Keep Taliban close, Afghan people closer
THREE-AND-A-HALF years after their takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban are no longer the only militant group to have wrested control of an entire country from its legitimate government. The Syrian Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is the second fundamentalist Sunni group, also a designated terrorist group, to take over a country. Somalia’s al-Shabaab was beaten back with Ethiopia’s help, else there might have been three of them, but it’s still not ruled out.
The difference between Afghanistan and Syria is that the world is lining up already at the door of the HTS leader and de facto head Ahmed al-Sharaa. The French and German foreign ministers were first up. Known better by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Julani, he has quickly shed his combat gear for tailored suits, and has talked down the extremism associated with HTS, and his own al-Qaeda past, allaying fears — at least for now — of a second Afghanistan, a theocratic state, though the last word on this is yet to be spoken. America willing, HTS may soon lose its terrorist tag. The US has already removed its $10-million bounty for him.
On the other hand, even by the duplicitous standards and shifting goalposts of geopolitics, no government has been able to find a good enough justification to put lipstick on the Taliban’s gender apartheid. So, while many countries have diplomatic engagement with the regime, and some have full-fledged diplomatic representation, the Taliban might yet be beaten by HTS to formal recognition.
In the end, it boils down to what the international community, and individual countries, decide to believe. At this point, India believes that the Taliban hold the keys to its security concerns on its north-western borders. That is why Delhi, which was silent on the Israeli strikes in Gaza that have now killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians, flattened homes, hospitals and schools alike, has found its tongue to condemn Pakistan’s December airstrikes inside Afghanistan, apparently aimed at militants of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but killed 45 civilians instead.
No doubt Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions helped the juices flow and set the stage for a “constructive” meeting two weeks later in Dubai between Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, the highest level of contact that India has offered the Taliban so far.
But let’s also keep our memories long. For all their apparent defiance of Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban retain many links to their first patron. Muttaqi, who grew up and obtained his Islamic education in Pakistan, and was part of the Balochistan-based Quetta Shura of the Taliban, continues to be personally invested in that country in several ways. So too other members of the de facto government.
Delhi’s channels to the Haqqani network, which is blamed for the 2008 bombing of the Afghan embassy, may be out of a spy thriller, and inevitable, given Sirajuddin Haqqani’s status as Afghanistan’s interior minister. But the arrivals at the new international airport in Khost in Haqqani land are... who exactly? The Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, based in Kandahar, is in touch with the who’s who of Pakistan. And despite the hostility, Pakistan’s links with sections of the TTP go back a long way.
So why did Pakistan take the extreme step of bombing Afghanistan’s border badlands? Those who have observed the Pakistan military for years believe that the Army chief, Gen Asim Munir, is desperate to rekindle US interest in the AfPak region, the Pakistan military’s cash cow for four decades until it dried up in the summer of 2021. ISI chief Muhammad Asim Malik’s very public visit to Tajikistan, where the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance is based, and his meeting with President Emomali Rahmon may have been another smoke-and-mirrors move that seems to have riled the Indian media more than anyone in Afghanistan. The Muttaqi-Misri photo op has similarly hit the intended audience. In the graveyard of empires, everyone is playing their own game, including the Taliban.
Engaging with the Taliban for the sake of India’s security is an imperative that cannot be trifled with. The question thus is not if India should be talking to the Taliban, but if it should be repeating the mistake it made in Bangladesh (and Myanmar) in Afghanistan? Or as Raghav Sharma, associate professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs, asks, does India have a blueprint for its engagement with the Taliban, and what the deliverables are? Simply put, there has to be a plan other than feeling good about having scored one over Pakistan.
Delhi’s dealings with the Taliban to the exclusion of what has been India’s invaluable strategic asset in Afghanistan — the people of that country — bring back the smell of all eggs in one basket. China’s robust presence in Afghanistan is ostensibly the other reason why India wants to be in Kabul. But it’s the Chinese now offering scholarships to Afghan students, while India’s pusillanimity on this front has prevented it even from inviting back those whose studies here were interrupted, after abruptly cancelling thousands of visas ostensibly on security considerations in 2021.
India may quietly take up its unfinished projects such as the Shatoot Dam for supply of drinking water to Kabul, which the Taliban have been asking Delhi to do for at least three years. Last year, the government sent engineers to run a check on the Indian-built Salma Dam in Herat. India does not have China’s deep pockets, but it has — or had — the goodwill of the Afghan people, and it is with them that it should be rebuilding bridges.
Every country in the West has made space for its friends and allies in Afghanistan, even while engaging with the Taliban at an arm’s length. India used to have some 40,000 resident Afghans at one point, most of them students. Not one was a security threat. Now, they are down to a few thousand here. Some went back to their uncertain destinies in Afghanistan, while others got third-country visas, puzzled and disappointed by India’s rejection.
Losing the Afghan people to Pakistan, China, Turkey, Iran or countries in Europe should be a far bigger concern for India than the ISI chief’s visit to Tajikistan.
India, which reopened its mission in Kabul in 2022 with a ‘technical team’, should accept the Taliban’s appointments to its diplomatic missions in Delhi, as it has already done in Mumbai, but it should also reopen its doors to Afghans. Citing security fears for not processing Afghan visas is as good as saying that Indian security agencies are incompetent. The Taliban want India to start issuing visas. Delhi could start by inviting Afghan women to return to their studies here, gently hinting to the Taliban to learn from HTS. Indians imagine their country as part of the “great game”, but great games are not for timid players.