Afghan challenges for India & Taliban factor
In the Afghanistan context, the present juncture can be characterised as the twilight hour embedding the deepest uncertainty. India cannot but be greatly concerned as it has indicated interest in being invested over the long term. It has unmistakable strategic interests in a geopolitical (and geo-economic) area that marks the junction of South Asia, West Asia and Central Asia.
India’s interest has lately been underlined in spite of the unsettling political and military situation in Afghanistan, which may well permit the return of the Taliban to the seat of power in Kabul. Indeed, India’s commitment to the people of Afghanistan was restated when earlier this month it signed the $300 million Shahtoot dam project that will provide clean drinking water to the once great city of Kabul, which has fallen on hard times in recent decades.
The Taliban, a strong politico-military outfit specialising in the terrorist method, are a special product of Pakistan, manufactured to permit Islamabad to have a long-term hold over Kabul. This is widely recognised. The Taliban leadership lives in Pakistan. Whether the Taliban will continue to be under Pakistan’s thumb over the long haul is a matter for the future.
Pakistan influences Afghanistan in deep, malignant ways as it has a long border with that country. Pakistan’s best friend China, now militarily and economically very powerful, also has a border with Afghanistan. India, on the other hand, does not, and is thus disadvantaged by geography.
And yet, it must remain engaged with Afghanistan. Whether the Taliban’s recapture of Kabul comes to pass or not, staying engaged with Afghanistan is India’s foremost challenge in the region.
New tools need to be devised. A new diplomacy with the friendly countries of the region, in particular Iran and Russia, which enjoy contiguity with Afghanistan (Russia via Tajikistan, where Moscow’s influence is paramount), must be envisioned. Indeed, the process of better gauging the Taliban, and forging the terms on which a relationship with this group can be reached, is also a part of the challenge for India.
The uncertainty in the Afghan theatre has been precipitated on account of the agreement reached by America’s erstwhile Trump administration with the Taliban one year ago this month. Under the Doha accord, all US troops must leave Afghanistan by May 1 this year in return for the Taliban cutting links with Al Qaeda. Alongside, the Taliban are enjoined to engage in an intra-Afghan dialogue in which the Afghan government is included. This is with a view to the formation of a government that will enjoy wide acceptability in the country.
The Taliban have, however, scuttled meaningful negotiations. They have instead unleashed violence on an unheardof scale, killing around 50 people daily over the past year, and engaging in targeted assassinations. The prognosis is dire. If the American forces pull out wholesale as planned, it is widely thought that civil war will break out. Armed factions are likely to emerge to resist the Taliban as the latter attempt to take control in Kabul with the help of Pakistan (and possibly China), while some groups may strike deals with the Taliban.
All eyes are on the new US administration of President Joe Biden. Will he stick to the timetable of withdrawal of American forces envisaged by his predecessor? Or will he, as many have urged, adopt a conditions-based approach whereby the US forces will persevere with a withdrawal scheme that will be guided by conditions on the ground and not by an artificial timetable.
The Afghans, and the regional powers, are naturally watching the situation closely. Iran and Russia, which carry considerable weight in Afghanistan, would want the Americans to withdraw soonest, but not in a rush. They fear that a hasty US pullout will inexorably pave the path for a quick Taliban or Pakistan takeover as other leading political and armed factions (over which Iran and Russia have natural leverage) will be disadvantaged if the Taliban cut through militarily, pre-empting a political process.
India — while it has commonalities with Tehran and Moscow on the Afghan issue — desires that the US ensure a smooth political process for the future governance of Afghanistan in which all participants, including the Taliban if they are interested, engage in political competition on the basis of an agreed Constitution, without resort to arms, in a sovereign, democratic, Afghanistan.
New Delhi has nursed such a goal for long but has done all too little to work in that direction. It practically found itself rooted to the ground for more than six months after the US and Taliban signed the Doha agreement in February 2020, uttering diplomatic pieties and doing little else.
India showed yet again that while it has influence in Afghanistan, especially with the people, it possesses little leverage. Lately, however, attempts are being made to change this state of affairs. To the satisfaction of the Ashraf Ghani government in Kabul, New Delhi actively engaged the United States and Nato to resist a precipitate military withdrawal and has shown other signs of engaging more deeply.
