As Afghanistan warmed up to India in the late 1940s, strains with Pakistan began to emerge

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29-05-2025

In November 1949, India's ambassador to Afghanistan sent a letter to the foreign secretary, celebrating the positive shifts in the chilly relations between the two nations.
'As you are aware, the Indian consulates both at Kandahar and Jalalabad have started functioning,' Ambassador Rup Chand wrote. 'I have received reports from the respective Vice-Consuls and it is apparent that the prestige of India has gone high in the eyes of Afghans.'
The thaw in the relations began after India became free. Until then, many Afghans had viewed India with hostility owing to the participation of British-Indian forces in the three Anglo-Afghan Wars. In the second of these conflicts, lasting from 1878 to 1880, Afghanistan lost control of the Khyber Pass and many Pashtun areas, which were handed to undivided India.
India's independence and partition changed two things. It dehyphenated India from Britain. And it transferred the areas seized in the Second Anglo-Afghan War from India to Pakistan, changing the object of Afghans' animosity.
So bitter were Afghans over Pakistan's control of the North West Frontier Province, which is dominated by Pathans, that they tried to keep the country out of the United Nations.
'Afghanistan cast the only vote against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations and Pakistan's leaders are inclined to couple this unfriendly act with Russia's coldness,' The New York Times reported on October 13, 1947. 'Afghanistan also has been bold in advancing her claim to Northwest frontier territories on the ground that Pathans inhabiting these areas on Afghanistan's border are racial brothers of Afghans.'
India's ambassador in Kabul told the vice-consuls in Jalalabad and Kandahar, Narendra Nath and Ram Chand Kalra, to closely monitor Afghanistan's ambitions for the North West Frontier Province. Following the direction, both diplomats dispatched regular reports covering socio-economic and political issues, including the ways Afghans perceived India and Indians.
American involvement
To read their despatches today is to see the historic roots of some of the contemporary events in South Asia. In his letters, for instance, Kalra observed the growing American interest in Afghanistan.
Kandahar at the time had a small American community, consisting mainly of employees of the civil engineering company Morrison-Knudsen. 'They are making roads, dams and other public works,' Kalra wrote. 'This is not exactly known on what terms they are working. It is said they charge a certain percentage over and above the actual expenditure and then the Afghan Government shares a certain portion of the net profit which the company gets in the long run.'
Kalra picked up on a possible link between the American activities in Afghanistan and the Cold War. 'There is a fairly good deal of rumour going round that the object of the Americans is not just commercial but they have political ends in view, i.e. the Americans want to know the strategic points from the military point of view which should stand them in good stead in the event of war with Russia,' he wrote. 'Some go to the length of saying that U.S.A. are financing the Afghan Government for these projects and that there is some understanding on the part of U.S.A. of advancing Afghanistan some loan.'
Kalra said it was 'difficult to get at the truth but one thing is certain that the Americans want to increase their influence in Afghanistan vis-a-vis the other countries, especially their greatest rival, Russia'.
Kalra's reports suggested that Americans had a friendly attitude towards Indians. They seemed to be genuinely happy, he said, when Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru went on his first visit to the United States.
Trade barrier
Not just the Americans, in Kalra's telling, Afghans too were pleased with Indians. When independent India's first diplomatic mission opened in Kandahar, locals welcomed it. 'The Afghans expressed great pleasure on the opening of our Consulate when they came to attend the party given on the 1st instant,' he wrote in an October 1949 report. 'The function was well attended. The Americans with their ladies added to the elegance of the show.'
In the same report, Kalra said Afghans had hopes from India. 'While the top Government officials eulogise the Indian Government and its officers, the middle class is looking to India for rendering them some good in the field of trade whereby the living conditions of Afghan masses would be ameliorated.'
One of the major obstacles to increased trade between the two countries was Pakistan. The military commander of Kandahar told Kalra that Pakistan was not letting Afghan traders send goods to India through its territory. 'The smoothness of trade prevailing in the pre-partition days has been disturbed,' Kalra wrote. 'The difficulties according to some of the traders, I have seen, are manifold. In the first place they have to spend time and money in getting a permit from Karachi.'
Next, the authorities in Karachi tried to convince Afghans to sell their products to Pakistani middlemen, who wanted to monopolise trade from Afghanistan to India. 'The other main difficulty is that the consignments between Afghanistan and India in the names of Hindu traders are often tampered with on the way and the latter have to get them booked in the name of other fictitious traders,' Kalra wrote.
Trade between the countries was also affected by the devaluation of the Indian rupee. Pakistan, which refused to do the same to its currency, created what Kalra called 'anxieties' and 'misunderstandings' through the rumour mill in Kandahar. 'The reported devaluation of Indian currency along with the anti-India propaganda gave impetus to trading with Pakistan,' Kalra said, adding however that this was a temporary phenomenon. A month after India devalued the rupee, Afghanistan followed suit and trade once again picked up.
