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Emperor of Maurya Dynasty of India Chandragupta’s (340-293 BC) rise to power to a diabolically cunning character namely Chanakya.
Chanakya has remained all time favourite sources of inspiration for almost all Indian rulers. It is unparalleled in its wickedness even by notorious book of satanic advices to rulers, “The Prince” written by Machiavelli in order to please his Medici masters, mythological Chinese “Art of War”, the “Arthashastra” and “Neetishastra”.

Particularly his teaching that “Enemy of enemy is a friend” left an indelible imprint on the mind and works of all succeeding masters of statecraft. Even to date, the Guru of statecraft seemingly whispers in the minds of Indian policy makers.
The foregoing prelude befits any analysis of the latest Strategic Partnership Agreement signed between Afghanistan and India.

Apparently the agreement, announced on Tuesday after Karzai’s meeting with Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, is the first such pact between Afghanistan and another country and it aims to boost trade, security and cultural links between the countries. The love affair, however, has a backdrop that brought the two countries with entirely different out look, geography, culture, history, economy and global standing together.

Guess what? Nothing else but a ‘common enemy’. Ascribed to deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan and allegation levelled by the former against the later of ‘non-cooperation’ in security matters and investigations of Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination, the all time low relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan gave India a golden opportunity to jump in and lure Afghan leadership with irresistible temptations.

With no compatibility and commonality in the outlook of India and Afghanistan and with no geographical contiguity, what made the two fall in love with each other?
One claims to be the largest democracy on earth with projections of being the second largest economy in the world by 2020, while the other is historically a “graveyard of empires” and currently a war town country with primitive outlook in all walks of life and aspects of statehood.

It should not be difficult to ‘guestimate’ the probabilities of ending up this love story in a happy marriage or otherwise in a view of the conflicting characteristics of the two countries and inevitable role of other countries having state in Afghanistan’s affairs.
Although the implicit convergence on a ‘common enemy’ is obvious in the recent development, it, however, remains to be seen how long this match making will work especially when President Karzai simultaneously calls Pakistan “a conjoined twin”.

Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan has remained in the forefront to help its brethren in its turbulent neighbourhood. It expressed its unshaken resolve to stand by Afghanistan in all weathers and actually demonstrated that resolve on several occasions.
Besides commonality of history and religion, pursuit of peace and stability has always remained a common ideal between the two neighbours. Be it bearing the burnt of bloody wars in Afghanistan or waves of terrorism, sharing burden of millions of Afghan refugees or helping develop Afghanistan’s infrastructure and stabilising its economy as well as providing transit corridor to this landlocked country, Pakistan has always remained steadfast.

There is a general consensus among all political analysts that among all players involved in the Afghan theatre, Pakistan is the only one that benefits from a peaceful Afghanistan.
Its crippling economy shattered by a series of natural disasters like earth quakes and floods, its wavering democracy frequently disrupted by long spells of dictatorships, its severe energy crisis that has halted its economic growth and the menace of terrorism that it is facing for last one decade, require its policy makers to pursue peace within as well as in neighbourhood.
Anything that triggers instability in Afghanistan is logically not acceptable to Pakistan at all. In view of the preceding situation, the accusations of non cooperation against Pakistan and allegations of involvement in assassination of Karzai’s chief negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani whom Pakistan till date declares a friend and well-wisher seem to be a baseless and unfounded pretext.

India’s role in the whole complex issue, however, raises suspicions.
Alluring apprehensive Afghan leadership with bounty of cooperation in development of infrastructure, training its security forces and providing financial assistance are not free from vested interests. Exploiting deteriorating relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, India seems to be hitting many birds with one stone.
Indian ambitious designs in the region are an open secret. Its tract record of waging hegemonic wars and un-called for interferences with almost all its neighbours including Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal,

China and Pakistan are a part of record.
In the words of Stephen Blank who wrote in Asia Times in 2003 that “India has long considered itself a major global player, or at least a major Asian power, and it has been deeply frustrated until now in not being regarded as a formidable actor on the international and Asian scene”.
He further wrote that major policy decisions, such as the one to go overtly nuclear in 1998, can be attributed to this consuming desire to be seen as a great power.

