 Well good evening. Good evening. Good evening your Excellency. Ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure to welcome you to Dr. Avinash Pallywell's wonderful new book, My Enemies Enemy. And if you haven't already bought one, you're not allowed off the premises without buying one. But in this day and age, I have to say, that was a joke. I also want to thank Mohammed Richard Raksha and the rest of our team for helping put on this evening's event, which is one of the first in CISD and SOAS's menu. If you look on the Center for International Studies and Diplomacies Advents page, you'll see quite a star cast of lectures in the coming year. The Center itself is a small part of the Great Science Empire. We have some 400 mostly master students. We're a postgraduate teaching center, master's and doctoral students, some 400 students, and some 350 of those are studying all over the world, as we speak, as part of our online programs, which we deliver in association with the British Foreign Minister's Diplomatic Academy, which is very good news until you look at the state of British diplomacy today. And then you, from my perspective, I guess I'll be long gone, but in 15 years' time I guess you'll be able to partly blame us for British diplomacy, as we have this teaching role now. But I'm also particularly delighted that Avinash joined us relatively recently to help believe one of these programs with the Diplomatic Academy, and no sooner had he arrived than this book emerged. I have to say I find it to be a satisfyingly factually dense analysis of the relationship between India and Afghanistan in particular. I had some years when I was working in the international news media after the unpleasantness of 9-11 and the events flowing, and it was just impossible to get a discussion of events in Afghanistan to bring any panel discussion on Western television to say, well, of course, another country engaged here is India, and has been for some time. It was not something that even, I say, the Guardian could bring into its scope of analysis. So as we're launching this South Asian program with the Foreign Ministry, having Avinash to not only bring a rounded view of the region, but a particularly sophisticated analysis of this critical dimension in the region was something which we were delighted to be able to welcome to us. So that's my picture, Senator Director. I'm now under strict instructions to disappear, which I will now do into the body of the hall, but we're not without recognising and asking Mr. Michael Dwyer of Hearst Publishers to come up and say a few words about the publisher's view of this book. So, Michael, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Your Excellency, Mr. Yanshi Sinha, thank you all first for attending this event. We're very grateful to have such strong support. Thanks also to Dan and to Professor Ed Simpson and the Serres South Asia Institute for hosting this. I think their new lecture series looks, as Dan said, mouthwatering, and we aim to add some further speakers to their spring season with their permission. Hearst publishes about 90 books a year, and of those we publish about 10 or 15 on South Asia and South and Southwest Asia. We have a strong interest in working with SOAS. I was a student here longer ago than I care to remember. We've been publishing authors here for at least 45 years and still do. So that's a connection we wish to maintain. We're particularly delighted to be publishing this book by Dr. Palawal. I'm personally interested in India's bilateral relations, and I'd long thought that this was a yawning chasm in the literature on South Asian studies and politics. We are about to sign a book at Hearst by former Indian diplomat on India-Russia relations since probably the late 1940s to the present. I'm on the lookout for someone to do a book about India-Japan relations over the last 30, 40 years. If you know anyone, email me. I'd like to talk to them. We are also delighted to be publishing this book. No pressure, Avinash, because of the advance praise it has received. We expect it to become the key text for understanding India-Afghan relations for many years. I doubt anyone else is going to do a better job than Avinash any time soon. We anticipate that it will be read closely, particularly in South Bloc, in Whitehall, and within the Beltway, and deservedly so. We really do need to make our decisions on these topics in an informed manner. This is one of the few recent books that gives us the New Delhi Kabul axis, and does it very adroitly. The last bit of the spiel is, of course, the book is a bargain, £15 tonight, down from £35, once only opportunities. If you want to buy a copy, see me, and thank you again. Your Excellency, Mr. Senha, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It's my pleasure and honour to be with you today, especially an honour to be back to a place I consider my second home, SOAS, and also grateful to have the opportunity on this very particular occasion to come and celebrate the launch of a book about a country or two countries that are very important in today's global politics, I would say, for all different reasons. We are here today to celebrate Dr. Avinash Pelleval's book, My Enemy's Enemy, India and Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to the U.S. withdrawal. As you all are aware, Afghanistan has gone through protracted years of war that is described in many different forms and ways. And one of the ways that Afghanistan conflict is described often is that this is a battlefield of many other conflicts, the conflicts between the Russians or the Soviets and the U.S., the conflict between the U.S. and Iran, the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the conflict, many other conflicts. So also it is considered a place that is the reflection of conflict between India and Pakistan. If you think through these lenses, one would kind of imagine that stopping these kind of conflicts would practically result in a peaceful Afghanistan. Whether this is a solution or not, whether this question could be even responded positively or not is very much depending on the fact that the country has been in this particular phase of war for 40 years and the complexity and the difficulty of finding a solution for it will not be really responded by one or another solution of these conflicts or these kind of different dimensions that we discuss. So this is the really time in which Dr. Pelleval's book is an excellent contribution, where it at least impacts one of these many dimensions through looking at the history of Afghanistan and India relations. This history is full of contradictory approaches and policies as Dr. Pelleval in his book explains and at the same time it is an important reflection or an important document in the sense that it is based on evidences, something that we find really difficult in today's political world. People are making statements, making policies, drawing, you know, conclusions on countries and histories, not