World Infomatoin Tuesday

Attacked embassy a symbol of Indian
push into Afghanistan
Agence France-Presse . New Delhi

India’s sprawling embassy compound in Kabul is a symbol of the country’s bid for more strategic clout in Afghanistan since the fall of the extremist Taliban regime in 2001.
India’s ramped-up presence in Afghanistan – including the opening of consulates in several cities and resources for reconstruction – has put it in competition with neighbour and long-time rival Pakistan, analysts say.
Pakistan condemned Monday’s car bomb attack that targeted the Indian embassy in Kabul, but the Indian media and commentators have been quick to see it as a part of an intensifying Afghan feud between the rivals.
The nuclear-armed countries are officially at peace but are still seen by commentators as engaging in proxy tactics.
‘Pakistan has a stated policy of seeking strategic depth in the region – Afghanistan and beyond,’ said C Uday Bhaskar, ex-deputy chief of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis in New Delhi.
‘India, since the fall of the Taliban, has been trying to revive its links with Afghanistan. So there is an element of competition here,’ Bhaskar said.
The attackers ‘are the forces that are trying to disrupt the president Hamid Karzai administration, disrupt any kind of initiative that seeks to bring about change from what the Taliban represented.’
For some commentators in India and many officials in Afghanistan, those ‘forces’ are believed to be a nexus of Islamist militants and elements of Pakistan’s shadowy spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.
Pakistan strongly denies it supports the Taliban and also rejects Afghan claims that it has failed to clamp down on Taliban militants based in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
‘I don’t think Pakistan would ever like to add fuel to fire in the current situation by interfering in Afghanistan. We cannot do it unless we go mad,’ former ISI chief Asad Durrani said.
‘Pakistan enjoys great clout in Afghanistan being its next-door neighbour as compared to India. Afghans depend on us, we are culturally very close to them,’ said Durrani, who headed the organisation in the 1990s.
For years, India and Pakistan have been at opposite sides of the devastating conflicts that have raged in Afghanistan.
After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Pakistan threw its weight behind hardline Islamic rebels from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, and went on to provide all-out backing for the Taliban militia.
India, as a friend of the Soviet Union, generally kept out of the conflict up to the collapse of the Moscow-backed Afghan government in 1992.
The ensuing turmoil in the country followed by the Taliban’s rise provided a fertile training ground for militants fighting Indian rule over part of the Himalayan region of Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in full.