For years both Indian and foreign analysts have expected that the early 21st century India would become a major projector of power and influence throughout Asia”.
A major byproduct of this intended rise to a global status would be a leave Pakistan training behind as a minor regional power that could not longer threaten India’s vital interests.
It was during Hindu Nationalist Bhartia Janta Party’s regime that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee directed planners to craft defence strategies that extend beyond ‘South Asia’ and transcend past sub-regional mind sets. India’s expanded security perspectives, he claimed; require such fresh thinking about projecting power and influence, as well as security in all these directions.

Afghanistan’s grievances against Pakistan and its hopes from entering a strategic relationship with India are understandable. However, what India aims to gain from this partnership is gruesome. Isolating Pakistan is actually just an immediate reward that India expects to reap apart from its long term designs.
The answers to what could be the possible Indian vested interests in entering a turbulent regions can be derived from Lutz C. Kleveman’s book ‘The New Great Game’ where in while founding his theory on rapidly depleting current global energy reserves he wrote that Crude oil, once seen as a wealth-creating blessing for mankind, is fact turning into the “devil’s tears”. The struggle to control the world’s remaining energy reserves increasingly culminates in bloody conflicts and the killing of innocent civilians, with the war in Iraq only being the latest example. He further, gives us a fearless, insightful and exacting portrait of a new battleground in the violent politics and passion of oil: Central Asia, known as the “black hole of the earth” for much of the last century. The Caspian Sea contains the world’s largest amount of untapped oil and gas resources. It is estimated that there might be as much as one hundred billion barrels of crude oil in the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan alone. Desperate to wean its dependence on the powerful OPEC cartel, the United States is pitted in this struggle against Russia, China, and Iran, all competing to dominate the Caspian region, its resources and pipeline routes.

Complicating the playing field are transnational energy corporations with their own agendas and the brash new, Wild West-style entrepreneurs who have taken control after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The New Great Game theory is an incisive analysis of the power struggle for the world’s remaining energy resources.
For India, Afghanistan can be the gateway to this great game theatre where besides seeking its desperately needed share in the energy cake, it can further its own as well as another strategic ally USA’s interests. The

American instant welcome response to Afghanistan-India deal, therefore, should not be a surprise. One must keep in mind that ‘Strategic Alliances’ do not take place in asymmetrical partners.
On one hand we have landlocked and mountainous Afghanistan suffering from evils like chronic instability, warfare and instability with ruined infrastructure and millions of its populace as refugees.
Positioned between the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian continent along the ancient “Silk Route”, this country has long been fought over and was also the centre of the “Old Great Game” in the 19th century between Czarist Russia and the British Empire.

It also remained a key cold war battle ground between Soviet Union and USA.
Though Taliban brought some measure of stability after decades of conflict, but that regime did not last long.

America’s re-entry in Afghanistan brought an end to Taliban Rule in 2001 and since then the country is again in a perpetual state of turmoil. On the other hand, we have India, a fast growing economy with the world’s second largest population.

With virtually no contribution for the unfortunate people of the Islamic Republic from India through these chaotic decades, the swift and newly found interest of Indian government in ‘stability, security and welfare’ of Afghan people is meaningful. There is no free lunch in International Relations. Ordinarily it might look like normal diplomatic initiative mutually agreed upon between two sovereign nations.

Facts, however, reveal an entirely different story. Afghanistan, in view of American influence in its policy making and despite having so-called stable regime in Kabul, is not in a position to independently sign such accords with a comparatively giant regional power.

India too despite its size and stature on global and regional level cannot whimsically interact with a country under a kind of American suzerainty. In view of its anticipated withdrawal from Afghanistan, American patronage of the strategic agreement between Afghanistan and India signifies the issue but what is to be seen is response of other major players in the Great Game.
There are at least five bases in Afghanistan, which are likely candidates to house large contingents of American Special Forces, intelligence operatives, surveillance equipment and military hardware post-2014.

In the heart of one of the most unstable regions in the world and close to the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China, as well as to Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, the bases would be rare strategic assets.

• The author is a medical practitioner in Harare.