really based on history. So Dr. Pelleval's book is a great contribution in that sense. So I will not take more of your time. You will have this evening discussing the book by our great panelists over here. But before I introduce the respected panelists for their contributions, I would like to request Dr. Avinash Pelleval to introduce the book. Thank you Ursula for the introduction and thank you Michael for publishing the book. There is no pressure whatsoever on me. I am truly, truly honored to have such a distinguished panel this evening. All of them are leaders in their respective fields and represents a wonderfully diverse body of opinion and experience. Very fitting, I must say, for an institution such as SOAS which revels in its diversity. Thank you, your Excellency. I commission on Mr. Sinha. Thank you Shashank. Thank you Farzana and thank you Ursula for taking the time out for this evening and for engaging with this book. Ursula today is here, you know, not just wearing two hats of both a chair and a panelist but flew all the way from Kabul for the evening, among other things. Thank you Ursula for this event. This event would not be possible without the support of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy and the SOAS South Asia Institute. In particular, I would like to thank Dan, Dan Plesch and the stellar admin team of Raksha Bhandari and Richard Appleby. They were the muscle behind this event. Now if anyone of you read the title of this book and thought, one, this author is highly unimaginative and two, surely, if a country as big as India, when it is dealing with a neighbourhood as complex as in Afghanistan and Pakistan, surely, I mean, it can't be as simple as my enemy's enemy, right? If you are thinking along these lines, please do read the book because those 288 pages are full of primary source evidence which will prove you correct on both counts. This book is a culmination of my doctoral and postdoctoral research at King's College London and before I tell you what it is about, what its findings are, I think it is essential to tell what this book is not about. It is not a justification or blind praise of India's role in Afghanistan. If you want to know that, if you are looking for that, I would sincerely recommend following Indian media for that. And if you are looking for blanket criticisms and rejection of India's presence in Afghanistan, then equally I would say you should follow the Pakistani media for that. And if you are looking for policy recommendations, again, I am not answering those policy questions as to what India should do, what anyone else could do to get the region together, really, not in this book. This book simply shows what India did in Afghanistan. It explains why it did what it did. It teases out the implication of India's decisions and highlights what possibilities existed or were debated. And by doing that, the book not only fills a gap in literature on Indian foreign policy and South Asian strategic affairs, but also offers a building block to use India as a case towards developing disciplines of international relations and diplomatic history much more generally. And foreign policy analysis much more in particular. Now last month, the president of United States, Donald Trump, he announced his strategy towards Afghanistan. In one single speech, he castigated Pakistan for everything that is wrong in Afghanistan, pledged continuous American troops, troop presence in Afghanistan without a timeline for withdrawal, made the subtitle of this book partly irrelevant, and put India on a pedestal and asking it to do more. Now let's be clear this is a wartime decision, not one gear towards resolving the conflict, but more to ensure that U.S. allies in and around Afghanistan continue to have a stronger hand against their adversaries. It was an admission that a conflict that has been raging for four decades has led to tremendous loss of life in capital, destroyed the social, economic and political fabric of Afghanistan is not ending anytime soon. It was an acknowledgement that India, a country that has not put a single boot on the ground and is not going to do so they just announced is very much part of this war. As we move forward trying to assert in what impact India's increased presence in Afghanistan might have on the geopolitics of the region and as we risk resigning ourselves into the trap of my enemy's enemy, this book seeks to take a look as to how we have reached here today and why so. Is containing Pakistan the key factor driving India's Afghanistan policy? That is the question, that is the central question that concerns this book and the answer to my mind is no. Pakistan is a very important factor in India's Afghanistan policy but containing Pakistan is not the be all and end all of this policy approach. There is a consensus in India that it wants to see a stable, sovereign and territorially united Afghanistan. What India can do to achieve this goal is where the debate really begins. At one end of the spectrum are those who argue that all of gun factions and political figures, whether inside or outside the fold of the government, that stand, you know, that stand at odd with Pakistan or are not in the influence of or dependent on Pakistan should be India's allies or friends. If these friends are powerful, they hold power in Kabul, they're brilliant but if they don't then India should do whatever it can to make them powerful. One way to empower them is to buttress their material capacities and mobilize international support in their favor. The other way to empower them is by making pro-Pakistan factions in Afghanistan relatively weak. By using covert or overt military means whatever is required. All policy makers who subscribe to these views are termed partisans in this book. The other line of the argument at the other end is that India should focus whoever comes to power in Kabul without fear of favor. And for this to happen India should build goodwill among the people of Afghanistan and politically engage with every entity regardless the militancy of their Islam in association with Pakistan's security agencies. Marked by pragmatism, not engaging with pro-Pakistan of gun factions is not a viable option according to this line of thought. However difficult it might be in practice to both open and sustain such a dialogue. All those policy makers who broadly subscribe to this view are called conciliators in the book. Cutting across political and bureaucratic lines, the debate between partisans and conciliators is far, very far from being a strict binary. These are broad analytical categories that allow unpacking strategy debates in India and are loaded with nuances depending on the case and point. Which of this advocacy then ends up influencing foreign policy output is determined by the interplay between what I highlight as the three drivers of India's Afghanistan policy. The first and most important driver is India's desire to strike a strategic balance between Afghanistan