During a trip to India on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called on the world’s most populous democracy to bolster its training of Afghanistan’s army and police. Training those Afghan forces is a crucial step to (mostly) extracting the U.S. from the decade-long war. But so is getting Pakistan to step up on a range of issues, from re-opening trucking lanes for resupplying the war to cracking down on terrorism to brokering an accord with the Afghan Taliban.
“We welcome [India's] playing a more active role in Afghanistan, a more active political and economic role,” an anonymous Defense Department official traveling with Panetta told reporters in India. The Wall Street Journalspeculated that the move “may be designed to tweak Pakistan.”That might be an understatement. “It will add to [Pakistan's] underlying fear that they may be sandwiched by India and an Indian proxy,” says Shuja Nawaz, a South Asia scholar at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “Not a good way of getting them to help with the Afghan transition.”
Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Capt. John Kirby, a top Defense Department spokesman, said that Panetta was expressing his “fervent hope” that the Indians will “continue to stay engaged in the region and in particular in helping Afghanistan as it moves forward.” Afghanistan wasn’t the focus of Panetta’s visit, Kirby added: “He’s in India to thank them for their efforts at regional leadership and to look for ways to deepen our defense cooperation with India and our relationship with India.” More
