Ugly geopolitics surface in Kabul bombing, Kanishk Tharoor

Kanishk Tharoor — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:59:39 +0000

Over forty people were killed yesterday when a suicide car bomber slammed into the gates of the Indian embassy in Kabul. Many of the dead were Afghan civilians, lining up to apply for visas to India. The attack also killed several Indian nationals, including two paramilitary personnel, a brigadier-level military attaché and a senior diplomat.

Yesterday's blast is one of the bloodiest incidents in Kabul since the toppling of the Taliban, but its grisly toll has geopolitical as well as human implications. A country sufficiently burdened with problems of its own, Afghanistan now finds itself hosting an increasingly violent struggle for influence between India and Pakistan.

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Afghanistan looms large in the foreign policy of its feuding south Asian neighbours. For more essential background and insight, read the related pieces in toD about Indian and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan:

Philip Jakeman: "Afghanistan: necessity and impossibility", 12 October 2007

Philip Jakeman, "India's soft allure", 26 July 2007

Kanishk Tharoor, "The Durand Line: a wrinkle in time", 28 February 2007

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Ever since the rise of the Indian-backed Northern Alliance in 2001 at the expense of the Pakistan-backed Taliban, Islamabad has watched anxiously as Indian influence grows apace on its west flank. The sympathies of much of Afghanistan's new ruling elite, including President Hamid Karzai, tilt towards India, where they were educated and sought refuge during the tumultuous 1990s. Since 2001, New Delhi has become the fifth-largest aid donor to Afghanistan, funding road and dam projects, building the new Afghan parliament, feeding millions of Afghan schoolchildren and opening up more avenues for Afghan students to pursue education in India. Nearly four thousand Indians are at work on construction and development projects in Afghanistan. India is one of the few countries to maintain an embassy in Kabul as well as consulates in all major Afghan cities.

Foreign embassies across west Asia have routinely come under attack in recent years, but yesterday's blast may be part of a more calculated strategy to sap Indian strength and resolve. Afghan interior ministry officials claimed that the "attack was carried out in coordination and consultation with an active intelligence service in the region", a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which Kabul and New Delhi have long blamed for stoking violence in the region and supporting the resurgent Taliban. Pakistani leaders were quick to deny any involvement in the bombing.

"Strategic depth" in Afghanistan against India was for decades a central priority of Pakistani foreign policy-making. In the modern era, such a bludgeoning approach is unlikely to help Islamabad improve its position on the global stage. While Pakistan supported the Taliban with impunity through the 1990s, the harsh light of international scrutiny now falls uncomfortably on the country's restless border areas. Government forces have had little success curbing Islamist militancy and impeding the movement of Taliban fighters back and forth into Afghanistan.

Though the bombing has been pinned on the Taliban, the ISI and its proxies doubtlessly facilitated and encouraged the attack. Should Pakistan fail to rein in the destructive elements of its shadowy intelligence agency, the international community's confidence in Islamabad will only continue to wane.

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Ugly geopolitics surface in Kabul bombing, Kanishk Tharoor