and Pakistan. New Delhi does not want Pakistan to have an unduly strong influence in Kabul. As it was assessed to be the case in late 1990s when the Taliban regime was there. But at the same time it does not want Afghans to unnecessarily interfere in the affairs of Pakistan. This is a counter-intuitive thought. But there is a good body of historical evidence suggesting the same. The second driver is the constantly evolving international political environment focused on Afghanistan. How does the US respond to the idea of heightened Indian presence in Afghanistan? How did the Soviet Union view India's relationship with the Afghan communists? Are Iran and Russia on the same page as India? Does United Kingdom's advocacy of reconciliation with the Afghan Taliban has many takers? How will China's increased political interest and involvement in Afghanistan impact India's options there? All these questions become important. And the third driver is the domestic politics of Afghanistan itself. Despite the good will that India enjoys among the people of Afghanistan, the situation at a political level is complicated. Simply different Afghan political leaders and factions value India differently. A recent example was President Ashraf Ghani's audacious outreach towards Pakistan in 2014 and 15. Seemingly at the expense of India. That the outreach expectedly failed is a different matter. What annoyed Indian policymakers considerably, although they tried putting a brave face at the time, was their knowledge that this outreach was more than just a political experiment. Rather it was an exercise rooted perfectly in the history of bilateral relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan regardless of India's relationship with either of these two countries. Interplay between these three drivers, striking a balance between Afghanistan and Pakistan, constantly changing international political environment, and domestic Afghan politics determines who dominates India's Afghanistan policy, whether it is the partisans or the conciliators. Or for that matter, there is a compromise between the two. For example, it is known that during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, India ratcheted up its rhetoric on Pashtunistan, Balochistan and East Pakistan. What is less appreciated is that the Afghan leadership was deeply reluctant in entertaining Indian desires to undermine the security and sovereignty of its eastern neighbor. It is known that Afghanistan in the 1970s under the presidency of Dawood Khan, increased political, military and financial support for Pashtun rebels inside Pakistan, eliciting a similar response from Pakistan who supported various Islamists of various hues in Afghanistan. What is less known is that despite being sympathetic to the Pashtun cause, India rejected request from Kabul for New Delhi to act in the east as Kabul acts in the west to quote-unquote take care of Pakistan. It is known that despite her reservations in private Indira Gandhi publicly supported the Soviet intervention. What is less known is that her predecessor, Prime Minister Charan Singh, had categorically rejected Soviet actions both in public and in private. It is often asserted that in 1996 India staunchly opposed the Taliban along partisan lines. Yet in 1992, India had welcomed the Mujahideen government to Kabul along conciliatory lines. In fact, there was coordination between India and Pakistan on the Afghan issue in early 90s, a time when Kashmir was witnessing its worst bout of separatist insurgency which India held Pakistan responsible for. It is known that ever since 2001 Pakistan has accused India of using its consulates across Afghanistan to form into violence inside Pakistan. What is less known is that during the composite dialogue between the two countries before 2008 Mumbai attacks, India offered Pakistan to undertake surprise checks on all Indian consulates in Afghanistan and ask for detailed readings of what Indians were doing there with the promise that India will not seek a quid pro quo. For its own reasons Pakistan rebuffed the offer. More recently since 2010 India kept arguing officially that there are no good or bad Taliban and that all such elements should be dealt with force. As this book demonstrates, on the ground and in internal policy discussions, India's approach has been far more nuanced. Now clearly there is good reason for Pakistan to be anxious. It is an anxiety that is exacerbated by the structural realities of the region and is historically apparent. There is an argument that resolving Kashmir would lead to an end of the Afghan war because after all it is the India-Pakistan rivalry which is at the heart of this war. A cursory look at this region's history will demonstrate that resolving Kashmir might assume which Pakistan's territorial anxieties and ambitions perhaps even lead to a limited Indian presence in Afghanistan but it is far from guaranteeing Kabul's acceptance of the Durand line as the legitimate border with Pakistan. The issue is that most existing literature and scholarship highlights phases of active partisanship and brands them as the rule. Historical evidence however points towards a much more complex reality that should force one to question both the intensity of India-Pakistan rivalry in Afghanistan and the strength of India-Afghanistan political relations popular good will notwithstanding. Pakistan's attempts to limit India's role in Afghanistan has only increased New Delhi's political will to deepen its footprint in that country. India welcomed Donald Trump's speech in Afghanistan. Now this is unlikely because policy makers in Delhi think this strategy is a recipe for success but more so because continuous American troop presence appeals to the central of India's Afghanistan policy that is striking the strategic balance between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Trump's strong criticism of Pakistan might make one think that this is an approval for partisans in India. But United States limited leverage over Pakistan, China's entry into the fray and Russia and Iran's independent engagement with the Afghan Taliban might open avenues for a stronger, more creative conciliatory response over time. The complexity of these relations really fascinated and terrified me when I was researching and writing this book. As the book concludes, if India can be an enemy across the Hindu Kush as it has been, it can also be a friend who appreciates Pakistan's territorial concerns and has little interest in exacerbating them. All I'll end this with is I sincerely hope that you enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Palival, for your very succent presentation of the book and enlightening us with key findings in analysis from the book. At this point I would like to request His Excellency Ambassador Senha to deliver their remarks. His Excellency Ambassador Senha is a seasoned diplomat and a career of spanning 36 years. He has handled several important assignments at