INDIA NEEDS TO SUPPORT AFGHANS BATTLING THE TALIBAN.

The Pakistan-backed Taliban will target India sooner rather than later, hence it is crucial for New Delhi to help courageous Afghans against the new government in Kabul.

Kabul has fallen again to the Taliban. Unexpectedly, so has the Panjshir Valley where the fabulous Ahmad Shah Massoud defied both the Soviets and the Taliban. Indeed more unexpectedly, India has stayed silent so far. 

 

It was in 1996 that the Taliban took over Kabul the last time around. Following a interpretation of extreme Islam, it unleashed a reign of terror in Afghanistan. It also exported terror to India. It transferred jihadi fighters in the form of the mujahideen to liberate Kashmir. 

 

There's one event that's etched in the memory of the region and must surely be unforgettable in the Indian knowledge. On December 24, 1999, five terrorists commandeered a aeroplane

 from India and forced the airman to fly it to Kandahar. The Taliban fighters girdled the aeroplane

 to help Indian military operations to deliver the hostages. 

 

India capitulated to the demands of the Taliban. It released Maulana Masood Azhar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Azhar went on to set up Jaish-e-Mohammed, a deadly terrorist group in Pakistan that's ignominious for striking the Indian congress and conducting the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Sheikh was arrested for kidnapping and boggling American intelligencer Daniel Pearl. Zargar has been transferring jihadis to Kashmir. 

 

India’s cession in 1999 is still a black mark on its character. The Taliban sees India as a soft target. It sees India as a land of kafirs who worship icons that need to be smashed. It's important to flash back that the Taliban blew up the major statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan in 2001 despite requests from Buddhist communities each over the world. In the eyes of the Taliban, India is a land of Hindus that oppresses Muslims and must be defeated, if not converted, to Islam. 

 

As in the 1990s, the Taliban is a clear and present peril to India. In August, India chaired the special session of the UN Security Council on Afghanistan. Yet India failed to take a position on the Taliban’s preemption of Afghanistan. No independent statement was forthcoming. 

 

Can India Go to Lose Afghanistan to the Taliban and Pakistan? 

It's an open secret that the Taliban have been nurtured by Pakistan. Ever since its birth in 1947, Pakistan has sought strategic depth against India. The great Mughal megacity of Lahore is simply 24 kilometers from the Indian border. India’s population, frugality and manufacturing capabilities stunt Pakistan’s. thus, Islamabad has always sought strategic depth by controlling Afghanistan. In the history, the Taliban have acted as auxiliaries to the Pakistani army and carried out multitudinous operations against India. The conduct of the Taliban and other jihadi fighters have given Islamabad presumptive deniability in its war of terror against India. 

 

The palm of the Taliban is a double- whetted brand for Pakistan. On the one hand, Islamabad has achieved its ideal of strategic depth. This time, the Taliban have indeed taken over the Panjshir Valley. On the other hand, this palm will addict Pashtun nationalism. Lest we forget, 15 of Pakistan’s population is Pashtun. This community was arbitrarily divided by the Durand Line into Afghanistan and British India in 1893. Pashtun chauvinists consider it a humiliating colonizer heritage and have noway accepted it. As Pashtun power rises, so does the trouble to Pakistan’s territorial integrity. 

 

Pakistan’s result to its Pashtun problem is to use an decreasingly extreme interpretation of Islam to tie the country together. In this interpretation of Islam, India is the bogeyman. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has constantly called the Bharatiya Janata Party a Hindu fascist party. He has damned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for leading a genocidal governance that kills innocent Muslims. This narrative seeks to unify the Pashtuns, the Balochs, the Sindhis, the Punjabis and other Muslim communities of Pakistan against India. The Pashtuns are lionized as the topmost fighters of the region and encouraged to fight a jihad against India for the emancipation of fellow Muslims in Kashmir. 

 

Ajit Doval is India’s public security counsel. In 1999, he negotiated with the Taliban for the release of hostages. He's well apprehensive of their designs. Yet India has espoused a delay- and- see approach to Afghanistan. Presumably, India wants to concentrate on its China border. Yet it's ineluctable that the Taliban and Pakistan will imminence India on the west. 

 

India must take a bolder stage against the Taliban now and not stay until the peril is at its door. New Delhi has failed to speak up for a democratically tagged licit government in Kabul. rather, it has accepted the preemption by the Taliban as a fait accompli. Like India, Afghanistan is a country with tremendous ethnical and artistic diversity. India is a good model for a unborn Afghan republic. 

 

India Can and Must Act 

In realpolitik terms, the Taliban is now dominant across Afghanistan. Indian policymakers might suppose that they can do little to intermediate. They don't have the force lines, military or intelligence wherewithal and political capital to operate in landlocked Afghanistan. So, dealing with the devil now in charge might feel to be the only realistic option. 

 

Yet numerous Indians forget that their country commands important soft power in Afghanistan. Afghans who don't support the Taliban have always looked up to India, not Pakistan, as a model for their country. So, support for Afghanistan’s democratically tagged government would strengthen India’s appeal among millions of Afghans. 

 

India could also consider supporting Afghanistan’s National Resistance Front( NRF) led by Ahmad Massoud. Historically, India has been more comfortable backing Amrullah Saleh, the former vice chairman who has declared himself as acting chairman of Afghanistan. still, Saleh is tainted by his association with Ashraf Ghani, the former Afghan chairman. Ghani has little credibility left after his flight from Kabul. He handed over the capital and the country to the Taliban on a server without indeed the pretense of a fight. Ghani’s character for corruption, arrogance and incapacity has made him a persona non grata in Afghanistan. Theanti-Taliban Afghans haven't forgiven Saleh for going along with Ghani, and he has thin support in the country now. 

 

In a clan- grounded traditional society, Massoud has surfaced as the altitudinousanti-Taliban leader. He's helped by the fact that he's the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud. MassoudJr. trained at the prestigious British military academe Sandhurst. He entered Kabul the day Ghani fled the country. Since also, he has put up a fight against the Taliban and is now leading a guerrilla force in Panjshir Valley. MassoudJr. has called for a public insurrection against the Taliban and is arising as Afghanistan’s stylish stopgap to take on the Taliban. 

 

It's in India’s strategic interest to back MassoudJr.’s NRF. The Taliban have won numerous battles so far, but they've yet to win the war for Afghanistan. Ethnical groups like the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Hazaras and others are bound to rally against their harsh, intolerant governance. numerous Pashtuns will join them. MassoudJr. needs backing from powers like India, Britain and the US to carry on the fight against the Taliban. else, this strict governance will inescapably export terror to the rest of the world again. 

 

Of all the world powers, India will suffer the most from the Taliban’s terror exports. Islamabad will direct the Taliban against India to save Pakistan and to retaliate New Delhi’s emancipation of Bangladesh in 1971. Indeed China has entered the fray in Afghanistan. Beijing has formerly hosted leaders of the Taliban and is willing to work with them. Russia is staying veritably quiet and there are rumors that it has made its own deal with the Taliban. 

 

With the US pulling out dramatically and chaotically, Afghans who opposed the Taliban for decades need support. Just as India formerly backed Bangladeshis, they must now help Afghans fighting the Taliban.