The Afghan theatre and judging India’s responses

Closing the embassy in Kabul does not fall among the questionable decisions in the country’s foreign policy stance

August 30, 2021 12:02 am | Updated December 04, 2021 10:29 pm IST

Business meeting, discussion. Teamwork activity. People around the table. Vector illustration. EPS 10

Business meeting, discussion. Teamwork activity. People around the table. Vector illustration. EPS 10

The Government’s decision to pull out all staff from the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, including the Ambassador, has come in for much adverse comment among analysts and experts. It is argued that all major powers, including China, Russia and Iran, have maintained their missions. We would have been of much better help to our citizens and others had we remained there instead of packing our bags and leaving in such haste. At the least, it is said, we ought to have had a consular office at the airport, such as the one said to have been kept by the Americans. Some have even stated that the Taliban had requested India to maintain its embassy, meaning thereby that they had assured us of safety. This is a brief summary of the views of those critical of the Government.

Where India stands

This writer has no means of verifying whether or not the Taliban had made such an approach to the Government and would not like to second-guess its decision. But it seems to me, that on balance, the Government was justified in taking the decision that it did.

 

First, India is not a major power, particularly when it comes to Afghanistan. We have not followed an independent or national interest-based policy towards the events in that country. This is true also of the previous Government. We have let the Americans decide our actions. To reiterate, we have never been a major player in Afghanistan. All we did was to support whatever government was installed in Kabul by the United States, first that of Hamid Karzai, and then Ashraf Ghani.

Putting all the eggs in the Ghani basket was wrong. He might have been a good academic and authority on developing countries, but he was not a statesman or a good administrator, besides being corrupt and tolerating corruption on a massive scale. Also, he was not a free agent, having to do America’s bidding all the time. We poured money — $3 billion worth — in small and medium projects across the country, which has undoubtedly earned us goodwill among the people of Afghanistan. But that did not earn us any role in the political consultations or so-called reconciliation negotiations among the stakeholders.

Feelers to the Taliban

In other words, India has not been a relevant player in whatever mattered most in relation to Afghanistan.

 

Criticism of the Government for not engaging the Taliban, not establishing contacts with them, is fully justified. It is reported in the media that the Government did engage the Taliban of late; the Government has not denied this claim. However, if it did begin talking to the Taliban, it was too little, too late.

We should have been open about it and established contacts at the senior level of the Taliban. Other powers did — China, Russia and even Iran, a Shia-majority country openly talking to a Shia-hating Sunni terror group. Even America started talking, openly, without feeling in the least embarrassed, to the Taliban at the senior level; this is the terrorist group which is estimated to have killed 2,500 American military personnel since 2001.

We were obviously not wanting to upset Ashraf Ghani. We could not talk to the Taliban because they refused to talk to the Government. As Ambassador Vivek Katju has argued, engaging does not imply endorsing. This was a serious lapse. We have to talk to people whom we may find distasteful to talk to, whether it is Pakistan, China or the Taliban.

 

Even if we had had skeleton staff for consular work, how would those needing consular help have approached them? Nobody wanted to risk going out, everybody was afraid of gun-toting Taliban fighters. Online help? That could be extended from anywhere. Now, the Government has even cancelled all the visas issued so far; not a convincing way to render consular assistance.

If the Taliban did give an assurance of safety and requested us not to close the embassy, how could we rely on their word? Did we, do we, have the means to force them to keep their word? The Americans have; they can still cause a huge amount of harm to the Taliban; they have assets on the ground to do so, and which they are not able to deploy fully to protect their people.

The other groups

And it is not just the Taliban. There are other groups in Afghanistan that are inimical to India — the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, as well as the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK, or ISIS K) . The Government had possibly intelligence about the threats posed by these groups. It is reported that they provided thousands of fighters to the Taliban in their jihad against foreign forces. They are a potent threat to us now, also perhaps to the Taliban as demonstrated by the horrific suicide bombing on August 26 which took the lives of at least 13 American military personnel and many more Afghans. Even if one of our citizens had been killed, there would have been an outcry.

 

Foreign policy approach

One can criticise the Government for some approaches it has followed in foreign policy, for example aligning so closely with America which has, in turn, has caused the Russians to be unhappy with us and which has led them to move closer to our enemy, China. Giving such huge importance to the Quad (composed of the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan) is also a questionable decision; the Quad is an American manoeuvre to contain China; it is an unabashedly anti-China arrangement which perhaps we ought not to have embraced so enthusiastically. But closing the embassy in Kabul does not fall among the questionable decisions.

Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, Indian Foreign Service (retired)

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