the Ministry of External Affairs New Delhi in India and in Indian diplomacy in South Asia, Middle East, Europe and permanent mission of India and the United Nations in New York. Ambassador Senha also served as an additional secretary and headed the important Pakistan-Afghanistan around division at the Ministry of External Affairs. So without further ado, I would like to request His Excellency to express their remarks. Thank you very much, Dr. Palival, my fellow panelists, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be here for this launch of this book. My first visit to Sohas and that's perhaps my fault that I've been here long enough to have come earlier. But I couldn't have chosen a better opportunity or occasion to come than the release of this book. And the reason why is that I have been associated off and on with Afghanistan for many years and I don't want to go into a lengthy sort of exposition of my connections with Afghanistan and for that matter Pakistan. But just to say that in 1992 I returned from Rome after being the first secretary commercial and economic and suddenly I was sucked into what was then called the IPA division, the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan division as a deputy secretary looking after Pakistan, not Afghanistan. But since I had a colleague sitting next to me reporting to the same boss position that I had later on, obviously one dealt at least peripherally with Afghan issues and obviously you couldn't deal with Pakistan and not deal with Afghan issues and vice versa. And then I find myself in 95 landing up as the head of the political section of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and what a time it was, 95 to 98, the Taliban had emerged from the seminaries of Samyul Haq's Orgola J-U-I-S if I remember correctly, if my memory serves me correctly, from the Heber-Pakhtunkhwa that time the NWMP and sweep into Afghanistan and then of course finally capture Kabul of course we had to evacuate our embassy then I remember Shahjeh who was my colleague in the division before I went for Pakistan narrating incidents about that but obviously I don't have time to narrate them to you. And then I find myself in 98 just to the side if I may, I was the first Indian diplomat to actually meet Hamid Karzai when he was living in Pakistan. But again that was more for my memoirs and not for this evening and that was I think 96 if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, 98 I find myself in New York in the permanent mission fresh out of six years of Pakistan, three years in the ministry and three years in the High Commission and lo and behold in a couple of years or three years there was 9-11 and suddenly Taliban became everybody's curiosity and I remember Amad Rashid's book, very very useful book that came out it's sold like hot cakes there and I was suddenly invited to speak and I was just a counsellor so I don't know why I was obviously with some experience I knew what the Taliban was. If I were to speak at various think tanks and institutions including at West Point participate in a discussion on the Taliban. So I don't know whatever little knowledge I had I didn't try and share with friends and colleagues there. But what was interesting was that I actually was not handling Afghanistan or for that matter Pakistan in the Indian mission to the UN but obviously given my interest and my experience I was often asked to cover for colleagues unfortunately I was not sent to Born One much to my disappointment but I did make up by attending Born Two ten years later. In 2009 I came back and headed the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran division for four years almost as joint secretary and additional secretary so a lot of what is written in this book particularly in that period from 2009 to 2013 I have been personally witnessed to and of course what is written before is something that I have peripherally followed. When I read this book I kept debating whether I was a conciliator or a partisan and at some points of time I said perhaps as per Dr. Palival's division I fit into one or the other but when I finished the book I was very confused. I still can't make out whether I come in one or the other category but having said that he very clearly clarified and he did so just now also that it's not a binary approach it's a very fluid categorization so I let that rest then perhaps grapple with my own demons and come to the conclusion of whether I was a partisan or a conciliator but one thing is very clear that obviously Pakistan, India and Afghanistan are three sides of a triangle and for any peace in Afghanistan naturally India and Pakistan need to work together and that's precisely why I think Dr. Palival mentioned that the composite dialogue was very much involved in the various editions of the composite dialogue. In fact I was involved since 98 when the working groups were set up between India and Pakistan and participated in successive meetings on whether it's Yachin, Cerkric, Trade, Kashmir, Nemat and I was there, terrorism so I did all that and I remember at that time we were very keen to engage Pakistan on Afghanistan so that we could allay their fears about you know any sort of containment or encirclement which was obviously not what we wanted so much so that we even wanted to raise our fears regarding the so-called strategic depth which I think if I remember correctly it was General Mirzastan Beg who first came out with this theory or this policy which has really influenced Pakistan's policy towards Afghanistan and as far as India is concerned I'm not going into the title or into the three drivers of Indian foreign policy because it's obviously very clear the way it has been stated but what I would like to say is that the amount of men in terms of people who have worked on projects in Afghanistan projects that I have personally supervised whether it was the Salma Dam, I remember visiting the so-called India-Afghan, Afghan-India Friendship Dam which was inaugurated last year or was it, I mean I personally travelled to, I remember it was really hazardous, I went in July 2011 to Chishti Sharif, now Chishti Sharif of those of you who don't know is a very important Sufi centre and a lot of the Chishti, the Sufi saints came from there and Salma Dam is somewhere there 160 kilometres from Herat and I remember flying in the old Russian ME-17 helicopter without doors and machine guns mounted on them and the pilot saying we'll fly treetop because the Taliban by the time they pick up their weapons you would have passed them but anyway it was not a very enjoyable experience as you can imagine but India has invested a lot in Afghanistan 2.6, 2.7 when I was there it was 2.3 billion dollars now it's probably more and we have built some seminal infrastructure projects there and I think this book does touch upon that for instance the Ghanj De La Ram Highway, now that highway was built at great cost, people lost their lives building that highway, how