Making the water boil in Afghanistan, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Making the water boil in Afghanistan

By Praveen Swami

Islamabad, for its part, backed not a few plots of its own. Its covert services cultivated Islamists exiled by the Daud government, using religion to combat Pashtun nationalism. In July 1975, the ISI financed an attempted coup led by the future mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Even the 1992 mujahideen capture of Kabul did not fundamentally alter India’s strategic objectives in Afghanistan. Internal fighting between Hekmatyar and other mujahideen groups soon led to a situation where New Delhi was backing one or the other faction which found itself in opposition to Pakistan.

It was only with the rise of the Taliban that India, for the first time in the history of Afghanistan, found itself supporting an opposition group — the Northern Alliance led by Ahmad Shah Massoud. In 1996-1997, RAW initiated negotiations for the use of the Farkhor military airbase, 130 kilometres south-east of Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe. India operated a small military hospital at Farkhor but also used the base to ship high-altitude warfare supplies to the Northern Alliance, service the group’s Soviet Union-built MI-17 and MI-38 helicopters, and execute electronic intelligence-gathering operations.

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