Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra, 20 November 2021
India has been seeking a democratic, multi-ethnic and stable Afghan government as a safeguard against Pakistani influence as well as to serve its long-term trade and energy interests in Afghanistan and Central Asian region. Keeping with these objectives, India had lent unambiguous support to the post-9/11 US-led war against terrorism, sought to strengthen democratic institutions in Afghanistan by contributing to the post-War reconstruction efforts, looked for greater economic integration between South and Central Asian regions and backed Afghanistan’s membership in SAARC and relied on the instrumentalities of soft power to build a favorable image in the war-torn country. However, all these efforts did not yield any positive results and India’s Afghan stakes and concerns received hardly any attention at the regional platforms following American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is becoming clear that India is lacking requisite diplomatic capital at the regional level which could have safeguarded its interests and security in Afghanistan. While Pakistan became crucial to all regional formats of discussions on Afghan issues since the Taliban takeover in August, India’s presence was not even sought in most of the multilateral meetings because it did not share a land border with Afghanistan, for instance, the meetings hosted by Iran did not include India. Fortunately, in October, India was invited to a meeting hosted by Russia on Afghanistan although New Delhi was not invited by Moscow to an earlier meeting on Afghanistan in August. The meeting in October included the Taliban representatives and the Indian delegation officially met the Taliban team on the sidelines of the Moscow format talks.
India’s Invitation Missed the Momentum
While in a bid to avoid further marginalization, India hosted and invited other stakeholders to a Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan on November 10, Pakistan and China declined India’s invitation to attend the Security Dialogue hosted by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval.[i]
While New Delhi had expressed readiness to provide extensive humanitarian assistance to the Afghans and the Taliban expressed their willingness to receive the aid during the Moscow format talks in October, it refrained from inviting the Taliban to the meeting hosted by it perhaps because it considered invitation to a regime’s delegation for an official meeting was equivalent to recognizing that regime. Even while Pakistan has maintained its diplomatic relations with Afghanistan, it has not formally recognized the Taliban regime. Other regional stakeholders have also not extended their formal recognition to the regime although they invited the Taliban for talks such as Russia. New Delhi’s reluctance to engage the Taliban regime is likely to enhance Pakistan’s significance in the eyes of regional players. There are reforms on multiple fronts which the Taliban regime has to bring in ranging from representing other ethnic communities in government to respecting human rights including women’s rights in their bid for recognition. India could discuss all these issues from a position of strength as the Taliban, in its present appearance, have not been able to receive recognition. India needs to ensure that Pakistan is not able to use Afghanistan and Afghans to launch anti-India cross-border terrorist operations which it could be discussed proactively by engaging the Taliban. India could have discussed how Pakistan did not respond to India’s plans to provide wheat and other assistance to Afghanistan (which were discussed on the side-lines of the Moscow format talks). Pakistan did not allow its territory for Indo-Afghan trade in the past and now by declining India’s invitation to the dialogue it has sent India’s commitment to the cold storage.
Soft power is not enough
While it is claimed that India has a soft power presence in Afghanistan rather than hard power, it needs to be noted that the impact of soft power is limited and gradual and it can be effective in a relatively stable socio-political and economic environment. In a war-torn country such as Afghanistan where state institutions are weak, militant groups compete for power and people shift loyalties, soft-power becomes directionless. For instance, to promote democratic institutions and stability, New Delhi had committed more than $3 billion towards reconstruction of primary sectors of the Afghan society which included diverse areas, including infrastructure, communications, education, health care, social welfare, training of officials, including diplomats and policemen, economic development and institution-building. These were the sectors which were identified by the earlier Afghan government as priority areas of development. Through consultations with local communities, Indian aid projects aimed at generating goodwill among the Afghans. However, all these efforts looked futile with the Taliban’s rise to power. Under these volatile conditions, India needed to expand its soft-power resources to a larger region so that it could help evolve and engage other countries surrounding Afghanistan around common views and ways ensuring a stable and peaceful Afghanistan.
