India, Kyrgyzstan NSAs are on the same page on Afghanistan

The two sides discussed the Afghanistan issue, and the visitor was in consonance with the Indian perspective on stabilisation of the war-torn country through a government in Kabul that has enough representation of women and minorities.

Published on: Oct 26, 2021, 21:17:53 IST

By Shishir Gupta

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

India’s national security advisor Ajit Doval on Tuesday held a dialogue with his Kyrgyz counterpart Lieutenant General Marat Imankulov where they discussed the regional security environment with a special reference to Afghanistan. The secretary of the security council of the Kyrgyz Republic was in India for the first strategic dialogue between the National Security Council Secretariats of the two countries.

India and Kyrgyzstan agreed upon steps to enhance bilateral security cooperation between the relevant bodies.

The two sides discussed the Afghanistan issue in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover, and the visitor was in consonance with the Indian perspective on stabilisation of the war-torn country through a government in Kabul that has enough representation of women and minorities like Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities. The two sides were on the same page on the Afghanistan issue and shared similar views.

Also Read | NSA Ajit Doval wants SCO to take action against Pak-based terror groups Jaish and Lashkar-e-Taiban

India and Kyrgyzstan also agreed upon steps to enhance bilateral security cooperation between the relevant bodies, including in the areas of counter-terrorism, combating radicalisation, narcotics control and defence cooperation, according to people familiar with the matter.

Kyrgyzstan is one of the founder members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), of which India is a permanent member along with Pakistan, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, which makes the dialogue between the two countries significant.

The Taliban announced the interim government last month and expanded the cabinet a few weeks later, claiming that it was an inclusive set-up as per the wishes of the international community. A closer look, however, revealed that the government was anything but inclusive, with no women representation in the cabinet and symbolic representation from minority communities.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.