Tag: India In Afghanistan

Taliban In Afghanistan: India’s Options

By Dr. Krishnendra Meena

Now that the Taliban has been declared winner in Afghanistan and its elected President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on August 15, 2021 without putting up a fight, the world, especially those in the region are assessing the implications of Taliban rule. The departure of United States Armed forces has been the catalyst for the series of events and emerging geopolitical shifts that will necessitate new thinking in Indian Foreign policy.

US entered Afghanistan to eliminate the Al Qaeda network and its Taliban supporters who were responsible for the attacks on the United States soil. The leader of Al Qaeda responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been eliminated but the Al Qaeda network survives as obviously do the Taliban. The United States may still have some influence on the new Taliban, but for India the political terrain is tectonically different.

India is invested heavily in Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. In terms of geopolitics in South Asia, Afghanistan accords a vantage point for India vis-à-vis Pakistan, it’s arch-rival. Matters are complicated further with the realization that China with its financial muscle and intention to expand the Belt and Road Initiative will find a stronghold in Afghanistan. Beijing made overtures to the Taliban leadership and met them in Qatar recently. With strong China-Pakistan relationship, India’s situation in the region becomes precarious as it may not have any leverage on its Western expanse.

India’s western borders have remained a concern historically and it expends a lot of energy and investment to consolidate and remain visible in the region. With its immediate neighbour Pakistan, not an ideal one, New Delhi looks towards Afghanistan and Iran, to both manage the western neighbourhood and to balance Pakistan.

India, therefore, has made significant investments in Iran and Afghanistan which are Pakistan’s neighbours towards west. India, imports crude oil from Iran even at the displeasure of the USA, and has invested in creating infrastructure (Schools, Hospitals and Roads) in Afghanistan. It has remained a cornerstone of India’s western geographical strategy.

The returns New Delhi may have been expecting in the form of connectivity and transport networks in the region now stand jeopardized. Under the New Silk Road Strategy of the USA, India would have gained access to Central Asia through Iran and Afghanistan. The current situation, however, alters the dynamic as the Taliban have expressed their resentment with India in the recent past and have gone to declare it as an adversary. India’s increasing proximity towards the United States may have resulted in the Taliban to dislike India.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has harboured the Taliban in safe havens on its Western tribal provinces during their difficult years and will influence decision-making in Afghanistan. Furthermore, it will work towards negating India and reducing its existing footprint in Afghanistan. As China has already approached the Taliban it is likely to extend its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects into Afghanistan via the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. In collaboration with regional power China, Pakistan will work to reduce India’s engagement in Afghanistan. The current geopolitical situation, therefore, is favourable for Pakistan.

India needs to take these developments into its stride and create opportunities to engage with the Taliban afresh. A positive beginning could be acceptance of the Taliban as the current interlocutors for Afghan people.

ALSO READ: The Afghanistan Papers Uncover A Dirty War

Internationally, a host of states have expressed their willingness to talk to Taliban as the ruling dispensation of Afghanistan. It may be because of the swiftness with which Taliban has occupied Afghanistan and it seems there is no challenge to Taliban and a civil war is unlikely. India also needs to engage with the Taliban for multiple reasons ranging from the investments made there to the inclusion in connectivity projects to pure geostrategic concerns. India can take heart from the fact that it evokes a lot of goodwill among the Afghan people.

Significantly enough, questions remain about the capacity of Taliban to govern a complex country. First, it will have to raise an economy from scratch to employ the younger generation of Afghanistan (60% of Afghan population is below 20 years of age). Whether China and Pakistan, two main allies of Taliban will be able to revive Afghanistan, remains to be seen. Second, current dominance of Taliban over the entire country will come under strain when local tribal warlords gather strength, aided by the West. The irony is that Taliban will still be riding the infrastructure built by the United States and its allies and India, whom they despise.

Third, acceptability for Taliban in the international system will also depend on the issue of human rights, most importantly women’s rights as they impose Shari’a law under the Islamic Republic in the territory. It is the fear of reprisals from the Taliban and the Shari’a which is causing the mass exodus of Afghans.

