India’s Options Are Limited In Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan And Delhi Must Play Its Cards Well

The Taliban triumphed on the Afghan battlefield as the US and other foreign forces packed their bags. It occupied the presidential palace in Kabul, called Arg, within nine days of capturing the first provincial capital, Nimroz. Afghan armed forces had abjectly given in, exhausted and demoralised. Dwindling domestic and foreign support for the Afghan government had added fresh wind to the Taliban’s sails. For the Taliban, the February 2020 Doha peace agreement embodied the US decision to abandon Afghanistan. The Taliban correctly surmised that the US stood def­eated and would not impede its march to Kabul. The desultory bombing by a few B-52s last week further confirmed the Taliban’s reckoning. Its quick campaign, comprising military, political, and propaganda components, culminated in outright victory.

While the Taliban postured that it was willing to have a negotiated settlement, for which a team headed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was present in Doha, it determined that the regime and constitution put in place by the US must go. Thus, the intra-Afghan talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which were tardy and had a difficult start, never stood a cha­nce. Before real negotiations could begin, the ground situation changed dramatically.

The state of play: President Ashraf Ghani had won the 2014 and 2019 Afghan elections fraudulently. An academic with poor governance skills, Ghani had written a book entitled Fixing Failed States. He ended up ‘fixing’ Afghanistan instead. Soon after becoming president, he went to Pakistan, where instead of first meeting the president or prime minister, he drove straight to the GHQ of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi in a failed effort to cut a deal to prevent attacks in Afghanistan by the Taliban. In recent months, he gambled on trying to get help from the chief of the Pakistan Army, General Bajwa, through the British chief of general staff, Nicholas Carter, seeking to remain the head of a transitional government in Afghanistan for six more months.

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While Afghan provincial capitals were capitulating to Taliban forces closing in on Kabul, the August 10 and 12 meetings in Doha, of the ‘extended Troika’ and the special representatives for Afghanistan respectively, were incongruently calling for the acceleration of the Afghan peace process. Significantly, unlike in their previous meetings, they did not reject the re-establishment of an Islamic emirate. The Taliban bided for time. Within 72 hours, with Ashraf Ghani fleeing, their capture of Kabul was complete.

The Taliban holds fundamentally contradictory objectives about the end-state of Afghanistan from a large portion of the Afghan people. It wants power without elections. It opposes the continuation of pluralist democracy. Its commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms is doubtful. It does not believe in gender equality. Even so, to secure recognition and continued assistance, it is projecting that it seeks an inclusive government that reflects the interests of all the ethnicities of Afghanistan.

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Has the Taliban changed? The Taliban is trying to project a moderate face. It wants to be seen as an entity with whom it is possible to conduct business. It is said to have learnt from its past mistakes—more narrowly focusing on a national agenda. However, its associate groups, such as the Al Qaeda, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, East Turkestan Islamic Movement, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), and Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM), are not. Moreover, at the ground level, their cadres interchange places. Targeted assassinations have been part of the traditional Taliban armoury. Now, vengeful killings have been added to it. It started with the massacre of surrendered Afghan military officers and men in Faryab. This was followed by the killing and mutilation of the body of Pulitzer-prize winning Indian photojournalist, Danish Siddiqui, in Spin Boldak and the execution of a Kandahar comedian, Nazar Mohammad. Now, contrary to the Taliban’s professions of amnesty and abjuring revenge, reports have begun trickling in from the provinces of the hunting down of opponents and executions.

Taliban leaders should reflect on why young Afghan men are putting themselves at risk of being crushed on the tarmac under the wheels of departing aircraft or dropping off the fuselage. They must restore confidence among the people. Girls and women must have the assurance that they can continue with their studies and work and will not be auctioned off to the highest bidder or forcibly married to Taliban fighters.

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Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who bec­ame the leader of the Taliban in July 2015, when it was discovered that Mullah Muhammad Omar had been dead for several months, was assassinated in a US drone strike in Pakistan 10 months later. Its new leadership comprises Maulvi Hibatullah Akhundzada, assisted by three deputies. They are Mullah Muhammad Yakoob, Mullah Omar’s son, Mullah Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha, and Sirajuddin Haqqani, whose father, the Mujahideen leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, aligned himself with the Taliban in 1995. Except for Mullah Baradar, everyone else has the reputation of being hardliners.

India followed the Afghan government’s lead in opening channels with the Taliban, reaching out to the Taliban when India’s external affairs minister participated in the September 2020 launch of the Doha intra-Afghan negotiations. India’s opening to the Taliban then became known and formalised. The early indications of the Tali­ban’s moves towards inclusivity seemed promising. The Taliban should feel confident that it will have India’s acceptance if it acts moderately and independently, in the int­erest of the Afghan people, and preserves some of the important gains made in Afghanistan since 2001.

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Engaging with the Taliban does not mean endorsing its philosophy. Many senior Taliban leaders know that the Haqqani network is of concern to India because of its ties to the Pakistani establishment. Steve Coll, in his recently published book, Directorate S, writes that the Haqqani network has been “a linchpin of ISI” for the past five decades. Afghan and American intelligence have held Sirajuddin Haqqani responsible for the Indian Embassy bombing in Kabul in July 2008. Equally of concern are LeT and HuM, both of whom had training camps in Afghanistan before 2001.

India’s Outlook: The end of India’s reticence in engaging with the Taliban should not mean showing its back to the Afghan people. India has goodwill across the political spectrum in Afghanistan and with ethnic communities in all parts of the country. India must continue to persevere in maintaining contact with its friends.

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Given that the Taliban’s ideological and organisational make-up are unchanged, it is hard to imagine that it has moderated itself. Hopefully, the people of Afghanistan remember the words of their sage-poet Sheikh Sadi, who wrote in The Masnavi: “Believe in God. Yet, before you retire for the night in your tent, do tie the camel’s leg.” Now that the camel is inside the tent, reining it in is going to be a challenge. The triumvirate attempting to negotiate with the Tali­ban—former President Karzai, former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the Head of the High Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah—have their work cut out.

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Will Taliban Once Again Harbour Al Qaeda?

That’s anyone’s guess, but American military officials are worried. In the peace deal signed with the US last year, the Taliban pledged to fight terrorism and prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a base for att­acks. But the US has little leverage to enforce that. Afghanistan’s former president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah, a senior official in the ousted government, met Anas Haqqani, a senior leader of a powerful Taliban faction who was once jailed and whose group has been listed by the US as a terrorist network—the Haqqani network. Its inv­olvement in a future government could trigger international sanctions.Technological advances over the past 20 years allow the US to target suspected militants in countries like Yemen and Somalia where it does not have a permanent troop presence. The Taliban paid a heavy price for their role in the September 11 attacks and likely hope to avoid a repeat as they seek to consolidate their rule. But earlier this year, the Pentagon’s top leaders said an extremist group like Al Qaeda may be able to regenerate in Afghanistan, and officials are now warning that such groups could grow much faster than expected. Afghanistan is also home to an Islamic State group affiliate that has carried out a wave of horrific attacks targeting its Shia minority in recent years. The Taliban have condemned such attacks and the two groups have fought each other over territory, but it remains to be seen whether a Taliban government will be willing or able to suppress IS.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Eye On The Camel’s Leg")

Source: AP

(Jayant Prasad is a former Indian envoy to Afghanistan. Views are personal.)