Amitai Etzioni David Katz Harsh Pant - Middle East Forum

allowing reciprocal concessionsto Indian products suchas sugar, tea, and pharmaceuticals.Kabul wants Indianbusinesses to take advantageof the low tax regime to helpdevelop a manufacturing hubin areas such as cement, oiland gas, electricity, and in servicesincluding hotels, banking,and communications.The Indian governmentalso piloted the move to makeAfghanistan a member of theSouth Asian Association of RegionalCooperation (SAARC)in the hope that this move willexpedite the country’s economicdevelopment by facilitatingtransit and free flow ofgoods across borders in the region.Moreover, Afghanistan’s SAARC membershipcould also enable South Asia to reach outto Central and West Asia more meaningfully. Ithas been estimated that given Afghanistan’s lowtrade linkages with other states in the region, itsparticipation in the South Asian Free Trade Areawould result in trade gains of $2 billion to theregion with as much as $606 million accruing toAfghanistan. 8THE LIMITS OFSOFT POWERThese gains notwithstanding, there is agrowing consensus in New Delhi that the softpower approach has yielded no real strategicgains and that, despite being the only countrythat has been relatively successful in winningAfghan hearts and minds, India has been increasinglysidelined by the West.From the very beginning, the foremost objectiveof India’s policy has been to preempt thereturn of Pakistan’s embedment in Afghanistan’sPhoto will not display.Indian foreign minister S.M. Krishna (right, here withSecretary of State Clinton, New Delhi, July 20, 2009) failed toconvince Western leaders of the folly of making a distinctionbetween “good Taliban and bad Taliban.”strategic and political firmament. Ironically, it isIndia’s successes in Afghanistan that havedriven Pakistan’s security establishment intopanic mode with a perception gaining groundthat India was taking over Afghanistan. TheObama administration’s desire for a rapid disengagementfrom Afghanistan has given the necessaryopening to the Pakistanis to regain theirlost influence in Kabul. 9 In order to keepIslamabad in good humor, Washington insistedon New Delhi limiting its role in Afghanistan,having apparently bought the argument that asubstantial Indian presence in the country threatenedPakistan and made it difficult for it to cooperatefully with the international community inthe fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Infact, India had a very limited presence in Afghanistanin the 1990s, and it was then that thePakistanis had a free hand in nurturing theTaliban.The Indian government’s traditional stancethat while it is happy to help the Afghan governmentin its reconstruction efforts, it will notbe directly engaged in security operations is be-8 The Hindu Business Line (Chennai, Madras), Mar. 29, 2007. 9 The New York Times, Dec. 1, 2009.Pant: India’s Afghan Policy / 33