NEW DELHI: President Obama’s announcement that the United States
will pull 33,000 troops out of Afghanistan by the end of next summer
was met with muted concern Thursday in India and Pakistan as analysts,
policymakers and military brass scrambled to assess the implications
for their respective nations.
Though Washington had telegraphed the troop reduction for months, it was larger and faster than many had expected.
In
Pakistan, the news was generally applauded. The South Asian nation has
bridled at U.S. regional influence, CIA drones in its airspace and what
it saw as the American intrusion on its sovereignty in May in the raid
that killed Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, according to LA
Times.
It shows that America is committed to withdrawing, said
Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani lieutenant general and now a military
analyst. "That’s welcome in Pakistan. A gradual withdrawal will be
helpful for the region."
A reduced U.S. footprint in the region
might allow Islamabad to expand its influence in Afghanistan. It also
probably would reduce U.S. pressure on Pakistan to sever links between
its security forces and homegrown militant groups, some of whom are
viewed by Pakistanis as freedom fighters useful in countering neighbor
and longtime rival India.
Many in India, on the other hand,
expressed concern that the relatively sharp U.S. withdrawal would raise
uncertainty in the region, increasing the risk that militancy in
Pakistan and Afghanistan would spill across India’s borders.
India
is confident its relations with Afghanistan are solid, and the
countries share a distrust of Pakistan’s motives and its bid for
enhanced influence in war-torn Afghanistan.
Pakistan will want
to ensure that India doesn’t align with Afghanistan’s Northern
Alliance, a political rival to tribal groups allied with Islamabad,
analysts said. It is also wary of India forming links with groups in
southern Afghanistan that might ally with and embolden neighboring
Baluch tribesmen seeking independence for Pakistan’s Baluchistan
province.
However, India’s ability to counter Pakistani
ambitions or otherwise exert its muscle in Afghanistan as U.S. troop
numbers decline is severely limited by geography: Pakistan borders
Afghanistan; India does not.
Pakistan controls the main road
and port access to landlocked Afghanistan, limiting Indian trade links.
And Pakistan can block energy pipeline routes to India from Afghanistan
and other Central Asian nations.
"There is a limit on what
India can do to influence Pakistani-Afghan relations," said Dipankar
Banerjee, a former major general in the Indian army and director of New
Delhi’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. "And India has to
accept those limitations."
India and Pakistan share an interest
in a gradual, measured U.S. withdrawal that gives the region time to
adjust and fill the vacuum in an orderly fashion, analysts said. A
full-on civil war in Afghanistan would hurt everyone. Nor would Afghans
fleeing any such meltdown be as welcome in Pakistan as they were during
the 1980s fight against the Soviets, given Pakistan’s economic troubles
and domestic terrorism problems.
India and Pakistan also share
an interest in limiting the rise of the Afghan Taliban, albeit for
different reasons. India is wary of increased Islamic extremism in the
neighborhood that could spark another attack like the terrorist assault
on the city of Mumbai in 2008, for which it holds Pakistan at least
partly responsible. And Pakistan is concerned that a revitalized Afghan
Taliban could embolden its homegrown Taliban movement, further
complicating its security issues. Online
