India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with U.S. Defence Secretary James Mattis in New Delhi on September 26 (Photo: @nsitharaman)
When President Donald Trump announced his Afghan policy late last month and signaled an open-ended involvement without an identifiable end-game, he sought India’s help, calling it a “key” strategic ally.
He made it a point to take his characteristic swipe by also pointing out that India was making billions of dollars in trade with America.
In an analysis that I wrote for the IANS wire on the announcement on August 22, I concluded with this, “ For India, the important takeaway from the speech is that the Trump administration will lean on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step up to the plate and show a greater willingness to get involved. It is not clear if Trump expects India to get involved militarily, a prospect New Delhi would shudder at given its own tensions with China and Pakistan.”
With US Defense Secretary James Mattis making his first official visit to India the question of the extent of India’s involvement ought to have been an important one for both sides. I am not sure if Mattis specifically discussed with India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman New Delhi’s military involvement in Afghanistan. However, Sitharaman did respond categorically to that question from the media during a news conference saying, “We have made it clear that there shall not be boots from India on the ground.”
That is the sensible approach for New Delhi which has over the past 16 years of the endless war contributed some $3 billion in aid via many development projects. Keeping its ancient ties with Afghanistan in firm focus India has been doing its own version of nation-building there.
While Washington or Kabul have not specifically asked New Delhi to deploy Indian troops as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), a NATO-led security mission to Afghanistan, there are expectations of some significant level of security cooperation between India and America in that country.
The extent and nature of India’s involvement in Afghanistan is a source of great anxiety for Pakistan. As recently as last week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the United Nations General Assembly that his country wants India to play no role at all in Afghanistan. Left to Islamabad, it would like New Delhi to pretend that there is no country called Afghanistan. (I exaggerate for effect.)
For India, it is a peculiar balancing act in Afghanistan—not doing anything at all as suggested by Pakistan will not earn it any points with its immediate neighbor even while doing just development-focused work will not give it the strategic heft it wants in the region. With America making security-related overtures, India will have to decide its role for the next decade and beyond.