New Delhi,
As India and China seek to move past the shadow of controversies and mistrust, could the two countries join hands in a project together in war-torn Afghanistan?

Sources said the idea was discussed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping’s informal summit meeting in Wuhan. Sources suggested that in confidence-building measures discussed during the one-on-one and delegation-level talks to bridge bilateral trust deficit, India and China agreed to look at possibility of joint development projects in Afghanistan.

While there was no official announcement, the MEA formal statement said, “Prime Minister Modi and President Xi underlined that as two major countries, India and China have wider and overlapping regional and global interests. They agreed on their need to strengthen strategic communication through greater consultation on all matters of common interest.”

However, this is not the first-of-its-kind proposal with similar ideas floated in the past too. Reports of such cooperation had surfaced during former National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon’s visit to China in 2010. During his meetings with then Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, both sides reportedly discussed economic cooperation in third countries, including in Afghanistan. “We talked about the possibility of cooperating in certain subjects in other countries, whether three-party or four-party collaborative projects in the economic field as well,” Yang was quoted as saying in a media interaction post-talks.

However, no project has taken off so far even as India, with its pledged assistance of $2 billion, has built dams, roads, stadium and the new parliament building among other projects in Afghanistan.

China too has heavily invested today in exploring natural resources, connectivity projects in Af-Pak (Afghan-Pakistan) region and playing a role in talks with the Taliban. China also recently proposed jointly developing railway network in Nepal, with Indian top sources saying Delhi wants to keep infrastructure projects in the Himalayan country simply bilateral for now.

While Sino-Indian collaboration in Afghanistan may raise eyebrows of China’s all-weather friend Pakistan, Beijing is also concerned about extremism and terrorism fanning out of Af-Pak region. PM Modi and President Xi committed cooperation on counter-terrorism, said Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale.