“Gift from the People (of) India to the people of Afghanistan” – read the stickers pasted on each packet containing medicines delivered to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Kabul, on December 11. New Delhi’s dispatch of 1.6 tonnes of medicines as humanitarian assistance was well received by the Taliban. The gesture and the words on the stickers, described in diplomatic circles as a guarded initiative to break the ice and test the shallow waters in Afghanistan, however, does
“Gift from the People (of) India to the people of Afghanistan” – read the stickers pasted on each packet containing medicines delivered to the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Kabul, on December 11. New Delhi’s dispatch of 1.6 tonnes of medicines as humanitarian assistance was well received by the Taliban. The gesture and the words on the stickers, described in diplomatic circles as a guarded initiative to break the ice and test the shallow waters in Afghanistan, however, does not conceal New Delhi’s enduring dilemma. Even four months after the Taliban capture of Kabul, its Afghan policy lacks clarity.
How to provide humanitarian assistance without legitimising the country’s new regime? How to engage with the Taliban without recognising it? How to ensure that the assistance reaches its targets without it being siphoned off? How to restore the balance of power in the country and maintain old alliances? These are some of the pressing questions that New Delhi has been confronted with since the collapse of a friendly government in Kabul on August 15.
The Taliban’s intransigence poses a critical challenge. Even in the face of the World Bank’s projected contraction in the Afghan economy, its inevitable collapse, and an impending humanitarian catastrophe, the former insurgents have shown little inclination to revisit their baseline ideology and worldview. Even as the infighting between the hardline (the Haqqani network), the moderate (Baradar), and the traditional (Kandahari Pushtuns) factions goes on, the Islamic Emirate is leveraging the international community’s concern for Afghan citizens. That eventual engagement and recognition will be a natural progression for such a State is something the Taliban seems convinced of.
In 2001, when India returned to Afghanistan after a five-year hiatus, it shared the space with a known set of actors- the Northern Alliance, who were seen as the victors. This time around, the new actors are untested entities and are known to have harboured anti-India postures and policies in the past. More importantly, they are seen as proxies of Pakistan. Though the Taliban have been sending feelers since 2011 regarding its inclination to engage with India, New Delhi officially shied away from such prospects for the fear of undermining the Afghan government.
A democratic dispensation, however imperfect, was seen as the best bet against the radical Islamist proxies. What New Delhi failed to realise was that the lack of democratic institution-building worked inadvertently to the insurgents’ advantage. In spite of years of nurturing, these institutions remained fragile and personality-based structures with patronage networks as their pillars, and hence, were unable to withstand the vagaries of change. India’s Agreement of Strategic Partnership with Afghanistan (ASP) in 2011, which spelt out the need for strengthening democratic institutions and making them collapse-proof, remained a project on paper. Incidentally, the Parliament building, which India helped build, remained a mere symbol of democracy. Neither did India do much about the fraud-marred elections that plagued the democratic experiment in that country.
In the past two decades, Afghanistan provided the engaging countries with two options: To either be significant donors, or be spoilers. However, as things stand now, the role played by the donors vis-à-vis the spoilers was qualitatively tilted. While India was the largest regional donor, most of its capacity-building initiatives ended up as capacity-substitution projects, and the high visibility projects like the building of the parliament, dams, roads, though initially useful, lacked integration into a long-term integrated strategy built on sustainability.
The humanitarian crisis and the imminent economic collapse of Afghanistan have indeed opened up the space for India to pursue the third option. Beyond the moral and ethical dilemma of whether to recognise the Taliban, a middle path approach of engaging amenable and nationalistic factions in the non-monolithic Taliban insurgency would help India reach out to the Afghans who are looking for India’s assistance. This may help dilute the extremist agenda, integrate and mainstream them.
Hence, a policy of detachment won’t suffice. However, New Delhi cannot be seen as desperate to regain its lost foothold in the country without a clear and long-term strategy. Even as the Taliban continue with its friendly postures towards India, New Delhi has to carefully calibrate its engagement strategy on the basis of a set of clear metrics of deliverables.
A new multi-pronged strategy must be geared towards protecting the gains of the last two decades to ensure the protection of women and human rights, dilute the extremist agenda and propel the Taliban towards forming an inclusive interim government that represents the aspirations and rights of the Afghan people. Providing Afghans platforms and opportunities to choose that type of government will be critical in weaving a long-term strategy.
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza is a founding professor, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad, and founder-president of Mantraya, India. She has worked in the governmental and non-governmental sectors for more than a decade in various provinces of Afghanistan. Email: shanthied@gmail.com @ shanmariet
Shanthie Mariet D’Souza is a founding professor, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad, and founder-president of Mantraya, India. She has worked in the governmental and non-governmental sectors for more than a decade in various provinces of Afghanistan.
The views expressed are personal
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