Secessionist sentiment
Under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, Afghanistan became a supporter of the right to self-determination of Pashtun people. When Pakistan put Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who had made the demand for Pashtunistan, under house arrest, there were protests in parts of Afghanistan.
Kalra kept track of rallies and statements from Afghan leaders in support of the self-determination movement. 'The Pashtunistan issue continues to dominate the political sphere and the movement had made further headway in the fortnight under report,' he wrote. 'A big Jirga of Khanzadgan, Safi and Shinwaris was held at Sheikh Baba Ziarat, in which Mohd. Shueb Jan, after hoisting the Pashtun national flag, delivered a speech on the unscrupulous treatment of Pakistan and their determination to achieve liberation from their domination at all costs.'
This was the time Pakistan began accusing the Indian government of fanning the demand for Pashtunistan. While the correspondence between Indian diplomats in Afghanistan in 1949 seems to suggest that New Delhi was merely observing the situation, it is true that there was support for the cause among ordinary Pashtuns in India.
'The Pathans of Ahmedabad in India held a meeting under Maulana Mohd. Akbar in which all the participants expressed their readiness to do their utmost for the attainment of Azad Pashtunistan,' Kalra wrote in a December 1949 report. 'They also decided to request all the other countries to recognise Azad Pashtunistan. This progress has naturally perturbed the Pakistani authorities.'
A similar meeting was held by Indian Pashtuns at the historic Fatehpuri Mosque in Old Delhi, where it was decided to garner support for the Pashtunistan movement.
Pakistan used the news of these gatherings to step up claims that India was actively supporting the Pashtunistan movement. In its information campaign, a despatch says, Pakistan also spread the rumour that an official named Meher Chand was recruiting for the Indian Army in Afghanistan's border areas with the North West Frontier Province. 'It appears Pakistan will now step up its anti Indo-Afghan propaganda drive in an attempt to turn the Muslim world against Afghanistan for having this friendship with India,' Kalra wrote.
At this tense moment, Indian diplomats in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kabul looked for signs of military build-ups to see whether Afghanistan would use force to settle the Pashtunistan question. The situation was particularly tense in January 1950 when Afghanistan and Pakistan exchanged strong words. 'Mutual recrimination has almost become an obsession, each calling the other not only undemocratic but also unislamic,' Kalra wrote.
The vice consul added that 'while Pakistan's mainstay is their criticism of Afghans' economic structure and autocratic rule, the Afghans find fault with Pakistan's policy of putting several thousand innocent Pashtuns in jail for their only fault of demanding independent Pashtunistan. In this cold war, there is naturally an influx of wrong and fabricated news items.'
In 1950, Afghanistan was not really in a position to wage a war against Pakistan. So instead it gave moral support to the Pashtunistan cause, with regular radio broadcasts in Pashto, Urdu and Dari calling for self-determination for those living east of the Khyber Pass.
'Some little hope for reconciliation, which Pakistan cherished on grounds of religion, is gone and the gulf has grown too wide to be easily bridged,' Kalra said. He added that Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan's statement that the country 'would not surrender an inch of land east of the Durrand line,' did not go down well in Afghanistan.
Friendship treaty
While the ties between Kabul and Karachi were in a freefall, Afghanistan's relationship with India continued to thrive. On January 4, 1950, the two signed a five-year friendship treaty, mutually recognising each other's independence, agreeing to build cultural relations, and furthering cooperation in industry and agriculture.
'The news was received by the Afghan masses with joy and enthusiasm, but has aroused jealousy and suspicion in Pakistani circles,' Kalra wrote.
Soon after the treaty was signed, a radio telegraph service between India and Afghanistan became operational, with their ministers of communication exchanging messages.
A few weeks later, when India became a republic on January 26, 1950, Afghanistan welcomed the event, with Prime Minister Shah Mahmud Khan sending a congratulatory telegram to Nehru and Kabul Radio broadcasting a special programme. The next day, a celebration was held in Kandahar for the upper classes and important traders. 'Sentiments of pleasure were expressed by one and all on the auspicious occasion,' Kalra observed.
A daily newspaper, Talu-i-Afghan, marked the event with a front page editorial headlined 'India Becomes Republic' that read: 'We have sanguine hopes that the new constitution, which is based on equality and unity will give 32 crores of people of all religions- Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian etc., equal rights, and as is clear from the lives of their leaders, everyone will have rights of all kinds of freedom.'
The editorial said that 'India has the right type of leaders like Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Abdul Kalam Azad, Sardar Patel and others, it has also vast resources and in a short span of its independent life it has succeeded in creating friendly relations with all the Islamic countries of the East'.
These sentiments guided the India-Afghanistan relationship, keeping them strong and friendly, until the 1970s, when Afghanistan became a major Cold War flashpoint between the United States and the Soviet Union.