Richard Holbrooke, the US President Barack Obama’s pointman for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is certain that the situation in Afghanistan cannot be stabilised without the participation of Pakistan as a legitimate concerned party.
What he did not say as clearly is that India will need to craft its Afghan policy around that reality, even if this meant being left out of the Afghan matrix “for the time being” as it happened in the case of the Pakistan-Afghanistan trade transit agreement.
He was equally dismissive of New Delhi’s concerns about reconciliation with the Taliban saying that neither the Taliban nor Pakistan is going to take over Afghanistan.
Mr Holbrooke, whose visits here had become infrequent in deference to New Delhi’s wishes, also said ahead of his talks with foreign secretary Nirupama Rao that improved US-Pakistan relations are not bad for India. “[It is] not a zero sum game,” he said.
“Our support for India is undiminished. We all understand India’s central role in the region and we believe India can play a very positive role in the search for stability in the region,” he said.
“India has legitimate interests in what happens in the neighbourhood and by neighbourhood I don’t just mean the countries that [border it]. We have said publicly that we recognise that Afghanistan’s neighbours and near neighbours have legitimate security interests in stability in Afghanistan and that most definitely includes India,” Mr Holbrooke elaborated.
Ministers from Afghanistan and Pakistan met on July 17 to resolve certain outstanding issues in the draft trade transit agreement, which has been agreed in principle but not signed yet.
Under the agreement, Pakistan would permit Afghan trucks to use designated routes for carrying goods up to the Wagah crossing with India but no Indian exports to Afghanistan would be allowed through the Wagah border.
The trade transit agreement was discussed in some detail by external affairs minister S.M. Krishna and his American counterpart Hillary Clinton when they met on the sidelines of the Afghanistan conference in Kabul on Tuesday.
In response to a question, Mr Holbrooke said the US considers the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) as a “co-equal threat” and just as dangerous as some of the other terrorist groups — a sentiment shared by Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and the highest-ranking officer in the US armed forces.
Speaking to journalists on board his plane bound for New Delhi, Admiral Mullen said the LeT represented a growing danger and it is part of a network of terror groups trying to extend its reach.
Adm. Mullen, whose talks with the Indian leadership Friday is expected to focus on Afghanistan, said that “the whole region has a role to play” in reconciliation efforts, including India, which is more than just “an interested bystander”.