Its overreliance on the US strategy of Afghan war and peace contributed to India’s inability to engage other regional stakeholders on Afghan issues with which Washington shared adversarial relations. By the end of the first decade of the US-led Afghan intervention, India’s inability to engage regional powers in terms of evolving common understanding and approach on Afghan issues became perceptible. India was excluded from many important regional conferences from discussing security issues concerning Afghanistan. For instance, at two significant summits India was not invited for assisting in resolving the Afghan crisis, one the trilateral summit held in Islamabad for discussing future roles of Afghanistan’s immediate neighbours, and two, the security conference on Afghanistan hosted by Turkey.[ii] With the evolving Afghan realities many regional powers not only learned to maintain contacts with the Taliban, their perspective on Pakistani role changed too. In this context, underlining Moscow’s changed perspective on Pakistan, a Russian expert observes: “seeing Islamabad as part of the region’s problems does not help to advance the Russian goal of playing a bigger role in the region. The Kremlin finally decided that Pakistan must be part of the solution. The format of four-way cooperation with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan should help Moscow prepare for the eventual pullback of the U.S.-led forces from Afghanistan: engage Pakistan, return to Afghanistan and tighten Russian hold over the former Soviet Central Asia”.[iii] By the end of the second decade, cooperation among other regional players where India did not feature was frequently noticed. There were a series of trilateral meetings between Pakistan, Russia and China primarily aimed at combating the ISIS threat. During one of the trilateral meetings in Moscow, they agreed to remove certain Taliban figures from the US sanctions list and approved Islamabad’s hosting of a meeting of heads of intelligence agencies from Russia, China and Iran to beef up counter-terrorism efforts aimed at the threat posed by ISIS.
Any Indian strategy to expand influence beyond Afghanistan into Central Asia has to depend on Russia. However, Indian leadership failed to convince the Russian leadership how critical their partnership is to secure a stable Afghanistan and realize their common objectives. Second, New Delhi did not take serious steps to alleviate Moscow’s concerns as regards its closeness to Washington. Moscow expressed its concerns about Washington getting an increasing share in defense acquisitions by New Delhi. To India’s further disadvantage, Russia moved closer to Pakistan and described the latter as its ‘closest partner’ as well as expressed its inclination to seek Islamabad’s assistance to stem the flow of radical Islamism and drug trafficking into the Central Asian region – considered as its strategic backyard and made fresh commitments to supply advanced Sukhoi 35 fighters and MI 35 attack helicopters to Islamabad.
Similarly, there was palpable American pressure behind India’s vote against Iran’s nuclear program and India backed three US – supported resolutions against Iran in the International Atomic Energy Agency and enforced UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran. Later, India failed to take forward its partnership with Iran and develop Chabahar port as the Trump Administration rolled back the nuclear deal with Tehran and put up new sanctions. India’s strategic partnership with the US tacitly forced New Delhi to drag its feet from forging an independent policy towards Iran which led to sluggish efforts at carving out an alternative route to Afghanistan (India has been denied overland route to Afghanistan through Pakistan). Iranian leadership accused India of not fulfilling its commitment towards developing the port. India’s commitment to the port waxed and waned with the Trump Administration’s volatile approach toward the issue.
India’s inability to engage China on Afghan issues led to enhanced cooperation between China and Pakistan under the Belt and Road Initiatives (BRI). While China sought Pakistan’s assistance to extend the BRI to Afghanistan, Pakistan sought to Chinese assistance in the evolving peace process in the war-torn country. Pakistan being located at the crossroads between Central and South Asia has been inclined to see the Gwadar port and other interlinking projects under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), serve the purpose of establishing strong ties with the landlocked energy-rich Central Asian states. Pakistan and China have also developed alternative routes to Central Asia such as Pakistan-China-Kyrgyz-Kazakhstan Transit Agreement through Karakoram Highway, Khunjerab and China. Pakistan would like to see the revival of the Silk Route but without India being a part of it.
