When India decided to pull out around 50 diplomats and security personnel from its consulate in Kandahar in Afghanistan on Saturday, in view of the Taliban gaining ground in new areas around the southern Afghan city, India once again found itself at a crossroads in what is believed to be the “graveyard of empires”. What has added to the already complex scenario is the eagerness of China to jump into the Afghan melee once the last of the Americans pack their bags on 11 September 2021.
The presence of the Dragon has made the situation more alarming in Afghanistan. A senior MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) official said that New Delhi has to reorient its Afghan policies. “We just can’t afford to sit back and let the situation slip away to the advantage of the forces inimical to us. Sensing an opportunity in the Afghanistan crisis, China has become super active in the region. Its close ally Pakistan too must be elated with the development.”
There’s a serious churn going on in the MEA on how to bite the Afghan bullet, especially on the issue of the Taliban. There was a time when a section of the Indian establishment wasn’t too averse to talking to the Taliban, but the Kandahar hijacking episode in 2001 changed all that. New Delhi just couldn’t be seen dealing with the Taliban. But now with the Dragon in the Afghan picture, and Taliban knocking on the Kabul doors, the consensus seems to be building up in India about the inevitability of talking to the Taliban. “Just that we should not be seen as too desperate for talks,” advised an official in the know of the situation. “Taliban know very well that India’s nod is necessary for their legitimacy in Afghanistan and have therefore in recent times made several overtures to Delhi through third-party contacts,” he added.
As per media reports, the Taliban have reached out to India at least two dozen times and even tried to come clean on their Pakistan connections. In fact, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen went to the extent of saying that his organisation never took part in the Kashmir jihad!
Sources say that there has also been softening in Delhi’s stand vis-à-vis Taliban. In 2018, India, for instance, sent a “non-official” delegation comprising two retired diplomats to the Moscow peace conference on Afghanistan. Two years later, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar himself participated in the intra-Afghan talks in Doha where he said in no uncertain terms that the peace process must be “Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled”. He also emphasised that no part of Afghanistan is “untouched” by India’s “400-plus development projects” in that country.
No doubt, India has been a big part of the Afghanistan development story, with investments worth $3 billion. It may not be the biggest investment, but each project undertaken by India, including the construction of the parliament building, the Salma dam and the Zaranj-Delaram highway project, has won goodwill among the public in that country. As Jaishankar himself had said while speaking at the Raisina Dialogue, “In the last 20 years, we have demonstrated, through our actions and projects on the ground, what our real feelings are for Afghanistan… I think, in all the 34 Afghan provinces, we have development projects of some kind.”
It is because of these investments and stakes that India can’t leave Afghanistan. This is also the reason why Indians stationed in Afghanistan find themselves in the line of jihadi fire. No wonder, about a week before the Kandahar evacuation, the Indian embassy in Afghanistan had issued a strongly-worded advisory for Indian nationals, asking them to exercise “strict vigilance and caution” with regard to security at workplace, place of residence and also during movement in the city. The advisory said that the security situation in Afghanistan is “highly volatile, unpredictable and dangerous”.
So, what should India do to deal with the Afghan quagmire? Unlike the US, it just can’t pack its bags and vanish, being in the immediate neighbourhood, and with Pakistan and China trying to turn it into their strategic depth vis-à-vis India. “India needs to follow a very fine diplomatic line,” said a senior MEA official, adding that Delhi must keep on supporting President Ashraf Ghani and yet should not be averse to talking to the Taliban. “The Taliban are a reality. The US has accepted it, and the sooner we accept it, the better placed we would be in dealing with the Afghan challenge. But this doesn’t mean we should give up on President Ghani. In fact, India’s active diplomatic role may hold the key to democratic forces retaining some of their hold in the Afghan administration,” he said.
Now that’s where the crux of India’s new Afghan policy lies. Delhi may not have a military presence in Kabul, but it has a strong hold over the hearts and minds of people there. India’s active role in rebuilding Afghanistan has given people there a semblance of normalcy amid violence and killings. This explains why the Taliban have been reaching out to India. This also explains why India is being invited to diplomatic high tables while discussing the fate of Afghanistan.
This doesn’t mean that the Taliban have cut their ties with Al Qaeda or even the mother of all terrorism—Pakistan. If anything the links have become deeper and would turn even more menacing, especially in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan which many in the Islamist world would see as an affirmation of jihadi victory. The real problem, however, is on the eastern side of the Durand Line in Pakistan, which just refuses to give up on its terror aspirations. With Taliban in power, Pakistan would achieve, in Steve Coll’s words in Ghost Wars, General Zia-ul-Haq’s dream: “A loyal, Pashtun-led Islamist government in Kabul.”
India’s—and for that matter world’s—problem resides in Pakistan, which called for “guns rather than butter” weeks after its independence. Where every general, liberal or otherwise, “believed in the jihadists, not from personal Islamic conviction, in most cases, but because the jihadists had proved themselves over many years as the one force able to frighten, flummox, and bog down the Hindu-dominated Indian Army”, as Coll writes again. In Pakistan, jihad is not a calling for the otherwise liberal generals, but a professional imperative. “It was something he (general) did at the office. At quitting time he packed up his briefcase. Straightened the braid on his uniform and went home to his normal life.”
The Americans would have saved themselves from this embarrassment of leaving Afghanistan like a loser had their President listened to former CIA operative Bruce Riedel, who had told President Barack Obama right at the beginning of his first term to shift focus from Afghanistan to Pakistan, for the latter has a “convoluted relationship with terrorists in which it was the patron, the victim and the safe haven—all at the same time”, as former Ambassador Rajeev Dogra recalls in his book, Where Borders Bleed.
The Americans failed to act, despite knowing the real force behind the Taliban surge in Afghanistan. Maybe they fell under the trap of Pakistan being a nuclear weapons state, an argument which the Pakistanis would use generously vis-à-vis India till Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the bluff after the Balakot air strikes in 2019!
Be that as it may, India will have to play the Great Game, with or without the US. For, its stakes have risen further with the Dragon all set to play the Afghan tango with Pakistani generals and Taliban leaders. With Taliban at Kandahar gates and China checking in on Kabul, it’s time India reoriented its Afghanistan policy.