important that highway is it connects to the garland of roads in Afghanistan and in the future when Chabahar comes up and when there is a connection we will realise how important that route will be in connecting Chabahar to Afghanistan and to the rest of Afghanistan in fact I even travelled on that road from Chabahar towards Iran Sheher in November 2011 obviously I did only 20-25 kilometres along with some people to see how what we can do and I think that is why that because of the problems we are facing for instance there is a reference to not in this book but I remember the supply of wheat to Afghanistan India has supplied a huge amount of wheat over the years and I remember during my tenure in Delhi we were unable to supply wheat through Pakistan so we entrusted biscuits, high-energy biscuits high-protein biscuits for schools meant for school children primary school children to the WFP the World Food Programme who then of course liaised with the Pakistan Government some of it went through Karachi and up all the way through the Kaipur parcel to Afghanistan but I remember that at that time he was told to remove the Indian flag or a gift from the people of India etc etc because that don't go down well but what I try to say is that the investment that India has made has been tremendous whether it is the Afghan parliament whether it is bringing electricity to Kabul after about 13 or 14 years from Uzbekistan through mountainous territory if I remember correctly it sort of connected and we did two substations in Charikar and Pule Kumbri if I am not mistaken and brought electricity for the first time to Kabul after the war I mean the sort of humanitarian work the sort of development assistance that we have done was actually for me an eye-opener because we didn't have a development partnership administration till 2011 from 2009 to 2011 the territorial division that I was in charge of actually ran this operation through our embassy and through our consulates so it was actually I think tremendous achievement to try and deliver on time of course there were delays, there were huge cost overruns told by a Russian colleague in Moscow that you will never be able to complete it we tried and failed so it was a matter of great pride that despite the huge cost overruns and time overruns we were able to complete that dam and it only produces 42 megawatts of electricity but it does irrigate or the land there the Iranians were very suspicious of what we were doing perhaps blocking the Hariko River if I am not mistaken and since my phone memory is correct if I am wrong and we had to allay their apprehensions so we have actually worked across the board in Afghanistan and there were no special areas that we liked to work people would like to think that since we were alienated from the south to the east from the Pashtuns we did work only in the north or in the areas controlled by the erstwhile northern alliance that is not correct we started the small development project which is a great innovation that we had done in Nepal and in Afghanistan and which as High Commissioner Sri Lanka I introduced there and these are the typically quick gestation projects which are less than a million dollars or even much less sometimes very small project like building cube wells, building primary health centers, culverts, small bridges etc which was so successfully implemented in Nepal, Afghanistan and then Sri Lanka and now we are doing it elsewhere too and these projects made a material difference to the lives of the people there, the people in the rural areas, people living in small communities who had been scarred by decades of conflict and that is why when I remember the consecutive polls doubt the veracity of those polls but they were done by not Indians certainly by international media organizations where India was viewed very favorably not by one, two or three sections of the society but right across of Afghanistan and if I remember the approval rating was way above 75% and India was number one ahead of the United States despite the fact that the US and the ISAF and the NATO had sunk in so much blood and treasure in Afghanistan, India was always consistently ranked one followed by other countries US, UK, Germany etc and obviously Pakistan didn't rate very high but I'm not moving to that because that is something that the pollsters and the Afghan people need to be asked but what I'm trying to say is that it's not a zero sum game, I think I've been quoted twice in this book but I see thanks to WikiLeaks I've even featured there I remember and I shouldn't be saying this but I remember playing golf in Delhi just when WikiLeaks broke and my colleague who's the deputy high commissioner in London rings me up on my mobile and actually spoils my swing and says Yashu, become famous or infamous you're on WikiLeaks I said oh my god am I going to lose my job he says no you come out smelling like roses and then I got two birdies and a par after that but anyway so what what I'm trying to say is that it's not a zero sum game I mean India and Pakistan I've told you how I've dealt with Pakistan for so many years I have so many friends there I indulge in very heated and not so heated very nice discussions with them on a host of issues including Kashmir but on Afghanistan there is a general agreement that unless the region as a whole works and obviously the two principle countries there apart from Afghanistan which is a subject of our discussion are India and Pakistan and so this whole heart of Asia initiative which was there when I participated right from the beginning and the first few meetings right up to I think Almaty or sorry Almaty last meeting I attended I participated in so many of these meetings where everybody expected that India and Pakistan would talk but obviously stalking in a multilateral context by agreeing to communicate is something else but by actually working together bilaterally and discussing it makes far more sense so I've always been with the opinion that it's not a zero sum game and if we have to for instance the accused of having 64 consulates in Afghanistan I have to say that's absurd you ask the Afghan government how many do we have we have four and they're very sparsely manned and I mean that's sort of stuff that they've been accused of doing they could never have done but anyway my reaction to this book is that it's not too late and I think even now if India and Pakistan are able to talk through Afghanistan on Afghanistan work together not just India Pakistan Afghanistan but all the regional countries it would help immensely but for that and I must add a writer because the bilateral dialogue is stalled basically on the issue of terrorism and that is an extremely important issue just day before our permanent representative in New York has asked for sanctions against funding of terrorist activity in Pakistan now we have always been maintaining that unless you clean the swamp clear the swamp that exists in that region and determined the unitedly