UNEASE OVER US TROOP PULL-OUT FROM AFGHANISTAN

External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday reiterated deep Indian unease with the US’s plan to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan for “political expediency”.

The gains of the last 20 years in Afghanistan, during which an entire generation of Afghans grew up not knowing what the previous years were like, is “something worth protecting, defending, nurturing” and they should not be “lightly sacrificed at the expediency of politics of the day”, Jaishankar said in a virtual conversation with former US National Security Adviser HR McMaster, who was one of the Trump administration’s most ardent advocates of stronger ties with India. McMaster is now with the Hoover Institution, an arm of Stanford University.

“I think people do worry about what would happen if things go bad,” Jaishankar added from New York, citing conversations he has had with counterparts around the world, especially in Europe, about the future of Afghanistan post US withdrawal without settling the key issue of who will be in charge.

On April 14, President Joe Biden announced that all US troops will be out of Afghanistan by September 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that led to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, in search of the perpetrators, al Qaeda leaders, and operatives sheltered there under the protection of the Taliban regime.

India has a place at the table in America’s post-pullout plan, as detailed in the leaked letter from secretary of state Antony Blinken to President Ashraf Ghani.