'Pak worries about India's Afghan role misplaced'

Dr Abdullah Abdullah, erstwhile foreign minister of Afghanistan and a candidate in the 2009 Presidential election, has lauded India's role in Afghanistan in terms of infrastructure development and institutional capacity building as significant and dismissed Pakistan's paranoia and deep suspicions about New Delhi's involvement in his country as totally misplaced.

In the interaction that followed his introductory remarks at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC, which kicked off a series of lectures by him on the future of Afghanistan, Abdullah, who is now the leader of the Coalition for Hope and Change in Afghanistan,  told rediff.com that "in terms of the role that India has played in Afghanistan, it's very significant in terms of supporting the development process-the reconstruction of Afghanistan, institutional capacity building and in many other ways".

But he acknowledged that it was his experience too that Pakistan has continued to misrepresent India's role in Afghanistan and said, "In Pakistan there is a misperception of what India has been doing. They think that there are training camps led by Indians in Afghanistan for Balochis or the others, they think that there are perhaps several (Indian) consulates."

Abdullah recalled that "even the number of the consulates from a credible friend in Pakistan -- when I was the foreign minister -- he raised it with me and I said, 'Look, even the numbers you have got it wrong, let alone those who are working there.' They (the Pakistanis) were saying that 50-60 people from the RAW (the Research and Analysis Wing, which is India's intelligence arm) is working in the consulate."

"So, it's these perceptions or misperception which exist that has led to what you described," vis-à-vis Pakistani paranoia and constant complaints about India's role to the US administration, particularly to the Pentagon brass working closely with Pakistani military leaders," he said.

Abdullah asserted that "we do need support from India, we do need support from Pakistan," and pointed out that Pakistan too to its credit "has helped in the reconstruction of Afghanistan-hospitals, universities, roads, capacity building, helping with the students-and we have made many, many headways in terms of our relations with Pakistan in the past few years in trade, transit in peoples to peoples relations."

But, obviously taking aim at Pakistan's efforts to persuade Afghanistan and the US to preclude India from being involved in Afghanistan, he argued that "no country should have-big or small-the authority to boycott…to veto our relations with another, whatever country-big or small-no matter how much contributions they have because it is for the Afghans to define their national interest in maintaining good relations with its partners and that has to be respected."

Abdullah, apparently taking a hefty swipe at Islamabad's efforts to dictate Afghanistan's foreign policy, said, "Sometimes they pass over these lines."

Earlier, in his opening remarks, Abdullah had spoken of how post 9/11 in terms of the regional context, then "(Pakistani) President Musharraf, General Musharraf, played a double game. From one side, he posed as the frontline state in the war against terror, at the same time, he provided critical opportunities for the insurgents in Afghanistan and the terrorists and the extremists to re-establish the themselves back first in Pakistan and then with support, return back to the country (Afghanistan)."

Asked by rediff.com if Pakistan still continued to play this 'double game,' and reminded of a question to President Barack Obama at last week's joint news conference with visiting President Hamid Karzai when an Afghan woman journalist emotionally said that all of Afghanistan's problems were due to Pakistan being "two-faced" regarding Afghanistan and Islamabad not being "really honest regarding Afghanistan," Abdullah said, "We were very happy -all of us-that there is an elected government in Pakistan."

He said, "You might recall that Musharraf coming here to Washington (and saying), 'Yes, Al Qaeda, we have broken them vertically and horizontally and we will finish them-it will take a few more days.' And, that regarding Osama bin Laden, 'we nearly captured him' and that Osama doesn't exist in Pakistan and we don't know if he exists at all."

"So, this was played for a long time," Abdullah said, "and, in today's situation, apart from having a democratically elected government in Pakistan, there is also another chance. The public opinion in Pakistan, because of the atrocities of the Taliban against Pakistani citizens, it has turned against the Taliban."

Thus, Abdullah argued that "hopefully, everybody, all institutions will seize this rather than playing with it. So, I wouldn't say we are in the same situation, but still of course, there are challenges."

In his address as well as the interaction, he also took some digs at Karzai and said after the presidential election during a meeting the United Nations had arranged between him and Karzai, the latter had kept saying that it were "the foreigners" who were undermining the electoral process.

"And then I told him that there will be foreigners, and what do they want from him, and he said, that they wanted to bring the Taliban."

Abdullah said this was the first time he was raising this assertion made by Karzai "publicly, that foreigners wanted to bring Taliban. So, it was at that time I decided, I should think about my future and the future of the country and then I decided not to participate," in the election run-off.

During the interaction, when Abdullah was asked if Karzai had confided in him who these foreigners were who were attempting to bring back the Taliban and if they were the US, Britain, the Europeans or the Pakistanis, he replied that Karzai "explained it himself later just a few weeks ago, what it means. He was referring to the broader international community rather than just one player at that time."

On the issue of narcotics trafficking and poppy cultivation, Abdullah alleged that "the main beneficiary of this illegal trade are the people very close to the top leadership or the government of Afghanistan and these people walk around scot-free."

Consequently, he said how can one have "the moral authority to go to the farmers and ask them not to do it."

Abdullah -- also obviously in ridiculing the red-carpet treatment accorded Karzai by the Obama Administration, less than six weeks after the White House indicated that it might disinvite him in the wake of his comments that he may join the Taliban and that the fraud had been perpetrated in the election by foreigners to undermine his election -- warned the US against investing in just one individual in Afghanistan.

"Your investment has to be on the people of Afghanistan, on the process in Afghanistan, and on support of the people in Afghanistan," he aid. "That has to be seen as such, has to be perceived as such, has to be in its real sense and then you will find in the people of Afghanistan, people who are grateful, which are appreciative because of your support, not like the people that will come and say that you are the cause of all evil. This is not the nature of the Afghan society."