China, which has so far pursed a policy of restrict non- intervention beyond economic affairs in Afghanistan, has also made its disquiet clear.
Same is the case with Russia.
Although both the powers have yet not come up with explicit reaction on the issue but in view of their joint resolve in the SCO in 2001 with China, Kazakhistan, Kyrghistan, Russia and Uzbekistan as members.
The purpose behind the creation of SCO can be found in Iranian writer, Hamid Gopira’s ” According to Brzezinski’s (a Polish American political scientist, geo-strategist, and statesman) theory, control of he Eurasian landmass is the key to global domination and control of Central Asia is the key to control of the Eurasian landmass . . . Russia and China have been paying attention to Brzezinski’s theory, since they formed the Shangai Cooperation Organisation in 2001, ostensibly to curb extremism in the region and enhance border security, but most probably with the real objective of counterbalancing the activities of the United State and Nato in the Central Asia.”
With this backdrop and conflicting interests of all stake holders, India is likely to face resistance to its overtures not only by external factors like SCO countries and Pakistan but also by internal elements like Taliban who, regardless of their bent towards any country, will consider ant friend of Karzai regime as their enemies. Be it convergence against a perceives common enemy or prerequisite of New Great Game, signing of strategic treaty between the two countries can neither be free from implications and consequences nor their credentials and domestic as well as international dynamics seem favourable. With Afghanistan’s primitive outlook in the mind we must also not ignore the fact the Indian track record that does not match with its desire to be recognised as a major global player and a regional power.
Here is no denial that India has seen uninterrupted economic growth in the past decade but its demographic and social fabric, its dormant separatist movement’s, its tack record of violation of human rights, its stubborn rejection of United Nations resolutions and its treatment towards minorities are dark sports on its credentials.
Forced subjugations of Kashnirs, mass murders of Muslims in Kashmir, Gujrat, Ahmedabad through state machinery, killing of Christian missionaries and desecration of Muslim, Christian and Sikh religious holy places in Hazrat Bal, Golden temple and several other places and suppressions of legitimate movements though draconian laws and brute force are hall marks of the Hindu majority India’s recent history.
With such dismal record India’s manoeuvres to get a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council on one hand and its desire to emerge as a formidable player in the New Great game on the other are not likely to bear fruit. Afghanistan and Pakistan and indulging in direct contact with turbulent Afghan territory can bring far-reaching consequences.
India seems to have estimated Karzai’s grip over Afghan affairs and underestimated other domestic factors whose reaction can drag it in the fold of consistence terror attacks which so far are confined to Pakistan. By coming in the fold of consistent terror attacks which so far are confined to Pakistan.
By going in direct contact with Afghanistan, India is committing the same historical blunder which Mughal Emperor Aurangezeb Alamgir did by annexing the buffer states between his empire and rebel Maratha states.
The expected clout in the Great Game can bring along undesirable evils for India. Likelihood of Afghan Taliban making alliance with Kashmiri freedom fighters is one such a strong possibility. On the global chess board of the New Great Game there are kings, queens, rooks, bishops and pawns. Afghanistan is undoubtedly the most important of all pawn that can threaten the opponent king with checkmate in this game.
This fact is well known to all players who sometimes move their pieces tactfully like chess and sometimes assemble to pull the rope like tug of war. This is for Afghan leadership to think whether it suits them to remain hostage to this ruthless game or to choose a path of stabilisation, development, peace and opportunities for its citizens to get rid of the shackles of wares and turbulence thrust upon them by powerful states.

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan should learn from their past experiences that maintaining hostilities with immediate neighbour’s and making friendships with remote countries seldom bears fruits.

Its time for all the developing countries of the world to take their destines in their own hands. They must adopt a policy of resolving their disputes with mutual consultations and negotiations.
Developing countries around the world should understand the repercussions of Neocolonialism and the New Great Game. Falling prey to the traps of powerful countries will not only deprive them of their rich natural resources, but will also keep them wandering in the vicious circles of poverty and dependence. Without mutual understanding and amicable resolution of disputes among developing nations the dream of independence will remain a far cry and reliance on powerful countries will keep jeopardizing and compromising their sovereignty. Freedom and sovereignty are hard earned prizes of third world countries which cannot be and should not be mortgaged for petty and illusive promises. If history doesn’t lie, storing and weak can never become friends in a true sense. Any equivalent partnership between the two is simply out of question and against the lessons of history. Words and phrases like sovereign equality and mutual benefit sound good, but they have always proved to be hollow in a world of “Realpolitik” based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises.
The author is a medical practitioner in Harare.