New Delhi
20 January 2010
While visiting US defence secretary Robert Gates maintained that India had
shown "restraint and statesmanship" after the November 26, 2008 terrorist attacks in
Mumbai, he noted that it would "not be unreasonable to assume that Indian patience will
be limited were there to be further attacks[.]"
At a crowded press conference here on Wednesday, Mr Gates pointed out that there was
a close cooperation between India and the US on counter-terrorism and intelligence
sharing.
In a departure from the standard US formulation on terrorism in the Af-Pak region, for the
first time the US drew Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), which is usually focussed on India, into a
common category as Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Mr Gates spoke of a "syndicate of terrorist operations" under the umbrella of Al-Qaeda,
which has not only plotted to destabilise the region but provoke a conflict between India
and Pakistan.
"The success of any one of them is success for all. Victory for one is victory for all," Mr
Gates said. He observed that the synergies of India, the US and other countries should
be harnessed to dismantle the syndicate.
It has been India's longstanding view in the Af-Pak context that it was futile to make a
distinction between the Taliban, operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the LeT,
which usually focusses on attacking India and is widely believed to be a creation of the
Pakistani security establishment.
The LeT shares Al-Qaeda's perspective and those of the Taliban, the operational
contacts of all these groups are continuous, their enemies are the same, and so are their
friends.
So far India had met with little success in persuading either Pakistan or the US and its
NATO allies to come around to her view that treating the terrorist groups as separate
entities was an artificial construct.
Mr Gates noted that the Indian development assistance in Afghanistan was at an "ideal"
level. He was responding to a question whether India should also be sending troops to
Afghanistan. He also spoke about Pakistan's discomfort with India's development
assistance in Afghanistan.
"[Each] country focussing on development and humanitarian assistance, and perhaps in
a limited way, in training, with a bit of transparency to each other in what they are doing
will allay their suspicions[,]" he said.
It was noteworthy that in his talks with Indian leadership, Mr Gates discussed the
"military modernisation" of China. China's rise and growth was an issue of great interest
for India as she cooperates with China on a range of issues but the unsettled boundary
between the two countries has been a continual source of concern.
Mr Gates said that the discussion on China was in generic terms, referring mainly to the
Indian Ocean security and the security of the "global commons" such as air and space.
He maintained that the US desired to engage China in "more routine indepth dialogue" in
order to avoid misunderstandings, in much the same way the US had engaged the
erstwhile USSR during the Cold War.
// India most popular among Afghans //
Over 70 per cent of the people of Afghanistan see India favourably, putting her way
ahead of other countries engaged in reconstruction of the war-torn country, according to
an opinion poll commissioned by the BBC, ABC and ARD (of Germany) in December
2009.
India (71 per cent) topped the list of countries viewed favourably by Afghans followed by
Germany (59 per cent), the US (51 per cent), Iran (50 per cent) and UK (39 per cent).
Pakistan received only two per cent support and the Taliban, three per cent.
The opinion poll said that India's development assistance programme had earned her
goodwill among the ordinary Afghan people, cutting across ethnic and geographic
divides.
India's assistance to Afghanistan has focussed on infrastructure development, human
resource development, food assistance and small development projects that bring
immediate benefit to the people.
A hallmark of India's support was that the development projects were Afghan-led and
Afghan-driven and aimed at building up local capacity.
The Afghan Centre for Socio-Economic and Opinion Research (or ASCOR) conducted the
survey between 11 and 23 December, 2009.
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