Pakistan’s concerns on India in Afghanistan real: US experts

[LahoreEstate]

WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s concerns over Indian involvement in Afghanistan are “real” and now being taken “more seriously” by Washington, top US experts told a Congressional hearing.

Milton A Bearden, former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad, told the Foreign Relations Committee that the US must understood what regional countries were doing in Afghanistan in order to come up with a “policy that made sense for Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

“India is becoming involved in Afghanistan to an extent that the Pakistanis consider Afghanistan as developing into an Indian garrison.“This is not hysteria. This is a real concern. Pakistan has fought three very real wars,” he told the hearing, chaired by Senator John Kerry on “Afghanistan’s Impact on Pakistan.”

Bearden, who said he was not making accusation against any country, remarked that New Delhi was deeply entrenched in Afghanistan.He said: “Though Pakistani concerns over Indian involvement in Afghanistan have in the past been dismissed by American officials as overwrought, they are nonetheless real, and it is correct that these concerns are being taken more seriously now by the United States.”

“Whatever we do, whatever measures we take, will affect Pakistan as the central element in this drama. So, without understanding what Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and India are doing in the region, particularly in Afghanistan, I don’t think we can come up with a policy that makes sense for Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

Steve Coll, head of the New American Foundation, said the Pakistani security services and their leaders had seen an Indian hand in Kabul since the days of the Soviet invasion.“And I’m not suggesting that it’s entirely illusory, as Milt described. India continues to invest deeply in Afghanistan today,” he said.

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