Need to safeguard progress made in Afghanistan: India
NEW DELHI: Against a backdrop of growing concern and uncertainty about the US-Taliban deal, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said on Monday that western powers should ensure the achievements of the past 18 years in Afghanistan aren’t jeopardised.
Worries about the agreement signed by the US and the Taliban in Doha on Saturday have been growing in New Delhi, especially as the deal talks of the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan over the next 14 months without, what experts say, are adequate guarantees from the terror group.
Asked about the deal during an event organised here by the Centre for Policy Research, Jaishankar said: “To the US and to the West, our message has been that the achievements of the last 18 years, it is in the global interest that those achievements are secured and protected, they are not jeopardised in the process of whatever they do.”
He contended recent events hadn’t come as a surprise because “everybody knew something like this was happening”. Only time will tell, he said, how the US goes about reducing its presence and backing the Afghan government and security forces.
Jaishankar highlighted several issues to which there were “no clear answers”, such as cohesion among different stakeholders and whether the Taliban will join a democratic set-up.
“There is a lot of interest in various countries that the neighbours of Afghanistan and those who have interests there also play some role,” he said, referring to India’s stakes in that country.
People familiar with developments and diplomats of several European countries said they believed the deal didn’t go far enough to address counter-terrorism concerns.
In New Delhi, the concerns have centred round reports that some 500 fighters of Pakistanbased Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) have been moved into Afghanistan.
The LeT was formed at Kunar in Afghanistan and has longstanding ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and its fighters could pose a threat to Indian interests, the people cited above said.