India, has been a favoured destination for common Afghans for generations and the international opinion is against the Taliban. India’s diplomatic efforts and negotiating capabilities to engage with the Taliban government will be crucial in the days and years to come. India must forsake idealistic notions in a realist world and should diplomatically engage with Taliban to protect its interests and to stay relevant in the region.

Taliban In Frame, Afghanistan In Flames, India In Firing Range

By Mahendra Ved

Buzkashi, the national game of the people of Afghanistan, has horsemen competing to possess the headless body of a goat. In one of the world’s most enduring ironies, the country has itself become the goat, being dragged and tossed around. A horrified world watches as an elected government is losing out to the Taliban, a group of women-hating men poised to take control.

They have rendered impotent and helpless the outsiders, all powerful, that have been either backing them diplomatically and militarily, or opposing them meekly, with wordy resolutions.

It happened to the British and the Russians and now, it is the Americans. The unprecedented turn of events has yet again shown that Afghanistan cannot be controlled from outside. Even before the United States ends its longest war by this month-end, the Taliban are knocking at the gates of Kabul, poised to win this round of what has been gamely called the “Great Game”.

The Game’s original players, erstwhile imperial powers Britain and Russia, now pale shadows of themselves, are riding piggy-back on the United States and China respectively. As the US departs, yet dominates the global discourse, the ascending player is China. Sadly, the global line-up the two lead, guarantees more violence and bloodshed for the Afghan people.

This round unfolds without a political solution that the US naively sought, signing a deeply flawed Doha Agreement of February 2020. It gave the Taliban primacy and legitimacy, without securing an end to the conflict and certainly, to terrorism. Now, since everybody is talking, the world is witnessing a collective shedding of crocodile tears.

The only thing that seems certain is prolonged violence. A UN report says 6,000 fighters of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are fighting alongside the Afghan Taliban and along with thousands of ‘volunteers’ from many countries. The Pentagon has woken up to the presence of “terrorist safe havens” on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Time will tell who has played what role and why.

All this does remind of the past – except that the world’s most powerful nation, having conceded ground, both territorially and tactically, is left conducting aerial operations from outside. Signals from Washington, as it licks its wounds worse than in Vietnam of the 1970s, are that this may not continue after August 30. The Afghans will be left on their own – abandoned to their bloody fate.

ALSO READ: A Resurgent Taliban In India’s Backyard

If this sounds like a diatribe, well, it is, against all those who had begun with lofty ideas at the 2001 Bonn Conference to facilitate a moderate regime in Kabul. Two decades hence, a war-weary Joe Biden confirms what George Bush Jr. said in 2002, that “nation building” was never the aim in Afghanistan. The Afghans, then, have a valid question: why are/were they there?

India was not alone in 2003, when its External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha lobbied with the US against a military campaign in Iraq. But they persisted, with a patently false excuse that Saddam Husain had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) which were never found. Super-confident after removing the Taliban from Kabul in response to 9/11, Bush Jr. needed to avenge his father’s humiliation at not being re-elected America’s President.

The Iraq campaign badly distracted Afghanistan’s. Its consequences are now clearly visible. Eighteen years hence, by end-2021, the US military will quit Iraq. Meanwhile, in addition to Al Qaida, another Frankestein has been created in the Islamic State (IS).

Again, India was not alone when its then National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon pleaded against the US announcing a firm date to withdraw from Afghanistan. The Pakistan-hosted Taliban would merely “sit out”, Menon had warned. That, and worse has happened since Donald Trump struck a deal with yesterday’s ‘terrorists’ and ‘insurgents’, bypassing the US-supported and US-dependent government in Kabul. That hit the credibility of all those in the world community who supported the “global war on terror” in Afghanistan.

To put it bluntly, this is America’s hubris. Its failure to see where the Taliban, ousted from Kabul, had moved to was compounded by failure/unwillingness to touch them. It was satisfied getting Osama Bin Laden. It kept deluding itself, and the world, in seeking to separate the ‘good’ Taliban from the ‘bad’. To cover up its own failure at the eleventh hour, it expected everyone else to seek an “Afghan-led, Afghan owned” political solution. Nobody asked why the Taliban would want it.