India and China share common concerns in Afghanistan and seek a stable and peaceful Afghanistan not only to safeguard their economic investments; they equally share the threat of spilling over of terrorism from unstable Afghanistan to Kashmir and Xinxiang regions respectively. However, their mutual adversarial relations ordained different roles in Afghanistan. Although some understanding evolved as to India-China joint partnership in economic projects and capacity-building in Afghanistan following a phase of downturn in relations in the aftermath of Doklam standoff, China was reported to have planned to extend the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to Afghanistan before engaging India in the joint economic partnership initiatives.
China not only acquired a mediating role in Afghan reconciliation efforts with Pakistani assistance, but Beijing also took concerted efforts at aligning the Afghan and Pakistani interests in Afghanistan by brokering strained relations between the two governments. China and Pakistan along with Afghanistan also launched a trilateral engagement at the foreign ministers level to discuss security issues about Afghanistan.
Engaging the Taliban
New Delhi’s reluctance to engage the Taliban proactively has been driven by a perspective that links the group to Pakistan’s training and aiding. India has failed to develop a coherent strategy to deal with the new regime which does not represent a monolithic structure. For instance, senior Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salem Zaeef, acting Afghan Defense Minister Mullah Yaqoob and many other Taliban leaders were not pleased with Pakistan’s backing of members of the the Haqqani Network as per certain reports. The Taliban regime did not hesitate to express its concerns about Pakistan fencing its border and argued Afghanistan had not agreed to recognize Durand Line as the international border. There are differences of opinion between Afghan Taliban and Pakistan over governance issues as well.
It has been argued that the Afghan Taliban under the late Mullah Omar were an indigenous movement unlike many other jihadi groups that undertook anti-Indian activities. Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid had said in an interview in 2010 that “the Afghan Taliban concentrate on Afghanistan. We have never taken part in any attack in India, nor do we attack anyone at Pakistan’s behest.” Former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar argued that India by taking an anti-Taliban stance had hindered its interests in Afghanistan. He said: “Mixing up the Taliban completely with the adversarial mindset of the Pakistani security agencies was equally wrong. Overlooking the indigenous roots of a home-grown movement was always injudicious”.[iv] Diplomat and politician Mohammad Sohail Shaheen remarked towards the end of 2019 that India’s fears as well as reservations over the Taliban’s intentions are not grounded in reality. He said: “It is not a genuine fear, it is not a reality. Why [should we] turn our fighters towards India when we need to reconstruct our country after its liberation? We need to have [relations] with other countries to help us in reconstructing and developing our country. We do not have any policy of interference in any other countries; rather, we want to have good relations with every global partner…”.[v] India’s proactive engagement with the Taliban along with simultaneous engagement with other regional players will lessen Pakistan’s influence over them. Pakistan may have overwhelming influence over the Afghan Taliban but India can only capitalize on the divergences and disparities within the group by remaining engaged with the group. The Taliban are not going to renounce their power, they may take time to bring in necessary reforms, change perceptions and get internationally recognized.
[i] S. Chari, NSA meet has a wishlist for Taliban. But some are pointless without China, Pakistan attending, ThePrint, November 12, 2021, Available at https://theprint.in/opinion/nsa-meet-has-a-wishlist-for-taliban-but-some-are-pointless-without-china-pakistan-attending/765013/
[ii] H. Iqbal, “Afghan Presidential Election and its Implications for the Region”, Regional Studies, Vol. XXVIII, No. 2, 2010, p. 75.
[iii] V. Radyuhin, “Changing face of Russia-Pakistan ties” The Hindu, September 9, 2010.
[iv] M. K. Bhadrakumar, M. K. “The Audacity of Afghan Peace Hopes”, The Hindu, February 4, 2010.
[v] “Afghan Taliban dismisses fear of attacks on India after US troop withdrawal, says neighbourhood’s support vital to rebuild country”, Firstpost News, October 15, 2019, Available at https://www.firstpost.com/world/afghan-taliban-dismisses-fear-of-attacks-on-india-after-us-troop-withdrawal-says-neighbourhoods-support-vital-to-rebuild-country-7499341.html