NEW DELHI — Afghanistan and India, two nations united in their suspicion of Pakistan, are set to forge closer ties Tuesday as Hamid Karzai visits New Delhi during a highly unstable time in South Asia.
The Afghan president, making his second trip to the Indian capital this year, will meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against a backdrop of shifting relations in the war-wracked and nuclear-armed region.
Some analysts in India predict that Karzai will elevate the role of India in stabilising his violence-torn country as he eyes a drawdown of US-led troops by 2014 after more than a decade of fighting.
They argue that Karzai is losing patience with Pakistan, whom he accuses of funding militant groups, and is unable to count on the United States.
"Karzai's visit comes at a crucial juncture to endorse India's involvement in Afghanistan," Saeed Naqvi from the Observer Research Foundation think-tank told AFP.
"Karzai is coming to India to confer on India the tag 'reliable ally'... India will get the right to play a more pronounced role (in Afghanistan) after Karzai's visit."
The Indian Express newspaper reported on Sunday that the Afghan leader would sign a "strategic partnership" agreement with Singh, the first such pact with any country in the world.
The proposed alliance, which foreign ministry officials declined to confirm, was said to include an Indian commitment to increase its training of Afghan security forces, including the police.
Indian involvement in Afghanistan is extremely sensitive because of the delicate and often deadly power games in South Asia.
New Delhi, fearful of the return of an Islamist regime in Kabul, has ploughed billions of dollars of aid into the country to gain influence -- raising suspicion in Pakistan which views Afghanistan as its backyard.
But anger in Kabul about the recent death of former president and peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani -- killed by a Pakistani citizen, according to Karzai's office -- is seen as pushing Afghanistan further into India's orbit.
"After all the destruction and misery, the double-game towards Afghanistan and the use of terrorism as an excuse still continues," Karzai said of Pakistan on Monday evening before leaving for his two-day trip to New Delhi.
Indian political analyst Subhash Agrawal, head of India Focus, a private think-tank, said the visit was "very, very significant in light of Afghanistan accusing Pakistan of being involved in the killing of Rabbani."
"This visit creates a more of a natural window for India to have a sustainable role in Afghanistan post-2014," Agrawal told AFP.
Some analysts fear, however, that a greater role for India would lead to a more intense and dangerous "proxy war" between it and nuclear-armed Pakistan on Afghan territory, with unpredictable consequences.
New Delhi has repeatedly accused Pakistan of links to groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network that have carried out attacks in Afghanistan on Indian targets, including the embassy in Kabul.
Any change in the Afghan-Indian dynamic also comes amid a sharp deterioration in ties between Pakistan and Washington, the fourth major player in the region's geopolitics.
The US has also accused Islamabad of covertly funding militant groups in Afghanistan, while the killing of Osama bin Laden by US troops on Pakistani territory in May also hit relations.
"Everything is moving rather quickly and the situation in Kabul is very fluid, but I wouldn't say it is necessarily worse than six months ago," a senior Indian foreign ministry official told AFP.
"The current debate between the US and Pakistan is still a developing situation, and we'll have to see how it pans out.
"These links (between the Pakistani state and terror networks) are now being exposed and the US has taken on board the grimness of the situation."
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