Pakistan wants "a puppet state in Kabul, a subservient state," said Muradian, the foreign ministry adviser. "India wants a stable, pluralistic Afghanistan."
.....
Take the three Indian doctors working in the dusty northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, dispensing prescriptions and performing surgeries in a faded colonial-era hospital that somehow survived the years of fighting.
Every morning, clusters of women in blue burqas gather in the narrow hallway outside the clinic, while men wait in the parking lot. They are the poorest people in one of the world's poorest countries: widows, the unemployed, the elderly. They measure the distance to the clinic by the cost of getting there and a 10-cent bus ride is a painful investment.
About 150 arrive every day for free care and medicine.
An old man named Myagul he has only one name, and didn't know his age had been coughing badly, he said, and growing dizzy when he stood up. The doctors prescribed blood pressure medicine and cough syrup. He'd already been to a handful of doctors, but they had all asked for fees he couldn't afford.
But on a warm Afghan morning, the old man with the greasy beard and the torn blazer left the clinic clutching a handful of medicines, weary but pleased.
"Finally it was these Indians who helped."
