Opinion Dr Singh and Obama’s Afghan Policy

Washington’s South Asia experts have tended to confuse the American political class by replaying the Pak Army’s propaganda that only Indian concessions on Jammu and Kashmir will allow Islamabad to fully cooperate with Washington in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile,the ‘China hands’ in the administration seemed to have sold the proposition that the answer to America’s current problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan lies in Beijing.

We saw this sentiment reflected in the joint statement issued in Beijing last week at the end of Obama’s China tour. Delhi’s reaction has been predictable — loud protestation. Dr Singh instead must do something different: Offer an Indian alternative.

India’s chattering classes are quick to denounce the policies of other nations. They always define what is not acceptable to India,but rarely suggest what may be feasible and how Delhi could help the world get there.

For one,Dr Singh can lay out his own vision for the region between Delhi and Kabul that was once an integrated economic and cultural space across the great Indus river.

Dr Singh has insisted for years that the destiny of Afghanistan,Pakistan and India is inter-linked. The PM has also argued that rediscovering the shared past and imagining a cooperative future hold the key to durable peace across the Indus.

India’s opposition to ‘third-party intervention” in the Subcontinent is well-known. What America needs to know and hear from Dr Singh is about India’s own plan — both short- and medium-term — to lead the north-western Subcontinent towards stability and prosperity.

Those plans will necessarily include the revival of trade along the traditional Silk Road between Amritsar,Lahore,Peshawar and Kabul,negotiation of comprehensive trade and transit agreements,and trilateral political engagement between the elected leaders of India,Pakistan and Afghanistan to defeat the forces of violent extremism.

Whether the Obama Administration agrees with these initiatives or not,Dr Singh would be right to make the Indian case at the White House.

The PM must also underline Delhi’s political will to move the region in a positive direction with or without American support.

(C. Raja Mohan is the Henry A Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress,Washington DC)