If we want to integrate Afghanistan, we should look to India
Saturday, January 9, 2010 at 11:04PM ARTICLE: With thumbs-up from Afghans, India explores more areas of aid, By Shubhajit Roy, Indian Express, Jan 05, 2010
The first half:
Buoyed by results of two independent surveys in Afghanistan voting India as the preferred country, ahead of even multilateral agencies like UN and NATO, to carry out reconstruction in the country, India is exploring ways to increase its assistance in various areas to that country.
India, which has a $ 1.3 billion development assistance programme for Afghanistan in place already, may venture into areas of cooperation like agriculture and irrigation apart from existing areas like power, IT, medicine, infrastructure and human resource development.
In a recent Gallup poll, when asked about the roles the Afghans thought that various groups or countries were playing in resolving the situation in Afghanistan, 59 per cent favoured India's role. UN and NATO were mentioned by 57 per cent and 51 per cent Afghans respectively.
In another public opinion survey conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), India topped the list of the countries seen as having "good relations with Afghanistan" -- with 24 per cent of respondents naming India, followed by the US (19 per cent), Iran (17 per cent) and Tajikistan (12 per cent). Pakistan, interestingly, was mentioned by only 5 per cent Afghans covered in the IRI survey. In the Gallup poll, about 33 per cent of Afghans surveyed saw Pakistan as supporting the Taliban leadership.
It's interesting, but you never hear anything about India in any American nation-building plan (which is all NATO, NATO, NATO), and yet, by most accounts on the ground, your average Afghan looks to India as the land of opportunity. So if you're going to connect Afghanis to the larger world, why wouldn't any and all cooperation with India on economic development be front and center?
India is the giant force pulling southern Asia into the global economy, not the U.S..
Old story of mine: our natural allies in frontier integration are New Core pillars, not Old Core allies.
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