 No longer can U.S. policymakers remain willfully blind to the reality that present operations are pushing Pakistan toward further Balkanization.