Afghanistan: Tough Choices for India 

STORIES, ANALYSES, EXPERT VIEWS

Afghanistan: Tough Choices for India 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in which India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Rudrendra Tandon, among those evacuated from Kabul Tuesday, was also present. “India must not only protect our citizens, but we must also provide refuge to those Sikh and Hindu minorities who want to come to India, and we must also provide all possible help to our Afghan brothers and sisters who are looking towards India for assistance,” Modi was quoted as having said.

 

Keeping an open mind

India is assessing its strategic policy given that both Pakistan and China will move to exercise influence over the next regime in Kabul. At the moment, officials said it is a “wait and watch situation” and “India won’t be first or the last country in recognising the new framework” in Afghanistan.

Officials said Delhi will “be in touch with democratic countries in proceeding forward on next actions”. For now, India will wait for a government structure to formalise under the new Kabul regime. Officials said given the rapidly changing situation there, it is not clear “who to contact on the Taliban” and “let them formally structure a system”.

The security establishment feels that the return of the Taliban is likely to embolden militants in the neighbourhood. Sources said the situation in the Kashmir Valley is under control at the moment.

In the view of Gautam Mukhopadhaya (former diplomat and Ambassador to Afghanistan, Syria and Myanmar. Following the ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan in November 2001, he reopened the Indian Embassy in Kabul that month) “prudence dictates that we keep an open mind, wait and watch what they actually do during and after the transitional process, assess how inclusive they are in accommodating the gains of the last 20 years and the progressive principles of the Islamic Republic, judge the opposition to Taliban rule, and our security needs before we jump into any hasty recognition of an Islamic ‘Emirate’ which will have profound consequences for the region, the world and the US in particular.”

 

Protecting gains of the past two decades

The immediate task will be to protect India’s intense engagement in Afghanistan’s  development sector. Its gains of the past two decades, achieved through painstakingly built high-value and small-scale projects, face reversal. India, a regional stakeholder and an unwavering supporter of an ‘Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, and Afghan-controlled’ peace and reconciliation process, has struggled to find a place in the numerous groupings that seek to decide the fate of the country. Its last-ditch efforts at opening a channel of communication with the Taliban, as part of its bid to engage with all stakeholders in the Afghan conflict, too, has not yielded much result.

A realist approach now says Dr Shanthie Mariet D’Souza (founding professor, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad and founder-president, Mantraya. She has spent over a decade in various provinces of Afghanistan) “would be to reach out to the Taliban to continue aid and development assistance…”

 

India’s statement to the UNSC: grudging acceptance of Afghan developments

Incidentally, India’s statement to the UN Security Council meeting on Afghanistan on August 16 contained elements of a grudging acceptance of Afghan developments. There was no demand that it would not recognise a government formed by force. There was no repetition of the “double peace” formula. It noted, “A broader representation would help the arrangement gain more acceptability and legitimacy”. The key word is “arrangement”. Its use denotes a desire to still keep options open, even though India has no role in working out the political structure that will now be put in place in Kabul.

 

 

Threat to India of Muslim radicalisation

Alok Bansal (director) and Soumya Chaturvedi (senior research fellow, India Foundation) however, warn that “after conquering Afghanistan, the foot soldiers of the Taliban will not start tilling the land. They will merely relocate to new battlefields to fight new wars. These could well be in India, which, according to them, is part of ‘Khorasan’ — the arena of ‘end of time’ battles. The fall of Kabul could also result in the surge of new jihadi recruits from India for other terror groups…….”

Agreeing, Swapan Dasgupta (right wing journalist and politician)  says “there is little doubt that the euphoria over the humiliation of America and the West is certain to generate a new wave of Muslim radicalization globally……..

“This has a deep bearing on India’s national security since in the coming months there will be a concerted bid by sections of the Pakistani State apparatus to transform conflicts in the Kashmir Valley into an Islamist cause célèbre, on a par with Palestine. On its part, China is certain to use its new-found status as a Taliban-friendly world power to either encourage pressing the accelerator on Kashmir or demanding a price for applying the brakes.

“For India, the Taliban victory in Afghanistan has brought new foreign policy and security challenges. At present, New Delhi’s old Northern Alliance friends are in disarray but they are certain to regroup and create enclaves of resistance to the Taliban. The choices are clear but difficult: unfriendly indifference or surreptitious encouragement of forces that will not be reconciled to a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

“One chapter in Afghanistan’s troubled history has ended. A new one may be just beginning.”

