The Afghan quagmire and India's challenge
India's "non-official" participation in a multilateral conference in Moscow on November 9 on exploring the possibilities of a negotiated settlement of the crisis in terror-torn Afghanistan has set off a flutter in New Delhi. The flutter has also raised speculations about India's future Afghan policy because this was for the first time India was present at an international meet on the issue of peace and stability in Afghanistan which also had the presence of the Taliban. This clearly marked a break from its past. India made it a point to clarify that it was not sending its officials to attend the "Moscow Format" meeting on Afghanistan but sent two retired senior diplomats who are now associated with Indian government-funded foreign policy think tanks in New Delhi.
India's decision to depute two of its former diplomats to the Moscow meeting was a well-considered one and understood to have been taken in coordination with the Afghan government which too sought to distance itself from the event by not despatching its Foreign Ministry officials but sending only a delegation of the country's High Peace Council. Clearly, both India and Afghanistan took care not to give rise to any perception that they were ready as yet to accept the Taliban as one of the parties in the Afghan peace talks.
The Indian decision to attend what is being called the Moscow Format of talks on Afghanistan followed Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to New Delhi in October for the annual bilateral summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after which a joint statement had said that both India and Russia supported the Afghan government's efforts towards the realisation of an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned national peace reconciliation process. Interestingly, the US, which is having separate talks with the Taliban's Doha-based office, had sent an observer to the Moscow meeting. The question that arises: is India getting caught in the vortex of competition between Washington and Moscow for a leadership role in restoring peace in Afghanistan? The spokesman for India's External Affairs Ministry maintained that India did not decide to send the two retired diplomats to the Moscow meet under any "compulsion". Is Afghan peace in danger of falling a victim to US-Russia rivalry after decades of US-Mujahideen collusion during Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s?
India has for long stayed away from any multilateral engagement on the Afghan issue involving the Taliban's presence and opposed dialogue with the insurgent group. In the past, India has also rejected suggestions by the United States to engage with the "good Taliban", maintaining that any distinction between "good Taliban" and "bad Taliban" is grossly misplaced and self-serving. So, does the presence of India at the "unofficial" level in the Moscow meeting where a Taliban team led by Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai indicate a change in New Delhi's thinking?
India, no doubt, has high stakes in peace in Afghanistan for two primary reasons. First, the problem of terrorism and violence in that country have serious security implications for New Delhi. New Delhi has time and again pointed out to the international community that the Taliban leadership is operating from the territory of Pakistan, guided and aided by the Pakistani military establishment for years. This is a cause of worry for India as is Pakistan's tendency to view Afghanistan as a "strategic depth" in the event of a conflict with India. At the government levels, India and Afghanistan have repeatedly warned the world about the terrorism being sponsored from territories Pakistan across the Durand Line dividing the country from Afghanistan. What has raised further alarms in India is the presence of the Islamic State outfit in Afghanistan.
Secondly, India has over the years remained deeply invested economically and politically in Afghanistan, building several developmental projects in the latter and funding several welfare schemes that have a direct bearing on the life of the ordinary people of that country. India has so far given three billion dollars worth of assistance to Afghanistan including emergency food supplies. A number of Indian nationals had in the past been victims of the terrorists in Afghanistan either in the form of killing or kidnapping. The Indian Embassy in Kabul and India-aided projects in Afghanistan had been targets of terror. However, India has stuck to its use of soft power of developmental assistance to that country. In fact, India has so far refused to invest militarily in Afghanistan either by sending its army or defence hardware. New Delhi has supplied only a few helicopters to the Afghan army. Understandably, India does not want to get sucked into the civil strike in Afghanistan. But has the time come for India, which has global ambitions as a regional power, to rethink and blend soft and hard power?
The 17-year-old strife in Afghanistan has two main aspects: military campaign against the forces of terror, and developmental. For several years, it is clear that the military drive against the Taliban is not going anywhere. The security situation in Afghanistan has over the last two years worsened drastically with the areas of Taliban attacks expanding. Vast swathes of Afghanistan are slipping out of the control of Afghan security forces despite the presence of the US-led international armies, and the Taliban seems to be attacking most parts of the country at will. This has raised questions about the efficacy of the military solution to the Afghan problem.
There is a view in India that both New Delhi and Kabul should take note of the changing security situation in Afghanistan and of the growing recognition in international efforts of the need to engage with the Taliban in negotiations and perhaps give space to the latter in a future power structure in that country. Besides, the Afghan government had not too long ago made conditional talks and peace overtures to the Taliban, though it made the mistake of making those overtures not from a position of strength in the military campaign. It was, therefore, expected that the Taliban would rejected the government's moves.
No one is suggesting that the Taliban's diktats on the terms of peace be accepted. The Taliban's insistence on complete withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan as a pre-condition for peace talks is unacceptable because the Afghan security forces are far from equipped to deal with the situation arising out of this. India's Afghan challenge remains as complex today as it was 17 years ago when the Taliban was ousted from power in that country.
Pallab Bhattacharya is a special correspondent at The Daily Star.