High-level sources here on Thursday described the recently-concluded strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan as a “progression” in ties that points to a direction, rather than a “step-up”.
They said, responding to questions, that there was nothing in it that should cause concern among any of Afghanistan’s neighbours, although Pakistan was likely to fret.
“But they were doing that anyway, and wanted us to get out of Afghanistan. However, they cannot have a veto over India’s or Afghanistan’s relations with one another or with third countries,” sources noted.
Against Kabul’s wishes, Islamabad has traditionally viewed Afghanistan as its particular and unique strategic space. This is likely to be circumscribed by the new pact.
The new element in the deal really lies in the open assertion by both sides to make their intent clear. This was underscored by President Hamid Karzai’s major speech from a public forum in the Indian capital on Wednesday, just a day after the bilateral agreement was inked.
Sensing a major development in the neighbourhood, the diplomatic community here, and strategic affairs aficionados, flocked to the Karzai lecture arranged by the Observer Research Foundation in droves, making it one of the most important diplomatic events in many years.
Mr Karzai’s publicised decision of last Sunday to cut off peace talks with the Taliban for now and to directly engage with Pakistan instead — which he reiterated in his address here — is widely seen as Kabul pointing to Islamabad’s “ownership” of the Taliban, and blaming it for their terrorist acts inside Afghanistan.
This move of the Afghanistan leader is likely to help him politically in his domestic sphere. In the last two years, President Karzai embracing the notion of peace talks with the Pakistan-based Taliban leadership, and his perceived softening toward Pakistan in the hope of making things happen as the US and Nato forces planned their exit by 2014, had caused unease among large sections of Afghans, particularly the ethnic non-Pashtuns.
Confirming a strategic partnership arrangement with India through a formal pact is likely to cause much relief in the country, given India’s benevolent profile, in contrast with Pakistan’s.
In his talk here, the Afghan leader — in an effort not to ruffle feathers in Islamabad — called Pakistan a “twin” of his country and India “a great friend”. He also said that between 2002 and 2006, he was “highly critical” of Pakistan but changed his attitude on seeing the terrorist depredations inside Pakistan. He noted that in the last sixty years no dispensation in Afghanistan had sought to engage Pakistan as closely as his government. But the President lamented, “Unfortunately, we did not get the result we want.”
So, the narrative of the just signed agreement is also one of taking lessons from an unhappy political trajectory.
India not flinching in its intentions “to stand by Afghanistan” — as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put it after signing the pact — after the international forces had departed, is likely to send a positive signal to the regional powers that desire the emergence of a stable and democratic Afghanistan which is confident about its sovereignty. This should allow both India and Afghanistan an expanded diplomatic space.