Pak threat brings India, Taliban closer

THE Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) paid a price for the week-long visit of its Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to India. Within hours of Muttaqi’s arrival in New Delhi, Pakistan carried out attacks on Kabul, targeting the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The Taliban retaliated two days later, resulting in vicious military clashes and about 250 deaths along the Durand Line. Although skirmishes have continued, major military operations have ended following mediation by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan was triumphant when the IEA was established. The Economist described the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan as a “strategic setback and stinging humiliation” for India. By inviting Muttaqi, India has advanced the calibrated, step-by-step normalisation of its relations with Afghanistan. External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar announced the upgrading of India’s Technical Mission in Kabul, established in June 2022, to the status of Embassy of India. New Delhi decided to engage with the Taliban as they consolidated their power.

India had no presence in Afghanistan during the previous Taliban rule and wanted to prevent a hiatus in the India-Afghan contact. Moreover, encounters in Jammu and Kashmir involving Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed operatives have revealed their use of US-made M4 and M16 rifles. It becomes necessary, therefore, to keep engaging with the Taliban to ensure that anti-India terror groups do not use Afghan territory.

Besides humanitarian and relief supplies, India has decided to recommence development cooperation projects, especially in healthcare, public infrastructure and capacity-building. The joint statement noted that while online scholarships continue, the pursuit of studies by Afghan students at Indian universities under the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and other scholarship programmes is under active consideration.

The EAM announced that India introduced a new visa module for Afghans in April and that “we are now issuing a greater number of visas, including in medical, business and student categories” — a long-standing Afghan demand. There is potential for greater cooperation in water management, irrigation and mining. To promote trade, airfreight corridors connecting Delhi, Mumbai and Amritsar to Kabul and Kandahar will begin operating soon.

Muttaqi received a tumultuous welcome when he visited Darul Uloom Deoband, which also led to a controversy in India. There is a close connection between the Sufi traditions of India and Afghanistan and of the Taliban with Deoband, which was opposed to the Partition and remained focused on education and religious teaching (the Pakistani Deobandi madrasas deviated from the Hanefite moorings of Deoband and turned to Wahabbism and Salafism). The most popular Sufi tradition followed in South Asia, the Chishti Silsilah, has its roots in Chisht-e-Sharif, near the Hari Rud India-Afghanistan Friendship Dam. Mujahideen leader and former head of the Naqshbandi Sufis, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, had more of his ancestors buried in India than in Afghanistan.

There were two sideshows during Muttaqi’s visit. The first was the public relations disaster for the IEA that followed his first press conference at the Afghan Embassy, which excluded women journalists. The Press Club of India “strongly condemned” such exclusion, and the Editors Guild of India called the decision “blatant gender discrimination on Indian soil”. Muttaqi had received women journalists before, in Dubai and Moscow. He made amends and held a second press conference, in which women journalists were not just numerous, they occupied the front rows and asked blunt questions.

The second was the escalating Afghanistan-Pakistan conflict. Muttaqi said Islamabad had been wrongly accusing Afghanistan of helping the TTP carry out strikes against Pakistan, which must set its house in order instead of blaming the Afghans. The Taliban and the TTP have organisational as well as ideological linkages and have fought together. They believe that if Pakistan considers an Islamic Emirate to be good for Afghanistan, it should be an equally rational choice for Pakistan.

The Taliban have always been wary of Pakistan. One of their co-founders, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaef, noted his assessment of Pakistan and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in his autobiography, My Life with the Taliban. He called Pakistan a “two-faced country” and described how the ISI has spread in Afghanistan “like a cancer which puts down its roots in the human body”. Zaef added that the ISI was famous in Taliban circles for its treachery: “It is said that it can get milk from a bull”.

There has been criticism about India welcoming the representative of an Islamist regime. The Taliban’s head, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada, has reasserted a harsher orientation of governance, vindicating the charge that the Kandahar-based senior Taliban leadership is composed of misogynists and ethno-nationalists. Women have disappeared from public life in Afghanistan. Girls cannot study beyond middle school. In the face of aggressive questioning by women journalists, Muttaqi conceded that education for girls is not ‘haram’, but did not say when they would be allowed to return to schools and universities.

The Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, in his latest report to the United Nations General Assembly, describes the repression of girls and women in Afghanistan as a crime against humanity, while the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against the Taliban head and the Chief Justice. Yet, one of the tireless crusaders for human rights in Kabul today, Mahbouba Seraj, realistically believes that to improve the situation, there is no alternative to engaging with the Taliban.

India must now fulfil its promises if its people-to-people relations with Afghanistan are to thrive. Although the Indian visa policy for Afghans has been liberalised, very few visas have been issued, and the processing time is inordinately long. Provision must be made for emergency business and medical visas. India should also revive granting visas to children sponsored by the Afghan Red Crescent Society for all-expenses-paid surgeries in Indian hospitals to treat congenital heart disease. When revived, the ICCR scholarship scheme must include a high percentage of women.

So far, only Russia has formally recognised the IEA. More countries, including India, are likely to move to normal, state-to-state relations with Afghanistan as soon as the Taliban take steps towards more inclusive governance and the observance of human rights, including women’s rights. As the Indian Embassy in Kabul begins functioning, the IEA will send its diplomats to the Afghan Embassy in Delhi. Even so, the black-red-green tricolour of the Islamic Republic will continue to fly atop it for some more time.

Jayant Prasad is ex-Ambassador to Afghanistan.