Getting India back to the Afghan high table
Paper : Prelims: Current events of national and international importance.
Mains: General Studies- II: Governance, Constitution, Polity, Social Justice and International relations.
Context:
- New Delhi’s Afghan policy needs changes and must include openly talking to the Taliban and all other political groups.
- India’s foreign and security policy planners had anticipated developments in Afghanistan they would have pursued nimble approaches, seeking to establish open connections with all its political groups, including with those perceived to be in Pakistan’s pocket.
How has Afghanistan reciprocated India’s such unqualified backing?
- The United Nations Secretariat organised a meeting on Afghanistan where it invited the six-current physical neighbours of Afghanistan—China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
- In addition, invitations were extended to the United States, Russia and the Ghani government. Obviously, Mr. Ghani did not condition his participation on India’s inclusion.
- He should have done so if only for the constructive role New Delhi has played in Afghanistan’s reconstruction since the Taliban were ousted from the country in 2001-2002 after 9/11.
- Also, for consistently supporting him.
- If Indian policymakers had adequately pondered on Afghanistan’s stance, they would have recalled his position on India in the immediate aftermath of assuming the leadership of the National Unity Government brokered by the Americans in September 2014.
- Hence, it is not surprising that he did not bat adequately for India to become part of the meeting called by the UN. Indeed, if all his fine words of India’s importance to Afghanistan were actually true.
What truly cut India more to the quick was the U.S. going along with India’s absence?
So much for the personal chemistry of the leaders of the two countries.
- The day after the meeting, Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. point man on Afghanistan and the architect of the Taliban deal, spoke to India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar to assuage hurt sentiments.
- But the balm of good words cannot obscure the basic fact that the U.S. acts to promote its interests in Afghanistan.
- It obviously expects that if in doing so Indian interests are exposed, India will protect them as best as it can.
- Despite India’s contributions to Afghanistan’s economic development — and these are undeniably significant covering large parts of the country, and are popular — as well as its long history of contacts with that country, it does not have a place in international diplomacy on Afghanistan.
- when it comes to international efforts, India yet does not have a role that it could.
- Clearly, as the most significant power in the region, India should have ensured that it had a place on the table and should have devised ways to achieve that end.
- This is especially so because Afghanistan impacts on India’s interests, especially its security concerns.
The Taliban and Pakistan
- The U.S. is currently crucially dependent on Pakistan for the successful implementation of its Taliban deal aimed at securing as orderly a withdrawal as possible from what is a major strategic reverse for the world’s pre-eminent power is not in doubt.
- In such a situation, it was essential for India to have maintained its strong links with the Afghan government, built and supported its traditional Afghan allies — perhaps this was discreetly resumed — but also establish open lines of communication with the Taliban.
- This was especially because they were informally conveying that India should not consider them as Pakistan’s puppets and also because they had gained international recognition.
- Contacts and discussions do not mean acceptance of their ways or that their professions of not being Pakistan’s stooges should not have been tested.
India’s Afghanistan policy:
- The United Nations Secretariat held a meeting of what it calls the “6+2+1” group on regional efforts to support peace in Afghanistan.
- The group includes six neighboring countries: China, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; global players the United States and Russia, and Afghanistan itself.
- India was conspicuous by its absence from the meeting on April 16, given its historical and strategic ties with Afghanistan.
- This has not happened for the first time; India was left out form talks similarly in 2001 and 2010.
- In both 2001 and 2010, however, India fought back its exclusion
- At the Bonn agreement of 2010, India played a major role in Northern Alliance accepting Hamid Karzai as the Chairman of the interim arrangement that replaced the Taliban regime.
- After the 2010 conference, New Delhi redoubled its efforts with Kabul, and in 2011 India signed the historic Strategic Partnership Agreement, which was Afghanistan’s first such agreement with any country.
Reasons for not inviting India
- In 2020, the reason given for keeping India out of regional discussions on Afghanistan was ostensibly that it holds no “boundary” with Afghanistan.
- But in fact, it is because New Delhi has never announced its support for the U.S.-Taliban peace process.
- As planners in South Block now consider their next steps in Afghanistan, they must fight back against the idea that any lasting solution in Afghanistan can be discussed without India in the room, while also studying the reasons for such exclusions.
Following are the issues that Indian must consider and act on as it seeks to fight back its exclusion from the peace talks.
India’s position on Afghan-led peace process and reality
- India’s resistance to publicly talking to the Taliban has made it an awkward interlocutor at any table.
- Its position that only an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned, and Afghan-controlled process can be allowed is a principled one but has no takers.
- The Ashraf Ghani government does not lead, own or control the reconciliation process today, comprising the U.S.-Taliban negotiation for an American troop’s withdrawal, and intra-Afghan talks on power-sharing.
- The U.S.-Taliban peace deal means that the Taliban, will become more potent as the U.S. withdraws soldiers from the country.
- Taliban will hold more sway in the inter-Afghan process as well, as the U.S. withdraws funding for the government in Kabul.
Two effects of India’s position
- New Delhi’s decision to put all its eggs in the Ghani basket has had a two-fold effect:
1) Its voice in the reconciliation process has been limited.
2) It has weakened India’s position with other leaders of the deeply divided democratic setup in Kabul such as the former chief executive Abdullah Abdullah.
Regain upper hand in the narrative in Afghanistan
- While many of these are problems of perception, New Delhi must move swiftly to regain the upper hand in the narrative in Afghanistan.
- India has provided the assistance of more than $3 billion in projects.
- Bilateral trade is about $1 billion.
- A $20 billion projected development expenditure of an alternate route through Chabahar.
- And support to the Afghan National Army, bureaucrats, doctors and other professionals for training in India should assure it a leading position in Afghanistan’s regional formulation.
- Three major projects along with hundreds of small development projects (of schools, hospitals and water projects) have cemented that position in Afghan hearts nationwide, regardless of Pakistan’s attempts to undermine that position, particularly in the South.
- The three major projects include 1) the Afghan Parliament, 2) the Zaranj-Delaram Highway, 3) the Afghanistan-India Friendship Dam (Salma dam).
Pursue opportunities to fulfil its role in the peace efforts
- India must also pursue opportunities to fulfil its role in the peace efforts in Afghanistan, starting with efforts to bridge the Ghani-Abdullah divide.
- India could also play role in bringing together other major leaders with whom India has built ties for decades.
- It would be an utter tragedy if the Taliban were to enter the government in Kabul as the U.S. deal envisages, to find the opposing front collapse as it did in 1996.
- An understanding between Iran and the U.S. on Afghanistan is necessary for a lasting peace as well, and India could play a mediatory part, as it did in order for the Chabahar project.
Conclusion:
- It is sad that despite all that India has done in Afghanistan over the past 18 years since the Taliban were ousted from Kabul in 2001, it finds itself on the margins of international diplomacy on Afghanistan.
- It is reminiscent of the time in the 1990s when, at Pakistan’s insistence, India was considered a problem and kept out of crucial global forums on Afghanistan. It did not matter then because along with Iran and Russia, it kept the resistance to the Taliban.
- India needs to take corrective diplomatic action even at this late stage, and even in the time of COVID-19.
- It must begin openly talking to the Taliban and with all political groups in the country.
- It must realize that its Afghan policy needs changes.