The US administration has offered India a greater role in the development of infrastructure, economy and security apparatus in Afghanistan, acknowledging the potential role New Delhi can play, a top Indian official has said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghanistan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on October 24, 2017. (Mohd Zakir/HT Photo)
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According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, all past hurdles imposed by the US at the behest of Pakistan against India playing a significant role in Afghanistan’s rebuilding have been removed and New Delhi has the complete support of Washington.
The move also has the support of Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah, he added.
New Delhi is receptive, but watching the evolution of the current phase of US-Pakistan relations closely, the official said.
US President Donald Trump spoke of the potential role India could play in Afghanistan in his August 21 speech at Fort Myer.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoed this in his October 18 Washington speech.
In the past month, US Defence Secretary James Mattis and Tillerson have visited both New Delhi and Kabul, and Ghani and Abdullah have been in New Delhi, and India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, the point man of the Modi government’s Afghan policy, has gone to Kabul.
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On October 24, Tillerson also delivered a tough message to Pakistan on eradicating safe havens for terror groups. During this time, the three sides discussed the pros and cons of bringing the Taliban on the negotiating table and the need to remove the strategic depth provided to this fundamentalist group by Pakistan.
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On October 24, Tillerson also delivered a tough message to Pakistan on eradicating safe havens for terror groups. During this time, the three sides discussed the pros and cons of bringing the Taliban on the negotiating table and the need to remove the strategic depth provided to this fundamentalist group by Pakistan.
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There have been detailed conversations between Doval, Afghan NSA Hanif Atmar, Ghani, Abdullah, Mattis and Tillerson on the timing of the talks while continuing to put military pressure on Taliban. While New Delhi has made it clear that it will not send troops to Kabul, it will support building of capability and muscle of the Afghan army and police. India will also increase connectivity within Afghanistan through roads, inland ports and telecommunication services, even in areas where it was previously prevented from doing so due to objections from Islamabad.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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