Kaput In Kabul

Telecom engineer K. Suryanarayana was perhaps a person who loved to take risks and challenge death. Nothing else could explain the decisions he took on April 28: he had purchased pylons from Khost province and hired a pick-up van, driven by one Waheed, to transport these to his workplace on the border of Helmund province. When they reached Qalat in Zabul, he inexplicably asked the escort vehicle to drive away. Suryanarayana then sat next to Waheed in the van.

Nobody knows where he went, or what happened to him. But the following day, back home in India, he had become news—Indian abducted in Afghanistan, TV channels beamed repeatedly. An Indian team was dispatched to secure his release.

On May 30, after more than 24 hours of nerve-wracking wait, the Indian consul general in Kandahar received a call from the governor of Zabul, informing that a headless non-Afghan body had been found in a ditch. It was the body of Suryanarayana; the severed head was found at a distance. His face had been disfigured, his body had no bullet wounds, contrary to the claims of the Taliban that he had been shot dead.

Perhaps it was a tragedy waiting to happen. For, Suryanarayana had become complacent about his security, believes the Indian team dispatched to Afghanistan. Employed by a Bahrain-based company, and sent to Afghanistan in January, Suryanarayana had once before ventured out of his camp without security. Then his car had broken down. Suryanarayana had been lucky to have survived that particular misadventure. In large parts of Afghanistan, no foreigner can venture out alone—and still hope to survive. The Indian team suspects local Taliban commanders, Alam Andaar and Syed Habib, abducted and killed Suryanarayana. Driver Waheed has disappeared.

Surprisingly, there was no note or message pinned to the dead body of Suryanarayana, as had been in the case of Maniappan Kutty, a driver with the Border Roads Organisation who was abducted and killed in November last year. Then his body, wrapped in a pink blanket, had arrived at the Indian consulate in Kandahar in a white-and-yellow station wagon. When the head of Kutty was lifted to stitch it back to his body, blood still dripped, suggesting he couldn't have been beheaded too long back. In his brown tunic was found a paper with a message scribbled in incorrect English: "India, this is not America, not India. This is Ifghanistan. Who comes here for bad means, we do this with him. Leave this Ifghanistan. Otherwise we will do a force full attack on you. This is warning for you. Because this war is between Taliban and America. You do not interfere." It was signed TALIBAN.

On the obverse side of the paper was drawn, child-like, a wireless telephone handset that was connected to what resembled a radio set. The possible message? Talk to us, through the radio. Kutty had been kidnapped on November 19 last year; his body had been received three days later, suggesting the Taliban had waited for someone from the Indian establishment in Afghanistan to contact them for negotiations.

The inability to contact the Taliban is proof of the poor ingress Indians have in Afghanistan. As India runs the risk of being too closely identified with the United States, and consequently considered legitimate target by the Taliban, lack of contacts in Afghanistan could adversely impact India's strategic interests there. Worse, the Americans are reluctant to allow Indian military presence, fearing it could upset the Pakistanis. All this could imperil some 2,500 Indians working in Afghanistan. "Afghan President Hamid Karzai is willing to provide utmost security. But practically, he can't do much, so poorly trained and ill-equipped are the Afghan forces," said a source.

India is involved in building a road between Delaram and Zaranj, enabling easier access to Afghanistan through the Chahbahar port in Iran. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police is providing protection to construction workers who are spread out in isolated camps (Minar, Gururi, Delaran) each separated from another by miles of uninhabited area. (Kutty was abducted at the time he was travelling in a Gypsy from Minar camp). There are roughly 135 ITBP personnel in Afghanistan, including those responsible for guarding the Indian embassy and four consulates. "You require greater numbers of security personnel," said a senior source. "We are very stretched."

But it's impossible to provide security to Indians who work for private companies. They are advised to register with Indian missions. But all that the missions can do is to sensitise them to the precarious security situation there and provide broad guidelines for personal safety—what they should or shouldn't do. Nor do consulates inspire confidence, saddled as they are with poor infrastructure. It's difficult to find government officials willing to volunteer for Afghanistan. Sources say the government could widen the net of recruitment through promises of better postings and assured promotions.

Indeed, the rhetoric of acquiring 'strategic depth in Afghanistan' is a hollow seminar circuit slogan. One of the consulates in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban are the strongest, is half the size of Pakistan's consulate there. This consulate doesn't even have a cipher operator, and possesses a solitary bullet-proof Ambassador car of uncertain vintage, prone to breaking down frequently; it has no landlines, it has three mobile phones which often don't work because the Pakistanis jam them. Astonishingly, these mobiles begin to work at the time an Indian is kidnapped. Guess the reason? Pakistanis want to track the event real time. You could say India's strategic depth in Afghanistan is surreal.