This is a lesson for Big Powers: you can light a fire in any corner of the world, but cannot douse it. Taliban became ‘good’ since they are not supposed to have ambitions outside of Afghanistan. But what about Al Qaida and the IS? Will the Big powers return to Afghanistan, Iraq or any other place if they perceive a new global threat? Someone has aptly said that those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

Of the others, if China is ambitious in Afghanistan, Russia and Iran are being plain opportunistic. The hapless Central Asians must seek American, Chinese or Russian help to fend off a resurgence in Islamist extremism at home that a Taliban triumph guarantees.

India is again on the wrong side, like it was when the Russians left and now, when the Americans are leaving. It invested three billion dollars and earned goodwill. Will it now be India’s fate to “do more” in Afghanistan at the US’s behest, to compete with China and Pakistan?

That, of course, will depend upon how the Kabul-Delhi equations develop. A furious debate has ensued if India should talk to the Taliban and whether Taliban are interested in talking to the Indians, when they have support of India’s regional adversaries. Otherwise supportive of the present government, Vivek Katju, an old Af-Pak hand and envoy to Kabul, calls it “policy paralysis”.

ALSO READ: Four Lakh Displaced As Taliban Advances

Conventional wisdom is that a ‘friendly’ government in Kabul would mark Pakistan’s victory. But it will prove Pyrrhic, what with flow of refugees, drugs and arms. It successfully hoodwinked the West while benefiting from them militarily and materially, nurtured the Taliban and calibrated their across–the-border operations and backed them in negotiations. Islamabad’s more important move, however, is effectively shifting a part of its allegiance from West to China.

Not a factor before, China is now the region’s strongest power-player, with global reach. Beijing has embraced the Taliban diplomatically and as reports indicate, also militarily. It is poised to extend the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan. China gains greater access to the Indian Ocean and to the Gulf, through Iran. Not just geopolitics, geo-economics is also at work.

Now, the fast-shifting ground situation. The Taliban have played their military card commendably by seeking to eliminate the re-emergence of the Northern Alliance that had helped the US remove them from Kabul in 2001. They have captured huge territory and some of the provincial capitals from Herat in the west to Badakhshan in the north and closed the gates for any external intervention on the ground.

But it’s not going to be easy. Embedded in their campaign are seeds of resistance from ethnic minorities who will fight for sheer survival, and not just against Pashtun domination. It’s life-and-death for the Uzbeks and Tajiks, who are in significant numbers and the Hazaras who, as Shias, are traditional Pashtun targets. Battles are likely to be fought for long for control of the cities and the countryside.

It is almost certain that a government, if born out of Taliban’s military victory, will face economic sanctions. Without hand-holding, Afghanistan is bound to suffer. Besides political instability, economic misery will worsen, not to speak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some questions for the near-future: how long and to what effect will the threatened sanctions work? As had happened with the Myanmar military junta, will biggies of the world engage in behind-the-scene engagements to guard their business interests? Not to forget, a Taliban mission operated in Washington till 9/11 happened, because the US wanted to guard its interest in Afghan and Central Asian oil and gas reserves.

How will the Islamic world respond to the near-certain birth, or re-birth, of the Islamic Emirate? Now that the West has taken a beating, will the definition of terrorism change? What will be the new global security threat perceptions and how will they be responded to?

The new chapter of ‘Great Game’ has more questions than answers. Not the least, the fate of that Buzkashi’s goat.

The writer is co-author, with late Sreedhar, of Afghan Turmoil: Changing Equations (Oxford Books, 1988) and Afghan Buzkashi: Great Game & Gamesmen (Wordsmiths, 2000). He can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Zalmay Khalilzad with Taliban representatives

India Must Remain Involved In US-Taliban Peace Talks

By Seema Guha

Taliban ended 2019 by kindling hopes of a ceasefire ahead of signing a peace deal with the US. But a few days later they went back on their word, perhaps due to internal differences within the group or for unknown strategic considerations. But whether now, or later in the year, a peace deal is likely to be announced, with or without pre conditions like a cessation of hostilities.

The Taliban has said often enough that fighting will stop only after foreign forces are out of Afghanistan. President Donald Trump would be desperate for an agreement considering that US elections are due this November. What the contours would be is not known, but the Taliban will ensure that they get a large piece of the pie in any political settlement worked out between the Afghan parties.

