Earlier this month, the Narendra Modi government again sent a delegation to Kabul in yet another strategic move seeking to enhance political and economic ties with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. While this was not first time that India sent a delegation to Kabul to meet the Taliban ministers settled in Kabul since August 15, 2021, the team from Ministry of External Affairs led JP Singh, Joint Secretary of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran (PAI) Division, during this visit also made a point to meet Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai, who had long been an ally of India and someone who became the President after the Taliban was ousted from that country by the American forces in 2001.
During the Taliban’s last rule in Afghanistan that went on from 1996 till 2001, India had completely abandoned the Taliban, and thereby Afghanistan. But even at that time the flow of Afghan refugees into India remained intact and it continued seamlessly while many of them settled across the country. But back in 2001, the geopolitical dynamics of the South Asian region and beyond was much different. At that time, while Pakistan was firmly supporting the United States, which declared war against al-Qaeda but ended up making Taliban its enemy, resulting in Washington facing its longest war ever. Meanwhile, the Pakistan military had long-term plans to exert significant influence in Afghanistan through the Pashtun-dominated Taliban even as Islamabad had issues with other Afghan ethnic groups. Moreover, Pakistan was always wary of the fact that the warlords who fought the Taliban and who aided the Americans to throw the Islamist group out of power mainly consisted of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras, and were close to its enemy — India.
Today, the scenario is much different and the tables have completely turned. The strategic bonhomie between the US and Islamabad has nearly vanished now and tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have soared over the growing assertiveness and unleashing of violence across Pakistan by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban. Since the takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban in August 2021, Pakistan has seen a surge in terrorist activities in Pakistan, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan region that have been purportedly carried out by the TTP leaders based in Afghanistan. However, New Delhi has realised that this is an opportune moment for pushing ahead India-Afghanistan ties now that it has closed all channels of communication with Pakistan. New Delhi also knows that relying on the US to regain its footprints in Afghanistan will be a futile exercise.
So, while taking advantage of the situation, India is moving in a cautious manner with Afghanistan, taking each step carefully. However, what New Delhi is deliberately avoiding to take notice of is that of the goodwill India enjoyed across Afghanistan, including in remote provinces of that mountainous country. The Afghans have always admired India for its governance, culture and the spirit of embracing its neighbours with open arms. Despite thousands of requests from former Afghan diplomats, officials, thousands of students holding scholarships, patients who wanted to visit India for treatment, India revoked the visa system and installed e-visa process, which has not been able to address the crisis. The only strong bridge that has withstood all the pulls and pushes of history between India and Afghanistan was the people-to-people connect. By not allowing smooth and seamless movement of people, India runs the risk of the losing that bridge with Afghanistan. Students, who lost two successive academic years since the Taliban’s comeback, are now asked to study in Indian universities by opting for online classes. If India is again opening up channels of communication with anti-Taliban characters like Karzai, even if for symbolic reasons, the Ministry of External Affairs should be able to persuade the Ministry of Home Affairs to restart resuming visas for those Afghans at least who have always been anti-Pakistan and pro-India.
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After rushing to close the embassy in Kabul in August 2021, India reopened it with a technical staff in June 2022. However, since then, neither has India issued visas for Afghan students and patients like it used under the previous regime, nor has it restarted any of the stalled developmental projects in the war-torn country. India has limited its role only to providing aid, even though Afghans seek assistance in of a different kind from India — the friend that always stood beside them in times of need. For some strange reason, the Indian Embassy in Kabul’s website still shows that Rudrendra Tandon is the current Ambassador of India to Afghanistan even though he has now become India’s envoy to Greece.
The biggest asset that India had in Afghanistan, which gave jitters to the Pakistani military and the ISI, was New Delhi’s presence in some of the most challenging and difficult provinces of Afghanistan — Kandahar, Herat, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif. According to sources and local media reports in Afghanistan, India is planning to reopen its consulate in Kandahar, the birthplace of Taliban where the group’s leaders hitherto took decisions. While such a move is necessary and important, India should also be careful of not slamming the door on its “friends” who will be extremely critical of such a move. These are those people who allowed India gain considerable entry into that country while the US continued its war there and favoured Pakistan. But India was able to make a deep impression in the minds of those who still adore the country and view it an useful ally.
India has to mollycoddle the Taliban through other means too in order to the keep the Haqqanis in check, else it won’t be long that this terrorist entity with millions of dollars of bounties on their leadership begin to sharpen their focus on Kashmir again. The Haqqani Network is a key ally of the Taliban and it will not think twice before meddling into India’s affairs again. In 2008, it was the founder of Haqqani Network's Jalaluddin Haqqani who had masterminded the terrorist attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
India needs to also ensure that the current administrative setup in the Afghanistan Embassy in New Delhi begins to start working by way of engaging with the Afghan students and patients who want to come to India. The problem has deepened so much that even the Taliban’s readout of its meeting with the Indian delegation talked about issuance of visas for the Afghan students, traders and patients. India has to find out a mechanism to sort this issue if it wants to keep its goodwill in that country intact while it goes on to deal with the Taliban much more openly than before despite not recognising the group formally, following in the footsteps of other countries. But India, unlike the West, is an immediate neighbour of Afghanistan and so it needs to act like one.
[Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs, and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs, and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.]
In Dealing With Taliban, New Delhi Shouldn’t Lose Entente With ‘Friends Of India’ In Afghanistan
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14.03.2024
Earlier this month, the Narendra Modi government again sent a delegation to Kabul in yet another strategic move seeking to enhance political and economic ties with the Taliban administration in Afghanistan. While this was not first time that India sent a delegation to Kabul to meet the Taliban ministers settled in Kabul since August 15, 2021, the team from Ministry of External Affairs led JP Singh, Joint Secretary of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran (PAI) Division, during this visit also made a point to meet Afghanistan’s former President Hamid Karzai, who had long been an ally of India and someone who became the President after the Taliban was ousted from that country by the American forces in 2001.
During the Taliban’s last rule in Afghanistan that went on from 1996 till 2001, India had completely abandoned the Taliban, and thereby Afghanistan. But even at that time the flow of Afghan refugees into India remained intact and it continued seamlessly while many of them settled across the country. But back in 2001, the geopolitical dynamics of the South Asian region and beyond was much different. At that time, while Pakistan was firmly supporting the United States, which declared war against al-Qaeda but ended up making Taliban its enemy, resulting in Washington facing its longest war ever. Meanwhile, the Pakistan military had long-term plans to exert significant influence in Afghanistan through the Pashtun-dominated Taliban even as Islamabad had issues with other Afghan ethnic groups. Moreover, Pakistan was always wary of the fact that the warlords who fought the Taliban and who aided the Americans to throw the Islamist group out of power mainly consisted of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras, and were close to its enemy — India.
Today, the scenario is much different and the tables have completely........
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