Malay Mishra
Four burqa-clad Afghan women auctioned at a street corner and a Taliban elder forcibly dragging away a small Afghan girl in full view of her parents who turn their back and walk away on the wailing child. At the Kabul International Airport, there were scenes of mayhem and chaos with incessant gunfire and 12 people dead at the last count, babies passed over the high-rise wall by parents to American soldiers manning the airport with nary a thought about their future. The medieval savagery and brutality of the Taliban play out to the world in gory detail in their second coming to power.
I was serving in our Embassy in Tehran during Taliban 1.0 which had different dynamics and was upended as much by the US attack as with the confluence of regional forces on the ground. It was possible then for India to be part of a broad-based understanding with Iran, Russia and the US and enlist the support of local warlords to get rid of the theocratic Sharia-based regime. India has no such advantage this time. It has missed the bus because of its hide-and-seek policy with regard to confabulations with the Taliban. That’s the reason it has been left behind in the primary talks with the Taliban which had Russia, China, Pakistan, Qatar and Turkey at the table with the US being the principal negotiator (since its infamous Doha deal of February 2020) and relegated to the second rung.
By now it is well evident that the Taliban will not change their stripes despite their public show of moderation and promise of an all-inclusive government. Their promise of amnesty for all workers serving foreign forces and compassion for women and children have been belied by facts on the ground. The unity government for which the Afghan Interim Council under former President Hamid Karzai (and including former peace negotiator Abdullah Abdullah) has been negotiating with the Anas Haqqani-led Taliban team is held back as the Taliban are likely to take a decision until the scheduled American withdrawal August 31.
The Taliban have by now well realised that governing the country against a nationwide opposition, mostly led by young educated tech-savvy millennials, would not be as easy as accomplishing a blitzkrieg military victory. Besides with the US government freezing all Taliban assets in the US Federal Reserve and the IMF stopping its quarterly tranche of aid, the Taliban could have financial difficulties in running the country. However, with their total control over production of opium, heroin and methamphetamine and sitting over $1 trillion worth of rare earth minerals, tin, copper and gold, the Taliban would not be in much disarray. Besides China has had a quid pro quo to buy peace from the group on the Uyghur and Turkestan Islamist Movement in return of financial help and freedom to use their territory for the Belt and Road Initiative. The Russian government has openly come out in support of the Taliban while Pakistan, the single biggest factor for Taliban’s stupendous victory, could very likely follow suit.
India is caught in a cleft. While it has acquired tremendous goodwill among the Afghan people over the last 20 years for its $3 billion worth investments in high-valued infrastructure, human resources development and governance, it has been forced to close down its mission and evacuate its diplomatic and security staff. However, thousands of Indian nationals and Afghan minority groups wait to be evacuated and that is the government’s top-most priority though with all commercial flights closed due to closure of the Afghan air space this is a matter of great concern.
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11 the Taliban white flag will most likely fly all over Afghanistan signalling a mighty drubbing of a world power by a ragtag bunch of Wahabi Sunni fighters of Pashtun origin numbering hardly 50-60,000. The capitulation of the regular Afghan forces numbering 300,000 (though bulk of them were ‘ghost soldiers’ and the actual fighting forces could be anywhere near one-fifth of that number) owes much to corruption, demoralisation and desertion. While President Biden is not off the mark in blaming the Afghan leadership for surrendering without a fight (former president Ashraf Ghani left with his close aides on the day of Kabul’s capture and is currently sheltered in the UAE on ‘humanitarian grounds’) the botched withdrawal of US forces would come to haunt his administration for years to come.
EAM Jaishankar in his address while chairing a UNSC briefing on “threats to international peace and security caused by terrorist acts” August 19 raised a strong voice against global terrorism and singled out terrorist organisations like LeT, JeM and the Haqqani network operating (from Pakistani soil against India) with “impunity and encouragement” though nowhere did he mention the Taliban. India has to be doubly careful as scores of hardcore terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda, IS and other groups have been released by the Taliban from the Bagram high-security prison and other places. There are good chances of all terrorist groups, Afghan-bred as well as ISI-encouraged, to regroup and these could be utilised by Pakistan against India despite the Taliban’s promise of not allowing their soil to launch attacks against foreign countries.
The silver lining has been the rise of a resistance movement in the Panjshir Valley, some 120 km north-east of Kabul, the only hideout not yet fallen to the Taliban. The resistance is led by former vice president Amrullah Saleh, a bitter critic of the deposed president who now calls himself the acting president, with the support of Ahmad Massoud’s forces joined by disgruntled soldiers of the Afghan national army. Ahmad’s father, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary Tajik fighter, was close to India during the Northern Alliance and remained a formidable force until he was eliminated by al-Qaeda two days before 9/11.
Would it help India to anymore adopt a ‘wait and watch’ approach? Geographically much closer to the theatre of conflict where the ‘Great Game’ of recent times is played out, India could be a target of Taliban-fomented excesses. It is time for India to calculate its present strategic options without being dictated by Western exigencies. At the cost of sounding clichéd, India has to take its decision keeping its national interests in view, and do that soon before the situation veers out of hand.
The writer is a retired ambassador.