confront the menace of terrorism I'm afraid there will be no solution to this problem thank you very comprehensive discussion and remarks particularly highlighting some of the reflections on how this can proceed further at this point I would like to request our panelist Dr. Farzana Sheikh as most of you probably know Dr. Farzana Sheikh she's an outstanding scholar and associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House in London a policy expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan twice Dr. Farzana Sheikh lectured at different universities in the UK, US and Europe and has published widely on the history and politics of Pakistan and its relations with its neighbors her most recent book Making Sense of Pakistan published by Hearst was selected by the Guardian in 2002 as one of the four essential books on Pakistan and Afghanistan for the British Government without further ado I would like to request Dr. Sheikh to have their remarks thank you Arsala and my thanks to the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy here at SOAS for inviting me this evening to help launch this impressive new book by Abinash let me begin by observing how hardly need saying just how prescient this book has turned out to be in fact I asked myself what did Abinash and his publisher Michael Dwyer at Hearst know that we didn't when they so canily decided to time the publication of this book to coincide with President Trump's provocative call for India to do more in Afghanistan triggering a furious response from Pakistan whose Prime Minister declared last week that he saw zero role for India in Afghanistan not surprisingly the storm generated has left everyone talking though it must be said not always with courtesy as was witnessed last week at the UN General Assembly where India and Pakistan traded unseemly insults over each other's alleged complicity in using Afghanistan to ferment terrorism in this climate of unbridled hostility we have never been in greater need for sober voices to step forward and restore calm this thoughtful contribution by Abinash more than rises to the occasion his judicious expose of India's Afghan policy since the late 1970s peopled by a dizzying cast of characters gives us an exceptionally well balanced and carefully calibrated analysis of the pressures facing one of Asia's most important rising powers and while he is acutely sensitive to the structural constraints that have frustrated India's Afghan policy over the last four decades or so he is also admirably well placed to demonstrate the vast room for maneuver and scope for agency enjoyed by Indian policy makers in crafting that policy indeed his access to key players at the highest levels of India's policy making establishment which would make any researcher green with envy leaves us in no doubt that India can and does enjoy considerable freedom of choice when deciding its foreign policy options in Afghanistan even if their outcomes have often been molded in line with the conflicting policy narratives of those Abinash defines as conciliators and partisans into 10 short minutes it is difficult to do justice to this fine study so let me pick up briefly on a couple of points that arise from my reading of Abinash's book the first takes issue entirely in the spirit of constructive criticism over the question of what really drives India's Afghan policy the second is more of an observation about the omission of the role of South Asian regional organizations as potential interlocutors of India's Afghan policy with regard to the first I think it is fair to say that if there is one consistent thread running through this book it is the claim that India's Afghan policy is not driven by the imperative of containing Pakistan rather we are told it is to ensure a balance between Pakistan and Afghanistan what this means Abinash explains is that India's policy in Afghanistan is largely informed by the desire to avoid an imbalance in the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan which is seen to be both destabilizing for the region and in conflict with India's interests the point is well taken but only I fear at the level of abstraction in practice it is to disregard what has been and remains arguably the most important driver of regional politics since 1947 namely the question of the balance between India and Pakistan rooted in Pakistan's historic claim to parity with India I would maintain that it is in fact Pakistan's claim to parity with India that has encouraged it to as it were take charge of Afghanistan a move that Indian policy makers have chosen to misread as an attempt by Pakistan to skew the balance in its favor in its dealings with Afghanistan rather than correcting Pakistan's fundamental imbalance with India I can think of no better example of this than Pakistan's irritation over being consistently twinned with Afghanistan as an aftback rather than paired with India so while there is no denying the complex and many layered quality of India's Afghan policy and Abinash is to be commended for bringing this to our attention it behoves us as scholars to be cautious before treating the historic and dare I say enduring rivalry between India and Pakistan as little more than an ideational variable that policy makers would have us believe plays little or no part in their calculations my second point concerns the role south asian regional organizations as potential interlocutors of India's Afghan policy while Abinash does an excellent job of showing us how Pakistan has effectively silenced India's voice on a post war settlement for Afghanistan by systematically excluding it from discussions at the global level when not marginalizing it from trans regional organizations such as the Istanbul process I did wonder why India had failed to mobilize regional bodies however modest such as the south asian association for regional cooperation otherwise known as SAARC closer to home where it could have expected a hearing from regional partners with a stake in Afghanistan this seems to me to be all the more surprising given that Afghanistan has been a member of SAARC since 2007 and that India as SAARC's dominant member has made no secret of its interest in expanding south asia's energy and trade links with Central Asia through Afghanistan if as Abinash argues India's policy towards Afghanistan is not simply about fighting proxy wars with Pakistan then we need to know why regional initiatives closer to home to break the deadlock over Afghanistan have failed to receive more attention from India's policy makers of course there are hurdles Afghanistan brings to SAARC the baggage of its unresolved dispute with Pakistan over the Durand line about which India is keen to maintain its neutrality while India must be mindful of Pakistan's profound misgivings about India's motives in steering the progress of South Asian regionalism nevertheless it would be curious indeed if Indian policy makers both partisans and conciliators were all together oblivious