ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Indian development activities in Afghanistan since 2002. It highlights how increased Indian engagement could help Afghanistan address major economic, political, and security challenges during its decade of transformation. The Soviet intervention, a failed attempt to impose communism, left more than a million dead and created 5 million Afghan refugees, who chiefly fled to neighbouring countries. Pakistan's push for a conservative Taliban regime in Afghanistan also had broad and disastrous effects, playing a key role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, among other events. According to the World Bank, actual aid to Afghanistan in 2010-2011 was about USD 16 billion, about the size of the nominal gross domestic product (GDP). India has played an active role in the reconstruction since 2002. So far it has pledged assistance worth about USD 2 billion, with projects covering the entire country mainly in areas of road construction, power transmission lines, hydroelectricity, agriculture, telecommunications, education, health, and capacity building.