Also Read: Has Trump Plan Edged India Out Of Afghanistan?

India needs to keep this is mind, and prepare for an eventuality when the Taliban becomes an important part of the Afghan political scene. The good news for India is that Afghanistan has changed drastically since the time the Taliban was in power till 2001. People are no longer in the mood to be cowed down and sacrifice the gains made in the Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani years. Womens’ rights have become pivotal as well as democratic principles. Ashraf Ghani’s victory in the presidential elections bears witness to this positive narrative. People came out to exercise their democratic rights during the parliamentary elections in 2018 despite the boycott called and the blood-letting by the Taliban. The same is true of the 2019 presidential polls. Luckily for Ashraf Ghani and by extension India, the President’s decisive victory will make his position stronger during the intra Afghan talks.

India had sent two of its former diplomats to Moscow in 2018 when Russia organized a meeting with representatives of the Taliban. Realising that all regional powers were engaging with the Taliban, and not wanting to be left as a by stander as the peace process seemed to gather momentum, Delhi sent retired diplomats to the meeting. They were tagged as “non-officials’’ keeping in mind India’s reservations about engaging with the Taliban. Both former diplomats later said that they did not get an opportunity to exchange pleasantries with the Taliban representatives at the meet. They just observed from a corner table of the hall. Perhaps that’s true. But it is unlikely that Indians have not been in contact with lower functionaries of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sure there has been no interaction at the higher levels. By sending two “non-officials’’ to the Moscow meet, New Delhi signaled that it was ready to do business with the Taliban in future.

It is also unlikely that if the Taliban becomes a part of the ruling establishment in Afghanistan, India would be asked to shut down its embassy as happened earlier.

What is evident from the US-Taliban negotiations is that the latter is now perhaps a tad more pragmatic than earlier when Mullah Omar headed the movement. By interacting with the US as well as China, Russia and Iran, besides the Gulf nations, it  is gradually coming to grips with the dynamics of pragmatic power play. The Taliban today though still staunchly wedded to its Islamic ideology is likely to be more practical in governance. The people of Afghanistan, especially in Kabul and other urban centres will not tolerate banning women’s education, a stop to all kinds of music, public beheadings and destruction of Bamiyan Buddha carvings is unlikely to happen. They may all be manifest in the countryside far away from international focus.

The final political settlement will see the Taliban emerge as the main power centre, and be in a position to dictate terms. It is well known that Pakistan, already anxious about India spreading its wings across Afghanistan will certainly try its best through the Taliban to clip Delhi’s wings. Islamabad will use its influence to try to close down some of  the consulates. Besides the main mission on Kabul, Indian consulates are in Kandahar, Mazar-e-sharif, Jalalabad and Herat.

The consulates have been a sore point with the Pakistani establishment and this will certainly be part of the agenda. How much dictation the Taliban will take from Pakistan is also a question. The fiercely independent Afghans are loath to take dictation from others.The Taliban are also aware that ordinary Afghans are happy with India’s developmental work, which have touched their lives. 

Successive Indian governments, starting from the Vajpyee era, through the two terms of Manmohan Singh’s term and now the Narendra Modi government had wisely focused on people to people contacts in Afghanistan. Luckily Pakistan’s opposition to Indian boots on the ground has paid off for New Delhi. By its non-aggressive stance, India has been able to win the hearts and minds of local Afghans. The Taliban are aware of this. In fact last year a Taliban spokesman had said that India can continue with its development works. Whether the leadership of the Taliban are of the same view or it was an off the cuff remark is difficult to gauge.

Delhi’s stand on Afghanistan has so far paid off. It has echoed the elected governments stand and marked out the red lines—that the hard earned democratic values cannot be sacrificed. India’s option is to continue to support the democratic forces in Afghanistan and concentrate as it has always done on development. At the same time whenever possible to be in touch with the Taliban. Not talking to the Taliban should never be an option as they are a part of Afghan society. Keeping in touch with all sections, supporting the democratic government of Ashraf Ghani for now, and working for the people would finally pay dividends.

No one knows when a political solution is worked out, but Delhi will know that Islamabad or rather Rawalpindi will try to use its influence to keep India out. How finally all this pans out is not known, but Delhi needs to keep its ears to the ground.