A leading Washington, DC think tank, which is a repository for erstwhile senior administration officials and policymakers, has called on India to 'tailor its Afghan policy to the new situation in Pakistan' in order to alleviate the decades-long competing strategic agendas between New Delhi and Islamabad vis-à-vis Afghanistan.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, in a report titled India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Hostile Sports, said that if New Delhi 'can find even modest ways of working in harmony with the Pakistani government, it could reap substantial benefits in its relations with both countries', even as it acknowledged that the new 'great game' may continue, 'but it will be more of chess, less of tug-of-war'.
The report said that besides the deep cultural and historic ties with Afghanistan that both India and Pakistan have had for decades, there had been competing strategic agendas.
'For India, Afghanistan was an important albeit passive geopolitical on Pakistan, as well the gateway to Central Asia. Pakistan saw Afghanistan as part of a threatening Indian pincer movement, a source of fuel for Pushtun separatism inside Pakistan, and during the Taliban years, a source of 'strategic depth' against the Indian threat,' the report stated.
The report said that the Indian presence in Afghanistan has 'stoked Pakistan's fears', and Islamabad believes that 'the Indian consulates provide cover for Indian intelligence agencies to run covert operations against Pakistan'.
It said that in recent years, 'Pakistan has accused India of intriguing in collusion with the Afghan ministry of tribal affairs and the Afghan intelligence agencies to fund and arm rebels of the Baloch Liberation Army, who are carrying out a separatist insurgency in Pakistan'.
The report recalled that when Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Pakistan in 2007, President Musharraf had 'presented him maps of locations with suspected Indian activity and urged him to rein in the Indians'.
'Pakistan's fears of encirclement by India,' it added, 'have been compounded by the Indian Air Force's new facility in Farkhor, Tajikistan, which may house MI-17 helicopter gunships. The air base follows up on hospital and logistics depot constructed by the Indians in the region some years ago'.
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