The Indian role in Afghanistan (new title)

[Tukhachevskii]

Not sure what the fallout from this will be geopolitically (Indo-Pak relations may worsen with Pakistan given a pretext, if it needed one, of further destabilisation in India although from India's persepctive might actually be an attempt to payback Pakistan by playing in a territory considered by Pakistani strategists as affording them strategic depth)...but given our travails I suppose the more the merrier!

According to India & Afghanistan: Charting the Future
India's reasons for intervention/participation are fourfold;
1. Denying the ISI strategic depth to train terrorists to attack India;
2. breaking the narco-terrosim nexus; &
3. secure Afghanistan as a trade/resource hub regarding hydro-carbons; &
4. tapping Afghanistans oil potential (?)
Sounds like classical geopolitical encirclement to me.

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And the Pakistani take...Afghanistan-Evolving an Indo-Pak Strategy: Perspectives from Pakistan

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The CSIS's take India and Pakistan in Afghanistan: Hostile Sport

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A paper outlining India's strategy with regards for foriegn aid, Emerging Donors in International Development Assistance: The India Case, which also ties India's assistance to Afghanistan as an attempt to tie them into a pro-India sphere of influence thus tacitly breaking Afghanistan's tie to Pakistan (from whom it gets nothing worth writing home about.)

&, finally,

A useful backgrounder from the Council on Foreign Relations, India-Afghanistan Relations