What should India do to support Afghanistan?

The Taliban seated at the desk of the President of Afghanistan, Presidential Palace, Kabul Afghanistan, August 15, 2021.

The Taliban have come into Kabul on August, 15, 2021 and the President of Afghanistan has fled to Tajikistan. As India celebrates 74 years of regained independence from the British Empire, Afghanistan has lost it’s brief freedom under a democratic government. While many will lay the blame of all this on the Afghan people themselves, others may find reason to understand that there was little chance of success as the Taliban was from the very beginning a U.S. and Pakistani creation gone rogue. Many in Pakistan are not overjoyed today, because they know the Taliban may indeed be supported by Pakistan but the flow of refugees is a strain on Pakistan. For Iran, the rise of the Taliban is not at all a good development, for it is a Sunni Radical Group not a Shia led movement. Even for China and Saudi Arabia the Taliban is not what it once was, the group has no function to wage war against the Soviet Union or to further the interests of the regimes in the same way as the past, the risk is too great that any engagement will backfire. For Saudi Arabia, India is now a large consumer of their energy exports, and for China the Taliban are a double edged sword, which may give them access to the Afghan Economy and resources but at the same time might also become a problem for their own supressed Uyghur Muslim Minority. The Taliban are a Bete Noir group even for those in Pakistan’s government who do not want a repeat of 2001. It is just a matter of time before the seeming victory in Kabul looks a lot different, for there are too many facts which will emerge over the next few months.

The Taliban breech the city limits of Kabul, August 15, 2021

For Afghanistan August 15, 2021 is going to be day that will not be forgotten, not because of defeat or victory, but because it was the day that democracy was not defended and theologists won. To say that Afghanistan could not have been democracy is simply ignoring the fact that 20 years of efforts were not unsuccessful, but rather they were insufficient to correct the policies of the past 95 years in regard to the region. The British Empire rather than graciously leave India, had to divide it as a balance of power move, for Indians demanding what was rightfully their own. There never would have been a partition of people who lived together for 10 centuries if they had been left to pursue politics of unity. The creation of Pakistan was to prevent India from becoming a Super Power in just decades, it went against the racist view which promoted the idea that Indians could not achieve, and that what India had been before the British Empire was just a figment of the Indian imagination.

Abdul Gaffar Khan with Mahatma Gandhi

Abdul Gaffar Khan with future Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Abdul Gaffar Khan was a Pathan, who fought in the Indian Freedom Movement as part of the Pan-Indian World, and regarded himself as part of this world. The division of the region is not a natural occurrence when looked at through the prism of long-term outlook.

For the even the end the British Empire could not come to terms with the loss of India nor it’s civilization. For how could be that Indians had once held the world’s largest economy in their grasp, and invented much of the basics of all modern mathematics. How could it be that the oldest works in any Indo-European Language, the Indian Vedas were found in India and the language of that time Vedic Sanskrit had been preserved flawlessly by them. How could it be that India was a multiethnic and religious nation long before Europe even dealt with the concept let alone the reality. For when people were accused of witchcraft in the West and burnt on the stake, India was led by an Emperor who questioned how it was even possible to dictate to another man how they should view the cosmos, for it came down to a personal choice which no Emperor had the right to decide for another person. That Emperor was Akbar, he was born a Muslim, but became a universalist, Afghanistan was under his rule just as seamlessly as North India, and this had happened before in the time of Emperor Ashoka in 260 B.C. on a larger scale. The idea of promoting harmony is harder task than division for self interest.

Displaced Afghans flooded Kabul, the Burqah will now be imposed on a generation of Afghan women who had never known this as mandatory.

The current situation in Afghanistan is hard to believe and really a student of history knows that when this happens, there is another story at play which is not transparent. The Afghan National Army had not been fighting Taliban but instead when any chance of victory came, Kabul ordered them to fall back. It is a replay of the last days of the Shah of Iran, and it is obvious this all was part of a deal to hand power back to the Taliban. Ashraf Ghani was allowed to leave Afghanistan safely to Tajikistan and this is similar to how the Shah of Iran departed, though in this latter case it was done better as even with information age, the clandestine escape was flawless.

Taliban, gives a woman 100 lashes for talking to a man.

India need not make any policy commitment today, the best thing to do is to observe and discern what has really transpired. The idea that 5000 accused terrorists were let out of a maximum security prison in Kabul by the Taliban, is a sign that the real deal will only become apparent in time. Letting such an event happen, is hard to be an accident. India’s interests may be different than those of Pakistan but peace is desired by a majority of the people of the region. Afghanistan being radicalized is not of benefit to any of the people of the Indian-Subcontinent. The situation on the ground in Afghanistan is not one which simply occurred, the U.S. has only shown that it has a pattern of apparent lack of credibility, both in intelligence gathering and analysis. To claim after 20 years, that the Afghan National Military could not defend Afghanistan simply does not seem credible at all. The idea of falling back and letting radicals take over seems to be the desired outcome, and though a lot of noise is made to the contrary the results speak for themselves. India really must consider it’s own interests and create a region which moves towards the principles of Secularism, Democracy and cultural preservation as a productive mechanism and not one of imagined realities. The disgrace unfolding today is truly enough evidence that the fate of the region cannot just be left to the wind and narratives which have no credibility.