Modi government’s responses to Afghan evacuation draw criticism

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When India padlocked its mission in Kabul and carried out a chaotic evacuation on Monday evening, it took more than five hours for the fleeing caravan to reach the military airbase just four kilometers away.

Officials most likely tapped into tenuous ties with local Taliban commanders to fend for themselves, but those torturous hours were likely symbolic of the sudden and sheer downfall New Delhi has taken in Afghanistan to be a former player and deeply invested partner in a self-proclaimed superpower devoid of agency and panicked in an abrupt ejection.

It was thanks to the courtesy of the American armed forces that the personnel of the Indian mission were even able to bail out.

It is evident that the Taliban’s swift and easy sweep over the Afghan capital has left governments around the world numb and puzzled. In India, this has raised pointed and critical questions about the anticipation and responses of Narendra Modi governments logistically, strategically and diplomatically.

The blame for the blunder is no less because the Foreign Ministry is headed by S. Jaishankar, a very experienced former foreign minister.

It’s too early to analyze the medium and long term implications of this drastic change in our neighborhood, but forget about it for now, a career diplomat told The Telegraph.

Why did we not obtain the evacuation of our diplomats and officials, and even citizens, much sooner? Everyone knew the Americans were leaving en masse and the Taliban was coming, what were we thinking? We were stoned in the head and weighted down in our feet, we just didn’t react or move as we should have. Why did we have to leave so unsightly at the last minute, almost at the mercy of the Taliban traffic controllers? And what are we going to do now for the Indians still stranded in distant Afghan corners, or our precious human assets?

He called the past few days an alarmingly staged foreign policy disaster and continued: We have received a severe and strategic blow in our immediate neighborhood, and it has happened because we have stubbornly blinded ourselves, we refused to see what was to come, we that the United States misinterpreted the situation for us, we grossly neglected what we had to do in our own national interest. The Americans were leaving, we were just left behind.

Former Ambassador to Afghanistan Vivek Katju put it more bluntly: I argued for years that we should have opened negotiations with the Taliban, especially as it became obvious to everyone that their takeover of Afghanistan was imminent. I mean the Americans were talking to them across the table, why not us? Others have offered the same advice, but it has not caught the attention of current foreign policy drafters.

When asked if India would not have legitimized the Taliban by speaking to them, Katju replied:. There are principles and very often there are requirements for pragmatism. After all, you often negotiate with your enemies as well, that doesn’t mean you hug or kiss them. Where did we leave ourselves in Afghanistan today?

Another former ambassador to Kabul, Rakesh Sood, expressed similar fears during a panel discussion hosted by The Print on Tuesday. He blamed the establishment for putting all of their eggs in one basket (i.e. the US basket or the basket of Ashraf Ghani who abdicated) and said India could have think it much better for herself. He also felt that New Delhi should have engaged with the Taliban. In the context of India’s hasty exit from Kabul, Sood said New Delhi could have planned the evacuation in a much more organized fashion.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a researcher from a foreign policy think tank said: There are many things that we could have done to avoid the mess we find ourselves in, but we didn’t. India is a regional power, it has leverage, it has resources. We could have pressured the United States not to quit so quickly, at least to show our reservations. We could have convinced Ashraf Ghani to give way, or otherwise, to open up decision-making to a larger body like a shura, a larger council of former Afghans, to achieve a smoother transition. Instead, we just followed what the Americans were doing and what Ghani falsely promised he would do to resist the advance of the Taliban.

There has of course always been a strong counter-argument in the Indian foreign policy establishment to any engagement with the Taliban.

In 2018, India sent two representatives Amar Sinha, former ambassador to Kabul, and TCA Raghavan, former envoy to Islamabad for talks on the evolving future of Afghanistan in Moscow. They were sent with express instructions not to even look at the Taliban on the table, a foreign policy insider said.

The deep reservations about the Taliban in the Indian establishment do not stem only from their bellicose Islamist and militaristic air; they are also, if not more, based on the Taliban’s close ties to Pakistan and a deep and justified skepticism about building trust with the predominantly Pashtun militia that now rule most of Afghanistan.

The belief that the Taliban will forever auction Pakistan, even if India tries to strike deals with them, is strong across the southern bloc.

As another former ambassador, Deb Mukharji said: Look, the Taliban know where India is in relation to them, you can’t convince them to make deals, and they are not reliable people. This is a very difficult area for many reasons. But that said, if we hadn’t blindly followed the American scenario in Afghanistan, we probably would have known better.

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