 

Regrouping of terrorism

And this is because after two decades of active involvement in the affairs of Afghanistan, and spending over a trillion dollars in the process to defeat terrorism and the al Qaeda, the U.S. has left Afghanistan in a worse situation than when it entered, writes M.K. Narayanan (former National Security Adviser and a former Governor of West Bengal).  It is not possible to discern any reduction in terrorism or the demise of any of the better known terror groups, such as the al Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS), or for that matter, of lesser known terror outfits. As a matter of fact, there has been a resurgence in al Qaeda activities recently. The IS, after some earlier setbacks, is again regrouping and currently poses a real threat to areas abutting, and including, Afghanistan. Radicalised Islamist terror and the forces of ‘doctrinaire theocracy’ have, if anything, thus become stronger. The collapse of the Afghan state will ignite many old threats.”

 

India, Iran will be most affected

India and Iran, in the view Narayanan “are two countries that would find accommodation with a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan very difficult. Pakistan may be an enigma of sorts, but the Taliban will need Pakistan at least in the short and medium term. Relations between Taliban Afghanistan and Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may not be easy, but will not lead to any major problems for now. India, even more than Shia-dominated Iran, may be the outlier among Afghanistan’s neighbours for a variety of reasons, including its warm relations with the Karzai and the Ghani regimes in the past two decades.

“……The aftershock of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban can be expected to continue for long. For India, the virtual retreat of the U.S. from this part of Asia; the growing China-Russia-Pakistan nexus across the region; and an Iran under a hardliner like Ebrahim Raisi, all work to its disadvantage. A great deal of hard thinking is needed as to how to retrieve a situation that for the present seems heavily tilted against India.”

 

Beginning of new phase in Afghanistan and India relations

Whatever, there is no question that  this  “marks the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between Afghanistan and India,” writes C Raja Mohan (director, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore and contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express). “The restoration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan with Pakistan’s support undoubtedly presents some very serious potential challenges for Indian security……a bigger question mark will be about the Taliban’s renewed support for international terrorism and Pakistan’s re-direction of jihadi groups that have allegedly fought with the Taliban towards India…..”

Pakistan’s leverage over the Taliban may not be absolute: However, “although Pakistan’s leverage over the Taliban is real, it may not be absolute. The Taliban is bound to seek a measure of autonomy from Pakistan. India will have to wait a while, though, before the current chill between Delhi and the Taliban can be overcome.

“While Delhi must fully prepare for a renewal of cross-border terror, the international conditions of the 1990s and 2020s are rather different. There is a lot less global acceptance of terrorism today than in the permissive 1990s. No major power would like to see Afghanistan re-emerge as a global sanctuary of terror. The world has also imposed significant new constraints on Pakistan’s support for terror through mechanisms like the Financial Action Task Force…..”

Possible regional geopolitical alignment against India: There could  also be a regional geopolitical alignment against India, but  “it is also important to note that the US and the West will continue to have a say in shaping the international attitudes towards the new regime….” But “a deeper Sino-Pak partnership in Afghanistan will inevitably produce countervailing trends…..”

 

‘Matter of time before things open up for India once again’

Stating that “there is no end-game in Afghanistan, Sushant Sareen (Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation writes  “a new ‘Great Game’ is just starting. India needs to show strategic patience. It is a matter of time before things open up for India once again. Perhaps if the Taliban prove they are not medieval monsters but only deeply conservative, India could open up to them. Or they will make an outreach to India to balance Pakistan. Alternatively, there could be resistance to Taliban from around the region, which again will open up new options for India. For now, however, India must prepare for the long game. This includes helping India’s friends in Afghanistan by giving them refuge. They will be our strongest allies whenever things take a turn in Afghanistan. Helping Afghan friends isn’t just an emotional or sentimental response, it is also a strategic response. The Afghans India helped in the really tough times in the 1990s became our strongest allies for the last 20 years. That India lost opportunity after opportunity in Afghanistan over these two decades isn’t on the Afghans, but on Indian policymakers who focused more on soft power and not enough on developing hard power options in a hard country like Afghanistan. Let us not make the same mistake twice.”

 

India trained Afghan forces can be ‘our’ ambassadors

The name of the game for India, thus is not to make mistakes again. There is a window of opportunity. Stating that “it is very unlikely that the Taliban would have resented the continued functioning of the Indian embassy in Kabul,” Lt Gen Zameer Uddin Shah (former Deputy Chief of Army Staff and the former Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University) writes “it was the Taliban that escorted Indian embassy officials to the waiting IAF aircraft at the Kabul airport. They would, most likely, have provided security to the embassy, too, if we had negotiated and requested them. There are various reasons to believe so…….”

India  “already have a reservoir of goodwill in Afghanistan, reinforced by the large number of Afghan military personnel and thousands of students who have received military training/education in India. They may have switched loyalties to the Taliban because of the ground realities, but their sentiments and affection for India would be enduring. They can be India’s new ambassadors now with the new Taliban in place.”

The former general makes a distinction between the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban. “The former are home-grown insurgents who battled against ‘foreign occupation’ while India must take all precautions to prevent the Pakistan Taliban terrorists from coalescing and providing strategic depth to our inimical neighbour.”


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