Delhi seeks a hands-on role

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ME21Df05.html

BANGALORE - The recent visit of India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Kabul has drawn attention to the steps Delhi is taking to enhance its relevance as a player in the approaching endgame in Afghanistan.

First, it has stepped up its old strategy of contributing to Afghanistan's reconstruction and capacity-building. In Kabul, the Indian prime minister pledged another US$500 million to Afghanistan, bringing India's total aid to the war-ravaged country to $2 billion. The aid package will focus on small development projects in agriculture and capacity-building among other things that will directly benefit the Afghan people.

India is Afghanistan's sixth-largest donor. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, it has contributed in a big way to infrastructure


projects, including construction of the 218-kilometer Zaranj-Delaram road, the Salma dam and the Afghan parliament building, the latter not yet completed. Besides, it has worked extensively in health and education.

This has earned it much public goodwill - easily its biggest asset in Afghanistan. While some Indian analysts have argued that this goodwill will count for nothing in the Afghan endgame, given Delhi's limited political clout and absence of military boots on the ground, it is evident that the government sees some merit in putting more money in reconstruction there; hence the stepping up of aid to people-centric projects.

By funding, and even arming them so they can resist being over-run by a Taliban funded by the Saudis and run by Pakistani Generals.

Its important to note, that Al Qaida carried out its assassination attempt of Ahmad Shah Massoud(the lion of panjshir)just 2 days before the 9/11 attack. He was airlifted to an Indian hospital in northern Afghanistan, and later to India in a desperate bid to save his life...sadly even such drastic efforts could not save his life. Afghanistan would have been a massively different place now if massoud had been alive...He would have been the president instead of Kharzai.

Afghani people love the Indians for the simple reason that they did not support the taliban, but actively helped them oppose it...and Delhi has to step in to cover the vacume and support the Afghans when America starts wrapping up its operations...if not Afghanistan will yet again become a Pakistani/Chinese colony.