to the opportunities presented by balancing bilateralism with regionalism in South Asia in conclusion let me say once again that I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to Abinash for this fine study which I am sure is set to take its place as a definitive account in the years to come thank you. Thank you for your remarks Dr. Sheikh. At this point in time I would like to request our other panelist Mr. Sheshank Joshi the senior research fellow at the Royal United Service Institute in London he holds degrees from Cambridge and Harvard and has been known for its wide publications across different journals and media outlets including Asian security issues and journals and strategic studies Asian affairs, Asian survey, Asian survey and the Washington Quarterly. His book Indian power projection ambitions, arms and influence was published as a Rossi Whitehall paper in December 2015 Mr. Sheshank Joshi Thank you very much and thank you to my fellow panelists. First of all let me just say what an outstanding book this is. I recently read a couple of books by practitioners. I read Sheshank Menon's book last year, Choices he was India's national security advisor and foreign secretary and then a few months ago I read Shyam Saran's book How India Sees the World also an account of contemporary Indian foreign policy. They both have very good sections on their respective perspectives as practitioners engaging with Menon's case particularly China in Saran's case Nepal and China as well but really in the corpus of writing on Indian foreign policy in the last several years I think a book like this really stands out for me because of its rigor in its depth and it's something that you very rarely see in discussions of a subject like this. There's volumes written on India and Afghanistan but of course very little of it rises to the level of scholarship like this and I think the reason for that is that Avinash has done the hard work of interviewing a very wide range of people whether voluntarily or in the High Commissioner's case involuntarily from courtesy of Julian Assange in a really comprehensive and impressive way. Not only that I think mining a range of sources beyond the diplomatic that I'll get on to in a second that I think is crucial to understanding India's regional diplomacy as well. So congratulations Avinash. I think this is an absolutely outstanding book on contemporary Indian foreign policy that stands head and shoulders above a lot else that's been written on this. Just a few scattered thoughts since my fellow panellists have said most of the substantive things that need to be said. First of all on this dominating thematic framework of partisans versus conciliators I think it's really interesting because it gets to a point about foreign policy for all countries not just for India in Afghanistan but for any country orienting its foreign policy particularly in a contentious you know conflictual state where political factions are rising and falling where there is no sort of guarantee that the party in charge today will be in charge in a stable predictable way in five years time. This fundamental dilemma is always there. Do you pick friends, pick winners and back them to the hilt or do you hedge your bets and how do you balance those two competing priorities and of course it's a spectrum but this is a really sort of perennial problem in foreign policy faced by all states operating in environments like this. Now he's very even handed about the way he adjudicates this debate between these factions or these groupings in Indian foreign policy but the way I read it and he'll correct me if I've misread this is that the theme seems to be that Indian efforts to pick winners in Afghanistan has repeatedly seen it get burnt and emerge with its fingers scathed and he talks about the drivers of who comes out on top in these Indian debates and he's outlined that as being Afghan domestic politics, the international political environment and this balance between Afghanistan and Pakistan not wishing actually not wishing to go all out on containing Pakistan but I think the way I saw it, those efforts to pick winners when the partisans were on top, when the people who said here are our friends in Afghanistan here is who we must support, here's who we must back to the hilt, whenever India's done that it's been burned first of all by political changes domestically in Kabul over which it had very little control sometimes in very dramatic and violent fashion like the fall of Najibullah by international political changes, changes in the international environment where the entire international approach to the conflict has changed as it did in the 2000s when the international community decided actually reconciliation with Taliban and reintegration at the ground level with Taliban foot soldiers and reconciliation at the higher level as the way to go and that was a change over which India was perhaps sort of caught in a reactive situation but I think third most of all, most importantly of all, the reason that partisans ship as the way Avinash has framed it has got India burned is because it hasn't had the means to ensure the survival of its allies or friends and that's not unique to India, that is a problem that the great powers have had as well but it's certainly a problem that India has had, it's ultimately a problem of limited capability and I think as he shows that he delves into some interesting areas of history with a sort of not revisionist accounts but certainly new accounts, what I found very interesting was his argument that in the 90s, a period we associate with India extending its support for anti-Taliban forces with the northern backing the Northern Alliance alongside Iran and Russia Avinash argues that there was no guarantee of India's sustained military support to Masoud, to Avinash Masoud the panchiri leader in the north, had not happened, he shows how the Uzbeks were wavering and expelled Northern Alliance leaders from their soil he shows that Indian capabilities at this point were actually very very small were very limited in their ability to dramatically change the situation on the ground, he quotes Lalit Mansing, a former Indian Foreign Secretary is saying India by itself cannot play a major role in the security situation of Afghanistan, a fact primarily determined by geography, by supply lines, by the fact that it requires the acquiescence of either the Central Asian states or Iran to be able to supply Afghan friends and allies with substantial amounts of support I think this is very interesting in the contemporary context because of course India now faces a situation where its allies from the 1990s, Iran and Russia have dramatically different positions in Afghanistan than they did in a way that again constrains India's ability to project power and force into Afghanistan notwithstanding the very substantial aid and development footprint that was outlined earlier in a meaningful way, Iran has engaged increasingly with