India and the Taliban: It’s Yesterday Once More

The Taliban’s capture of Kabul is a huge setback for India’s influence, interests, and ambitions, not just in Afghanistan but in Central Asia as well. In addition, there is concern in India that the Taliban’s victory will embolden anti-India terror groups active in Jammu and Kashmir.

India has had a hostile relationship with the Taliban. New Delhi did not engage with the group when it was in power in the 1996-2001 period, nor in the ensuing 20 years it was out of power. Unlike many countries, which established ties with the Taliban, especially after it became clear that the group could not be defeated militarily and would be part of a future power structure in Kabul, India still avoided reaching out to Taliban leaders.

It was only in recent months that Indian officials may have reached out to Taliban leaders. While India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has not confirmed any engagement with the Taliban, a recent statement by the MEA that it is talking to “various stakeholders” in Afghanistan suggests that New Delhi might have opened some communication channels with the Taliban.

However, it is unlikely that this eleventh hour outreach will make things less difficult for India in Afghanistan as the Taliban settle into power in Kabul.

Underlying India’s longstanding reluctance to engage the Taliban is its perception of the group as a Pakistani proxy. New Delhi has often accused the Taliban and the Haqqani Network of attacking Indian nationals, diplomatic missions, and projects in Afghanistan on the orders of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). These attacks were seen in New Delhi as aimed at scaring India into downsizing its presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan was keen on.

As for the Taliban’s perception of India, this has been largely shaped by its patron, Pakistan. Dependent on Pakistan for sanctuary and other support, Taliban leaders avoided ruffling the ISI’s feathers with any outreach to India.

Importantly, the Taliban resented India’s close relationship with the Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani governments.

India was a strong supporter of the post-2001 governments in Kabul. It participated in a big way in Afghanistan’s reconstruction, investing around $3 billion in a slew of infrastructure projects that included dams, roads, and power stations. It also played a major role in capacity building; it trained thousands of Afghan civilian and military officials, and journalists, too. Thousands of Afghan youth benefited from scholarships to study in India.

Although Indian soldiers did not join the U.S.-led coalition forces to fight the Taliban, India did provide the Afghan government with weapons. This drew the Taliban’s ire.

Now that the Taliban are in power and Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan is poised to rise, India fears that its influence and interests in the country will be undermined. The Afghan-India Friendship Dam came under repeated fire as the Taliban advanced across Herat province over the past month. India is concerned that its projects, built at huge cost to the country, will be destroyed by the Taliban.

A friendly government in Kabul and a stable Afghanistan are necessary for India to fulfill its ambitions in Central Asia more broadly. With the Taliban in power, India’s plans to access Central Asian gas and markets through Afghanistan are in shambles.

Lacking overland access to Afghanistan and Central Asia – as Pakistan does not allow Indian cargo to move through its territory to these landlocked countries – India looked for another route to reach the Central Asian states. That alternative route was via Iran and Afghanistan. New Delhi funded and developed a deep-sea port at Chabahar in Iran. India, Iran, and Afghanistan signed a trade and transit agreement. With the Taliban in power, the Chabahar port has become a “dead investment,” as Sanjay Kapoor wrote recently in Scroll. India’s dreams of large-scale trade with Central Asia have been dashed.

With business at Chabahar expected to decline, business at Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which is on lease to China, is poised to boom. It will provide a boost not only to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) but also to China’s plans to extend CPEC into Afghanistan. Along with Pakistan, China’s influence in Kabul is poised to grow.

The victory of the Taliban will come as a morale boost to jihadist and Islamist groups around the world. The message going to Kashmir from Afghanistan will be that if the Taliban could defeat a superpower, it shouldn’t be difficult to defeat the Indian armed forces.

The Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan will be interpreted in Pakistan as a victory for its long-standing strategy of using terrorists to further its foreign policy and security goals. For decades, Pakistan sought a friendly government in Kabul to acquire strategic depth in Afghanistan vis-à-vis India. By supporting the Taliban and the Haqqani Network robustly it has achieved this objective. This can be expected to encourage the ISI to step up its support of its sword arms in India – the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Thousands of LeT and JeM militants who fought alongside Taliban fighters in Afghanistan may soon begin returning home to Pakistan. The ISI might direct them to Kashmir.

Events in Afghanistan played a major role in fueling the anti-India militancy that erupted in 1989-90 in Kashmir. In 1989, when the Soviets left Afghanistan, thousands of mujahideen were jobless. They were pushed into India. Will history repeat itself now?

The hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft IC-814 from Kathmandu to New Delhi by terrorists of the Pakistan-backed Harkat-ul Mujahideen in the final days of 1999 remains a vivid memory in India. The Taliban, then in power in Afghanistan, allowed the aircraft to land in Kandahar. Taliban fighters guarded the plane. India, which had no ties with the Taliban regime, could do nothing to rescue the passengers. With the lives of 160 passengers and crew in peril, it conceded to the hijacker demands to release three terrorists from Indian jails. After the exchange of hostages for terrorists took place, the hijackers and the freed terrorists walked free. They went on to carry out some of the most horrific terror attacks in South Asia.

The Taliban facilitated their freedom.