In January, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee visited Afghanistan to inaugurate the 218-km Zaranj-Delaram road project that India was building at a cost of $150 million (Rs 750 crore).
He travelled by helicopter from Kabul to Zaranj, close to Iran's border, accompanied by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Protecting the two leaders were four armed soldiers positioned at all four windows, rifles pointed outward.
For a function that lasted around 30 minutes, 8,000 British personnel were put on perimeter security duty. And a night halt was ruled out.
| ON TEH FRONTLINE (Some large Indian projects there) | ||
| Company name | Number of workers | Type of project |
| WAPCOS | 350-400 | Dam construction |
| Golden Relief Resources | 85 | Construction of heliports, runways & taxiways |
| BSC-C&C JV, Gurgaon | 250-300 | Road project |
| KEC International Ltd, Mumbai | 60 | Power transmission |
It was this experience that highlights the limits to India’s reconstruction ambitions in Afghanistan — and the dilemma. At a time when the US is mulling a respectable exit from the troubled country, India cannot even countenance the idea of shutting down its reconstruction efforts because this is the cornerstone of India’s Afghanistan policy. Yet, security for those working there cannot be fully guaranteed.
That Afghanistan is not a safe place to live and work for Indians is clear — since November 2005, 13 Indians have been killed there, the most recent incident taking place in February 2009. The bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008, which killed four officials and 55 Afghan nationals, prompted the Indian government to rethink security options for its citizens there. Currently, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police guards the embassy and Indians working on various government-aided projects. But every Indian in Afghanistan cannot access that kind of security.
“The onus lies on the individuals to avoid being easy targets,” said Swapna Kona Nayudu, a researcher at Delhi-based Centre for Land Warfare Studies and who has visited Kabul to work on the representative processes in the lower house of Afghanistan's Parliament.
There are 3,500 to 4,000 Indians working in Afghanistan on various projects in institution-building, infrastructure, education, power, telecommunications, agriculture and food assistance.
True, not every Indian is under threat. For instance, accountancy firm Deloitte posted half-a-dozen Indians in the capital Kabul last year after it won a big auditing contract. These employees came home unscathed when their work was done. The security threat to Indians is not uniform across the country.
The western and northern parts are relatively safe, said an official from the government-run Water & Power Consultancy Services Ltd (or WAPCOS), which is in charge of the largest project that India has undertaken — the 42-Mw Salma Dam Power Project in the western Afghanistan province of Herat.
According to Simran Kaur Lohnes, deputy director of the Investor Support department in the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, there are 43 registered Indian and Indian joint-venture companies in Afghanistan. The key part of India’s aid programme to Afghanistan is to link it with its regional neighbours by building roads and power transmission lines (see table).
Speaking at a summit on Afghanistan hosted by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Moscow recently, S K Lambah, the Prime Minister’s special envoy, explained the rationale. “Historically, Afghanistan has prospered when it has served as the trade and transportation hub between Central and South Asia,” he said.
The Pul-e-Khumri transmission line to Kabul will soon be completed by the Power Grid Corporation of India. This transmission line brings in power from Uzbekistan to Kabul and is testimony to India’s attempt to connect Afghanistan with its neighbours and make them stakeholders in Afghanistan’s development.
At the SCO summit, Lambah said the government has pledged $1.2 billion (Rs 6,000 crore) to rebuild Afghanistan. In October last year, Mukherjee informed Parliament that India spent Rs 1,178.39 crore in three years in aid to that country. The Ministry of External Affairs alone has allotted Rs 454.50 crore in its 2009-10 budget as aid for Afghanistan.
Such substantial Indian help for Afghanistan has left Pakistan unhappy. Hence, as part of the Contact Group set up by the US to review its policy towards Afghanistan-Pakistan, New Delhi will have to be wary of Washington’s compulsions to mollify Islamabad’s fears that its “strategic depth” in Afghanistan is being eroded by Indian activities. Which means Indians who work there need to ratchet up their security precautions.
