India's Afghan crisis

Its options have narrowed as the Taliban advances

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar’s back-to-back meetings on Afghanistan on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation take place this week against the backdrop of a crisis for India, created by an inchoate policy towards the country’s north-western neighbour. An ill-judged initial refusal to engage formally with the Taliban, the failure to build a viable politico-military opposition in anticipation of the US departure and a reliance on soft power has, in effect, delivered Afghanistan to Pakistan and its powerful sponsor, China. This much was clear from the steady progress of the Taliban from its bases in Pakistan towards Kabul to overthrow the hapless Ashraf Ghani government. Extraordinary assurances to Beijing from a brutal Sunni extremist leadership that it would not collaborate with the Uyghurs, the oppressed Muslim minorities on China’s north-eastern border, underline the emergence of a powerful alliance based on realpolitik with two neighbours with which India scarcely enjoys stable relations. The precipitous evacuation of Indian consular personnel from Kandahar in the face of the Taliban’s inexorable advance only served to exemplify the diplomatic vacuum in New Delhi.

Now, as Mr Jaishankar meets his Chinese and Pakistani counterparts and President Ghani together with the long-standing US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad in Dushanbe and Tashkent, the outcomes for India in the emerging political paradigms in Af-Pak appear hazy. Mr Jaishankar will be negotiating from a position of weakness on several counts. First, without a clear political objective or strategy, military intervention of any description can be ruled out. Second, India cannot count on closer ties with the US to influence the course of Afghan politics. The US has displayed its own narrowing options when it abruptly left the elected government of Afghanistan to the mercies of drug-financed extremists armed by Pakistan. Yet, the US is unlikely to retract its decades-long sponsorship of Pakistan, which serves its own multiple geo-political goals, best exemplified by its limp response to Pakistan’s transparent sponsorship of home-grown terrorists. Third, India’s own relations with Pakistan and China have touched new lows. The reinstatement of a ceasefire with Pakistan along the Line of Control remains precarious. In Ladakh, where the Chinese military made steady inroads in 2020, the agreement to de-escalate tensions and for Chinese troops to pull back along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) has been only partially effected.

With both countries, small signs of new aggression are emerging: The drone attack on Jammu and the digging in of Chinese troops along the LAC being two examples. Embedded in these pinpricks along India’s northern border is the threat of escalating terrorism as the Taliban approaches Kabul. With little clarity yet on Jammu and Kashmir’s post-Article 370 future, simmering political tensions in this Union Territory offer an open invitation to fighters from the Taliban ranks to sign up for the Pakistani security establishment’s programme of permanent destabilisation for the region. This could offer China an opportunity to advance its claims along the LAC. India may yet be in a position to play its traditional soft power card in Afghanistan but it would do better to rely on the hard power of augmenting military capability and, most of all, intelligence networks so that it is not caught on the wrong foot as it has repeatedly in the past. A low-intensity, two-front war is the least desirable outcome of the Afghan debacle.