India, China to jointly train Afghan diplomats

India and China will jointly train Afghan diplomats. The decision follows Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at an informal summit in Wuhan on April 27-28, where the two sides decided to explore joint projects in Afghanistan.
Economic Times has learnt that a small batch of Afghan diplomats will be initially trained in China, followed by their training in India. China has in the past joined hands with the US to train Afghan diplomats.
The decision to jointly train Afghan diplomats is part of joint projects that India and China hope to undertake in the landlocked and war-ravaged Afghanistan. The Chinese ambassador to India recently referred to jointly undertaking capacity-building projects for Afghanistan.
India has the experience of training Afghan officials. It has trained Afghan civil servants and army officers over the past decade.
Beginning with this joint capacity building project, Delhi and Beijing hope to undertake joint projects in Afghanistan in health, education and food security. Delhi has been providing support in healthcare and education to Afghans for several years. Since last year, Delhi has been supplying wheat to Afghanistan through the Chabahar Port in Iran.
Any Sino-Indo project through Afghanistan to connect Iran would be on the agenda only after the two sides kick-start development projects, as per people familiar with the matter. However, the proposed connectivity project is unlikely to be included in China’s Belt & Road Initiative due to India’s reservations about the mega project that seeks to connect Asia’s biggest country with rest of the continent, Africa and Europe.
Earlier, India and China have twice held bilateral dialogues on the Afghan situation. Both sides are also part of several multilateral formats on Afghanistan. India and the US have undertaken joint projects in Afghanistan and last year co-hosted an entrepreneurship meet here.
India and Russia will also launch a joint project in Afghanistan. While this will be first Sino-Indo joint initiative in a third country in South Asia, the two sides have been involved in joint hydrocarbon projects in Sudan, Syria and Colombia.