CEO: India always proves to be a reluctant partner for Afghanistan

The Chief of Executive Officer (CEO) Abdullah Abdullah at the opening ceremony of Indira Gandhi emergency treatment center and clinic for children said that India has always assisted Afghanistan with needed support.

The Indian country has recently constructed a clinic with the most modern facilities in Kabul, worth $ 5 million.

“India has already proved its friendship to us because of its full assistances to our community,” CEO, Abdullah Abdullah said.

India remains an integral part of Afghanistan’s steady progress in institutionalizing peace, pluralism, and prosperity.

Ties between Afghanistan and India go beyond the traditionally strong relations at the government level.

Since time immemorial, the peoples of Afghanistan and India have interacted with each other through trade and commerce, peacefully coexisting on the basis of their shared cultural values and commonalities.

This history has become the foundation of deep mutual trust. Public opinion polls in Afghanistan confirm this, as well as the sentiment Afghans share about feeling at home whenever they visit India.

The Minister of Public Health is also said to consider the construction of this clinic effective for the suffered Afghan children and it is scheduled that a number of Afghan doctors to be trained by Indian doctors in various parts.

In the meantime, Indian ambassador to Afghanistan also commits over the continuation of assistance process of his country in the future.

India’s well-targeted aid programs include infrastructure development, institutional capacity building, small development projects, as well as food security assistance in the form of ongoing deliveries of wheat to Afghanistan.

Since 2001, more than 10,000 Afghan students have studied in India on ICCR scholarships, with some 7,000 returning home armed with an education and technical skills, which they are using to drive Afghanistan’s stabilization and development.

Meanwhile, many mid-career officers in the Afghan government have benefited from the technical capacity building programs of ITEC and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, while some 8,000 Afghan students are pursuing self-financed degrees in different fields across India.

And India’s signature infrastructure projects – the building of the Afghan parliament in Kabul and the Salma Dam in Herat – are nearing completion.

Afghanistan and India have a full agenda of shared objectives to execute. The framework, within which bilateral aid programs and projects should be implemented, is the Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which Afghanistan signed with India in 2011. Over the long run, the multi-dimensional Indo-Afghan relationship will only grow, in line with the two nations’ historic ties and converging interests, which they share with China and Russia.