Afghan Taliban leaders as it always did but now does so in a much more far reaching strategic way, hedging its own bets supporting key Taliban factions as the organization has done over the years, Russia of course has also now allegedly armed some factions of the Taliban or at the very least engaged with factions in a more positive open way, again not only with an eye on pushing back against the US presence but also hedging its own bets and so India's own ability to intervene and to play a substantial security role in the way that it did to convey lethal assistance over Iranian ground and airspace has changed and I think that question of pragmatist versus conciliators is shaped by this limited capacity and this limited risk tolerance at that level and again we saw this two days ago with India's defence secretary two or three days ago the new Indian defence minister in her meeting with Secretary James Mattis the US Secretary of Defence categorically ruling out any Indian boots on the ground and signals that even India's posture on lethal assistance would be very very cautious. The second point on this subject of partisans versus conciliators is I'd be really interested in drawing you out on where you stand on this because I said a little bit on the partisans but on the conciliators you're actually also quite harsh on a lot of their ability to successfully juggle these various balls in handling their links with different Afghan factions and I think you have a section where you say the conciliators engage with all approach yielded limited results at best and confused many in alienated some Afghans at worst. Now the High Commissioner mentioned development assistance and of course in your book you talk a little bit about how the geography of India's development assistance concentrated certainly one period in Pashtun areas managed to alienate and provoke many of India's traditional friends in northern communities and you feel sympathetic for Indians trying to juggle that relationship at this point with Hamid Karzai because you wonder how they could have handled that much better. This was the period at which they were trying to branch out, they were trying to engage with Hamid Karzai in the early 2000s despite a great deal of skepticism from the partisans and we must maintain awaiting a support for our traditional friends in the sort of in northern communities and even in that period if the conciliators couldn't manage it then when did they manage it so I guess what I'm asking is in your view who got it right who successfully balanced it because you're on the fence and it's a good scholar you're also perhaps right to be but we flush you out here and tell us when was it at its most successful throughout this because I'm really interested. Just a final point in the last couple of minutes I have. I think one of the great things about this book is it gives due weight to what has been called the missing dimension in international history which is intelligence and this is a very difficult subject for any scholar to work on given the lack of archives, the difficulty of sourcing, the sensitivity of these issues but it would be very very difficult to write a book on this issue without due weight to intelligence just as you could not write a meaningful history of international involvement in Afghanistan in the 80s without intelligence dimension you know the books like Steve Coles, Ghost Wars and others they couldn't be written without due attention to what the CIA and other organizations were doing similarly I don't think you could write a book like this without due attention to what the Indian intelligence perspective was very very difficult to do but I think you've tried your very best to do it. Now this is interesting not only historically in terms of India's involvement with Baloch and Pashtun separatists on which you give I think a very rigorous but fair-minded and sensitive appraisal but also contemporary developments. You talk about India's ramping up support for was it Baloch groups after during the Kargil period under Narayanan, MK Narayanan's India's National Security Advisor? It was basically in Afghanistan when they really started backing all the different factions within the Northern Alliance fold and then however it transpired this was aimed towards kind of drawing some balance during the Kargil war when you know sure with the Baloch yes I mean there has been different points in time and that support has been given allegedly. And you draw that very well over the full period. Again after the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008 Avinash talks about how MK Narayanan reached out to Amrullah Saleh at that time the Indian Afghan intelligence chief to assess possibilities of jointly targeting militant infrastructure in Pakistan. And there's a whole chapter I think which gives a really rigorous and as I say sensitive not at all sensationalist account of India's handling of these issues and particularly how to handle Pashtun and Baloch communities including by drawing upon diaspora communities drawing on relationships with the Afghan government and others. This is a profoundly difficult subject because it's so shrouded in a morass of national propaganda and wild claims. But I think you've done a really good job of teasing this out including interviews with people who served on India's Joint Intelligence Committee, Indian intelligence officials who held senior roles in the Afghan portfolio. And I think that that's really important both in giving us a more nuanced accurate account beyond the wild 64 consulates getting up to all kinds of nonsense on the one hand. And of course on the other hand this view that in certain circles that India is whiter than white and is a pacifist state would never dream of doing anything coercive in the neighborhood. And of course that is also not an accurate and balanced portrayal. So you've done a really good job of that. And that allows you to take a pragmatic appraisal of the way in which India's relationship to the Taliban itself evolved after 2010. And despite the rhetoric which I think at times did get rather sanctimonious about how there are no good or bad Taliban and the West doesn't understand this and other Western countries don't get this. But actually I think there's a very interesting detailed exposition of India's own cautious and contentious within Delhi outreach to different Taliban factions after 2010 and the impact that had. And I just wonder maybe you could say for us at the end, I'll wrap up now, on how you think India will handle this issue. Because clearly the US policy that Faizana mentioned has come with an emphasis. The US still seeks a diplomatic and a political solution. And I wonder if you think how this will actually translate into India pressing for its own concerns. What will be its particular red lines and national interest as that issue comes back to the fore again after a period in which it's been greatly subsided. Thank you. Thank you very much.