Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
on which it was safe to travel, even as malaria was on the point of eradication through es-
timable health and development programs. Toward the end of this period, I hitchhiked and
rode local buses across Afghanistan, never felt threatened, and was able to send topics and
clothes back home through functioning post offices. There was, too, a strong Afghan na-
tional identity distinct from that of Iran or Pakistan or the Soviet Union. A fragile webwork
of tribes it might have been, but it was also developing as more than just a buffer state.
Pushtunistan might be a reality, but as in the way of dual citizenship, so very definitely is
Afghanistan. Blame for the three coup d'états in Kabul in the 1970s that led to the coun-
try's seemingly never-ending agony of violence rests as much with a great and contiguous
power, the Soviet Union, as with the Afghans. As part of a process to firmly secure the
country within its sphere of influence, the Soviets unwittingly destabilized Afghan polit-
ics, which led to their December 1979 invasion. For Afghanistan, as a geographical buf-
fer between the Iranian plateau, the Central Asian steppes, and the Indian Subcontinent, is
breathtakingly strategic, and thus has been coveted by not just Russians, but also by Irani-
ans and Pakistanis, even as Indian policymakers have been obsessed with it.
An Afghanistan that falls under Taliban sway threatens to create a succession of radical-
ized Islamic societies from the Indian-Pakistani border to Central Asia. This would be, in
effect, a Greater Pakistan, giving Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate the abil-
ity to create a clandestine empire composed of the likes of Jallaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, and Lashkar-e-Taiba: able to confront India in the manner that Hezbollah and
Hamas confront Israel. Conversely, an Afghanistan at peace and governed more or less lib-
erally from Kabul would give New Delhi the ability to extricate itself from its historical
nemesis on its northwestern frontier, as well as to challenge Pakistan on both its western
and eastern borders. That is why during the 1980s India supported the Soviet puppet re-
gime in Kabul of Mohammed Najibullah, which was secular and even liberal compared
with some of the pro-Pakistani Islamist mujahidin trying to topple it: for the same reason
India now supports Hamid Karzai's Kabul government.
A stable and reasonably moderate Afghanistan becomes truly the hub of not just south-
ern Central Asia, but of Eurasia in general. Mackinder's Heartland exists in terms of the
“convergence” of interests of Russia, China, India, and Iran in favor of transport cor-
ridors through Central Asia. And the most powerful drivers of Eurasian trade routes are
the Chinese and Indian economies. Estimates for overland Indian trade across Central Asia
to European and Middle Eastern markets foresee a growth of over $100 billion annually.
It is only because Afghanistan remains at war that New Delhi is not connected by trucks,
trains, and trans-Caspian ships to Istanbul and Tbilisi; or to Almaty and Tashkent by road
and rail. Nevertheless, India has contributed significantly to building Afghanistan's road
network, along with Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Indian-funded Zaranj-Delaram highway
