From Kabul to Kolkata, new beginnings

India knows what it wants in Afghanistan, and before anything else, it wants back in.

In Kabul, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh probably couldn’t tear himself away from the history lesson unfolding a few thousand kilometres away, in Kolkata. So he called Mamata Bannerjee, the leader of the Trinamool Congress, and someone who will now be forever known as the giant killer of India’s communists, and congratulated her.

Singh couldn’t have been more pleased. It was the major left party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had publicly humiliated him over the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 by withdrawing support to his government and forcing a political crisis on the country (another party called the Samajwadi party then bailed out the Congress).

In astrologically superstitious India, Friday the 13^th could not have been a good day for at least some people. For example, the CPI(M), which is not really known to fall for this particular bourgeois weakness. In power in Bengal for the last 34 years, the longest running, elected Communist government in the history of the world was finally ousted by a 55-year-old single woman who prefers a plain, white sari to the fashionable cotton weaves in vogue with India’s card-carrying intelligentsia.

Seems like the winds of change are sweeping pretty much across all of South Asia these days — even though in Delhi, it’s the hot loo that is primarily warming up the atmosphere. With the temperature climbing to 43 degrees Celsius, Manmohan Singh thought he would beat the heat and head for the mountains, in this case the Hindukush, less than two hours away, by air, from home. Moreover, his forefathers used to trade goods in Afghanistan, using both Pindi and Peshawar as stepping stones to Kandahar and Kabul.

Good time to be here, Singh must have thought. Osama bin Laden had just been killed in the neighbourhood, within whispering distance of the Buddhist ruins of Taxila. Would the death of the world’s most dangerous terrorist impact the willingness of the Afghan Taliban to cut a deal with Afghan president Hamid Karzai, as well as hasten the withdrawal of the Americans from this part of the world?

India knows what it wants in Afghanistan — even if it hesitates in saying it. First of all, it wants back in. Delhi’s been kept out too long by Pakistan, first during the mujahidin years, when the US fought the Soviet Union via Ziaul Haq, and then in the decade of the nineties, when Pakistan was one of three governments in the world to recognise the Taliban in power in Kabul.

Ironically, it was Osama bin Laden who helped India return to Afghanistan. When 9/11 happened and the US decided to bomb the terror havens in Afghanistan, India was among the first to reopen its mission in Kabul. In the last 10 years, Delhi has committed $1.3 billion, of which about $500 million have been spent. Two days ago, Singh committed another $500 million to help the country get a fix on its economic crisis.

Perhaps, some of that money will be used, as a start, to train Afghan women police, in both India and Afghanistan. Certainly, Delhi hopes the US will see Pakistan’s double game in Osama’s wake, and is persuaded to let India train Afghanistan’s security forces. Perhaps, Karzai could ask Delhi to begin right away.

Friday the 13^th, did you say? For Manmohan Singh, the demolition of the Left parties in Kolkata and Kerala would have surely brought a big smile to his face. Add to that, the new hand of friendship outstretched in Kabul. Now stir.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2011.