Against the unholy alliance of Pakistan, the Taliban and Kashmir centric terrorist groups, the civilian-led government of Ashraf Ghani, however weak it may appear, is still India’s best bet to protect its interests in Afghanistan and its security concerns in Kashmir.
The Doha Agreement or Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan signed by the Taliban and the United States on 29 February 2020, though couched in reassuring tones and altruistic language, is in reality a face-saving exit strategy formulated by the United States to extricate itself from a quagmire that had turned increasingly ugly. The pact does little to mitigate the deadly instability that is certain to follow or guard against the negative geopolitical ramifications for the region that the critical void left by the US withdrawal will engender.
The aim of the Doha Agreement is to stymie a recurrence of terrorism under a resurgent Taliban, which in all probability will be a part of any intra-Afghan deal to govern the country; a worst-case scenario envisions a complete takeover of the country by the Taliban. Accordingly, the Doha Agreement states that “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan which is not recognized by the United States as a state and is known as the Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qaida, to use the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.”
But how this key stipulation will be enforced, monitored or verified has been inexplicably left open, handing the Taliban an expedient loophole to further its nefarious activities if it so desires. This is by far the most glaring deficiency of the deal.
In the context of the Taliban’s ascendancy how does India position itself to address its security concerns vis-a-vis terrorism spilling over from Afghanistan into Kashmir and protect its investment in that country? Should it shed its past inhibitions and talk to the Taliban? And what are the chances of a fruitful outcome in the event India does reach out to the Taliban?
These are the burning questions that cry out for answers.
To begin with, India has had a troubled relationship with the Taliban. The last time the Taliban were in power (1996-2001), there was a sharp increase in Afghan jihadi elements infiltrating into Kashmir. And in 1999, the Taliban was in the forefront of providing sanctuary and safe passage to the hijackers of IC-814 at Kandahar who had successfully negotiated the release of Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed; it was a humiliating experience that India must not forget or forgive.
Additionally, Kashmir-centric terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and Hizbul Mujahideen have had strong continuing bonds with the Taliban. As recent as April 2020, Afghan security forces killed 10 JEM members during a raid on a Taliban camp in Nangarhar, indicating that the two fight side by side.
The Haqqani group, which is one of the well-trained Taliban factions, has targeted several Indian consulates in the past and was responsible for the deadly Kabul bombing in 2008 that killed over 50 people.
Given its committed anti-India sentiments and inseparable ties with Kashmir centric terrorist groups, it is very unlikely that the Taliban will have a change of heart overnight and abandon these terrorists cold.
Even if some factions of the Taliban are eager to negotiate with India, the matrix of the Taliban with its disparate and unruly factions makes it almost impossible for a uniform policy to succeed or a top-down diktat to work.
And then there is the Pakistan factor. The Taliban are Pakistan’s Frankenstein created and sustained by Pakistan’s ISI. Pakistan maintains a stranglehold on the Taliban, acting as a puppeteer who pulls the strings. The Doha Agreement would not have come about without Pakistan’s approval.
As an indication of its tight oversight, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Taliban who signed the Doha Agreement on behalf of the Taliban, was once arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) in 2010 because he attempted to carry out unauthorized negotiations with Hamid Karzai, the then President of Afghanistan, indicating the tight degree of control that Pakistan exerts on the Taliban.
It would be naive to assume that Pakistan’s extensive investment—financial, logistical and military—to shore up the Taliban has a purely charitable intent. It is to further its all-consuming anti-India agenda. And a Taliban controlled Afghanistan facilitated by the Doha Agreement will specifically serve to camouflage its anti-India terrorist activity.
Abhinav Pandya, founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation, a security affairs think-tank, and the author of an upcoming book, Terror Financing in Kashmir avers: “However, because of the continuous pressure from the Financial Action Task Force, Pakistan intends to maintain plausible deniability, for which the U.S. withdrawal offers a golden opportunity. Islamabad is likely to shift most of the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir-based terror training camps to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, most likely to emerge as a safe haven for all kinds of jihadist groups. As per credible sources, they have already shifted some camps to Afghanistan. Further, the Indian establishment also fears, and rightly so, that post-U.S. withdrawal, Pakistan is likely to divert many battle-hardened and highly radicalized Taliban fighters to Kashmir. The process has already begun as Pakistan has been reviving Al Badr, a defunct terror group of the 1990s, in Kashmir since 2020. Al Badr has a strong base in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and reportedly has ties with the Haqqani Network, the sword arm of Taliban.”
Pakistan has too much at stake to allow even an iota of rapprochement between India and the Taliban. To claim that India’s outreach will embolden the Taliban to strike an independent path bereft of Pakistan’s influence (as some commentators assert) is nothing more than wishful thinking.
Realistically speaking, talks with the Taliban are a futile venture and unlikely to yield any results. But there can be no harm in India pursuing this line of thought as a lateral avenue.
Against this tripartite unholy alliance of Pakistan, the Taliban and Kashmir centric terrorist groups, the civilian-led government of Ashraf Ghani, however weak it may appear, is still India’s best bet to protect its interests in Afghanistan and its security concerns in Kashmir. Moreover, the current government in Afghanistan has some degree of legitimacy as compared to the Taliban that aims to usurp power by violent means.
Short of putting boots on the ground, India must continue to support the Afghan National Security Forces as it has done so far by training army personnel and supplying essential military equipment. In addition, it should initiate a broader diplomatic and operational initiative under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the United Nations to stall a violent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact consisting of countries adjacent to Afghanistan is especially suited to tackle this crisis. In fact, the SCO, earlier known as the Shanghai Five came into existence in the late 1990s to tackle the twin horrors of terrorism and narcotics trade emanating from the earlier Afghan civil war.
Multilateralism is an attractive and advisable option but challenging in the context of the SCO owing to the complex and differing interests of the major members especially India and China.
But an op-ed titled “Afghanistan will test SCO’s capacity” (GT, 15 June 2021) written by Andrey Kortunov, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council in the Global Times, which is the official publication of the Chinese Communist Party, offers a ray of hope. He calls on the SCO nations to sink their differences and embrace multilateralism to resolve the Afghan problem and prevent a radical Islamic government in Afghanistan.
He surmises: “On the other hand, from now on, the future of Afghanistan should be a matter of concern not for remote overseas powers, but for regional players around this country—such as Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, India and Central Asia countries. The ability or inability of these players to come to a common denominator on their respective approaches to Afghanistan will become the critical external factor affecting the country’s future.”
While we can continue to explore these options, we must realize that in the ultimate analysis we must be responsible for our own security without being dependent on external permutations and combinations. In short, a robust and advanced military preparedness along the entire perimeter of our nation is the only iron clad permanent guarantee for our security.