It may be appropriate to make mention in this context of the Afghan charge d’affaires in New Delhi, Tahir Qadiry, who worked with energy, and some foresight, in a most difficult moment to impress upon India to step up its act and be proactive to mobilise Afghan factions in the democratic direction even as the US-sanctioned Doha process (which may conceivably unravel) plays its music in a different register.
Kabul has not had an ambassador in New Delhi for more than two years and it fell to this young diplomat to fill a big gap. It is this spirit that saw in the recent period the arrival in New Delhi of senior Afghan personalities such as Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ata Mohammad Noor and others although the Covid-19 pandemic inhibited travel. The building of a viable consensus among the top political figures of Afghanistan is crucial in the context of a postUS Afghanistan.
India enjoys the goodwill to be a catalyst. But will it play that part? Zamir Kabulov, the Russian President’s special envoy for Afghanistan and a respected Kabul hand, is said to have noted wryly: “If India wants to come to the party, it must dance!” Perhaps preliminary steps have been taken in that direction. But it is still early days. What New Delhi must really prepare for is to remain on terra firma in the Afghan theatre even if the US troops pull out completely in the next two months.
Zamir Kabulov, the Russian President’s
special envoy for Afghanistan and a respected Kabul
hand, is said to have noted wryly: ‘If India wants to come to the party,
it must dance!’
India granted permission to overfly Indian airspace for the aircraft carrying Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan en route to Sri Lanka on Tuesday evening, news agencies reported. Permission was reportedly granted despite the fact that Pakistan had refused permission in 2019 on three occasions for Indian VVIP aircraft carrying President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to overfly Pakistani airspace.
The Pakistan PM reached Colombo on Tuesday evening for an official visit to the island nation. The external affairs ministry in New Delhi did not issue any comment on the permission that was reportedly granted.
Sources confirmed that Pakistan had officially sent its flight plan to India in advance regarding the aircraft that was to carry the Pakistan PM on his way to Sri Lanka, after which New Delhi granted permission for the same. The aircraft reached Colombo from Islamabad on Tuesday evening and flew over the waters of India’s Exclusive Economic Zone or in its vicinity on the flight path parallel to the peninsular Indian coastline, sources said.
Khan, who will hold wide-ranging talks with top Sri Lankan leaders including President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and PM Mahinda Rajapaksa on issues like trade, defence and technology, is the first government head to visit Sri Lanka since the
Covid-19 pandemic. It is his first visit to Sri Lanka after assuming office in
2018. His last visit to Sri Lanka was in
1986 when he was the captain of Pakistan’s cricket team during the acrimonious Test series where he accused the local umpires of bias.
Ahead of his visit, the Sri Lankan government cancelled Khan’s planned speech to Parliament, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is said the Parliament speech, due on February 24, was included in Khan’s itinerary at the Pakistan government’s request.
Cape Canaveral (US), Feb 23:
Nasa has released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface. The quality was so good — and the images so breathtaking — that members of the rover team said they felt like they were riding along.
“It gives me goosebumps every time I see it, just amazing,” said Dave Gruel, head of the entry and descent camera team. The Perseverance rover landed last Thursday near an ancient river delta in Jezero Crater to search for signs of ancient microscopic life. After spending the weekend binge-watching the descent and landing video, the team at Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, shared the video at a news conference on Monday.
“These videos and these images are the stuff of our dreams," said Al Chen, who was in charge of the landing team. Six off-theshelf cameras were devoted to entry, descent and landing, looking up and down from different perspectives. All but one camera worked. The lone microphone turned on for landing failed, but Nasa got some snippets of sound after touchdown: The whirring of the rover's systems and wind gusts. Flight controllers were thrilled with the thousands of images beamed back — and also with the remarkably good condition of the rover. It will spend the next two years exploring the dry river delta and drilling into rocks that may hold evidence of life 3 billion to 4 billion years ago. The core samples will be set aside for return to Earth in a decade. Nasa added 25 cameras to the $3 billion mission — the most ever sent to Mars.
The space agency's previous rover, 2012's Curiosity, managed only jerky, grainy stopmotion images, mostly of terrain. Curiosity is still working. So is Nasa's InSight lander, although it's hampered by dusty solar panels.
Deputy project manager Matt Wallace said he was inspired years ago to film Perseverance's harrowing descent when his young gymnast daughter wore a camera while performing a backflip. Watching the video "I think you will feel like you are getting a glimpse into what it would be like to land successfully in Jezero Crater with Perseverance,” he said.