The emerging power profile in Afghanistan was the least that India could have hoped for or anticipated. The proposed ministry principally has the Pakistani-ISI stamp and is infested with ‘terrorists’ – 18 of the 33 names announced by the Taliban being UN-designated ‘global terrorists’. Fact is, even the United States could not have bargained for such a worse scenario. With the Indian government keeping a pregnant silence over the way things have ended up in a nation that was so close to it for many decades, it is a moot point whether the Modi government had any calculations at all about Kabul.
While segments of the Taliban leadership and even the Haqqani network repeatedly professed they were not at the beck and call of Pakistan, the ground realities are different. A top functionary of the Pakistani military intelligence, ISI, reaching Kabul and participating in ministry-formation talks and finally getting things done the way it desired is proof itself. Nor can the sidelining of those who manned the Doha political office, the likes of Abdul Ghani Baradar, or moderate faces like Mohammed Abbas Stanekzai a small matter. Looking at matters from the Indian point of view, the new Prime Minister designate, Mullah Hassan Akhund – the one who ordered the razing of Buddha statues during the Taliban’s first innings in power between 1996 and 2001 – and interior (home) minister Sirajuddin Haqqani who had been out and out anti-Indian, together make a lethal mix.
India must be prepared to face considerable difficulties vis-à-vis the likely nurturing of terrorism under the Taliban rule there. The implications in relation to Kashmir Valley could be grim though Afghanistan and India do not share a border. Trained terrorists could be exported from Afghanistan to India via the Pakistani soil. The same holds true for the US too in the long run. For now, the Taliban cannot rub the US the wrong way. The billions in funds from the Afghan government parked in the US Federal Reserve, which has been frozen, is guarantee that the Taliban regime will play safe with the US. Alternatively, China has promised millions of dollars in financial support to the Taliban government. This alone is small comfort for a war-torn nation that will now have to build itself from scratch. The Taliban offensives there in the past three decades brought situations to such a pitiable low. There are no indications whatsoever that things will improve. Afghanistan could rather be a pawn in the hands of Pakistan’s ISI.
