Supping with the Taliban leadership
From development projects worth billions to security aspect, India has high stakes in Afghanistan but its claims need to reflect in its actions
The growing warmth in India-Taliban relationship, which is in sharp contrast to the chill earlier attending it, warrants scrutiny. India had discrete and unpublicised contact with sections of the Taliban even before the latter came to rule Afghanistan in August 2021. Thereafter, these occurred in the open. As early as August 31, 2021, the Indian ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, then head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha and now their acting Deputy Foreign Minister, at the latter’s initiative. They discussed the safety, security and early return of the Indian nationals stranded in Afghanistan as well as travel to India by Afghan nationals, especially members of the minorities. Mittal also made the point that Afghanistan’s territory should not be used for anti-India activities and terrorism in any manner. According to a press release by the Ministry of External Affairs on September 1, the “Afghan representative assured the ambassador that these issues would be positively addressed”.
In October that year, an Indian delegation, led by JP Singh, joint secretary, Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan Division, Ministry of External Affairs, and including Adarsh Swaika, joint secretary, Eurasia, met acting Deputy Prime Minister, Abul Salam Hanafi, on the sidelines of the Moscow Format Consultations on Afghanistan. According to Zabihullah Mujahid, acting Deputy Minister of Information and Culture and the Taliban’s central spokesman, both sides “considered it necessary to take into account each other’s concerns and improve diplomatic and economic relations”. Singh, he further stated, had expressed India’s
readiness to provide “extensive humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan”.
With the dispatch of 3,000 tonnes of wheat to Afghanistan after the devastating earthquake of June 22 in that country, India’s total shipment of the grain to it reached 33,500 tonnes out of a total of 50,000 tonnes committed last year. It has also sent 27 tonnes of relief material including family ridge tents, sleeping bags, blankets and sleeping mats, besides medicines sufficient for 5,400 surgeries and treatments covering 36,000 people for three months by WHO, apart from earlier dispatch of 13 tonnes of medicine, 500,000 units COVID-19 vaccines and one million of the same to Afghan refugees in Iran.
An important accompanying step has been the reopening, on June 23, of India’s embassy in Kabul, to be manned by a small team of diplomats and technical staff, to coordinate the efforts for delivering humanitarian aid. This, of course, does not mean recognition of the Taliban regime. The decision, India has made known, will be taken along with major global
powers. Yet, its actions do lend a measure of legitimacy to the Taliban Government.
Clearly, India’s ties with the Taliban regime, as these have evolved, mark a complete departure from those earlier. Has it been worth it? Several factors conduce to an affirmative reply. New Delhi’s needs good ties with Kabul to continue being involved with its development projects in Afghanistan which are estimated to have been well over $3 billion before the Taliban captured power. The projects, whose impact affects all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, include the construction of school, hospitals, roads dams and electricity transmission substations and lines.
Second, there is the security aspect — preventing Taliban-ruled Afghanistan from becoming a springboard for terror strikes and other activities directed against India. The presence on Afghan soil of camps of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, which specifically target India, and others like Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP), an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS), and Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, hostile to this country, raises questions; so does of the role of the Haqqani network, which has close links with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate and was responsible for several vicious attacks against India’s establishment before the Taliban’s second coming. It is now an important part of the Taliban ruling establishment.
While its head, Sirajuuddin Haqqani, has said that Afghanistan wants friendly relations with all countries, one has to see whether this is reflected in its actions concerning India. For their part, the Taliban have stated that they would not allow their territory to be used for hostile actions against other countries. Can it, however, be relied upon to do so? Pakistan created them in the summer of 1994, and has, since then, lent them unflinching support without which they would not have survived. Now there have been tensions and border clashes between the countries.
Can one rule out the same thing happening in India’s case? The Taliban have not delivered on their promise to allow girls’ education above class six and to permit women to work according to sharia laws. Rather, they continue to increase restrictions on women. It is also clear that, contrary to their pronouncements, they are unlikely to have an inclusive Government in Afghanistan. Second, will they be able to deliver even if they want to? They now have several factions based on ethnic, regional and sectarian grounds besides the deeper schism between the pragmatists and the dogmatists. The latter may well make India an issue in their confrontation with the former who have mainly been behind the friendly overtures to this country, sending New Delhi-Kabul ties for a toss.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal.)
Source: The Pioneer
