India in danger of missing bus to Afghan peace

One of the biggest takeaways from the Oval Office meeting that Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had with US President Donald Trump was the cementing of Pakistan’s place at the negotiating table as the US moves on with its peace talks with the Afghan Taliban.

The win was by far one of the biggest takeaways of the Trump-Khan meeting. For one, it signaled that Pakistan had managed to get back into the centerstage of the discussions with the Taliban. These discussions will lay the foundation of a new government in Kabul and hence be decisive about the future of a country that Pakistan has always regarded as its backyard.

Historically, Pakistan had played a key part in Afghanistan, notably since the US began supporting the Afghan militants fighting the Soviet forces that had occupied the country way back in 1979. The establishment of a post-Taliban government following the September 2001 attacks in the US began to reduce Pakistan’s influence in Afghanistan. This was accentuated over the past couple of years, as Pakistan was left pretty much out in the cold in the face of mounting pressure from Trump for Islamabad to cut its ties with the terror groups working against India.

From 2002 onward, India began to capitalize on Pakistan’s loss of influence in Afghanistan. New Delhi has been one of the largest donors to Afghanistan and has helped build numerous infrastructure projects, including roads, hospitals and schools, over the last two decades. India has also been training Afghan soldiers, notably since the US began drawing down its army from the country. And India has been playing a key role in building the intelligence-gathering capacity of Afghan forces.

India managed to undertake all these steps to assist the Afghan government only because the Taliban was absent from the equation. A stronger anti-Taliban government in Kabul was a dream come true for India, which treats the Taliban as anathema mainly because the group has always aligned itself with Pakistan and its military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence. Another reason is because, historically, the Taliban has supported and aided terror groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir.

But India’s inability to deal with the Taliban has, in many ways, become the Achilles’ heel of its Afghan policy. For the past few years, there have been clear signs that, despite the threat that the Taliban posed during nearly two decades of the US attempting to rebuild a democratic and inclusive Afghan government and hence decimating the Taliban and its raison d’etre, the extremists have only been gaining territory and power in Afghanistan, handing a long series of embarrassing defeats to the Afghan army.

With Barack Obama and his successor Trump losing interest in pursuing what is increasingly proving to be an unwinnable war, the US has been clearing the decks for a negotiated, albeit face-saving, withdrawal from Afghanistan. The talks with the Taliban are the central pillar of this strategy.

Over the years, other nations joined in the reach out to the Taliban. China, as Pakistan’s best friend in the region, has been pushing the Taliban with a twin agenda. First to ensure that the Taliban would not fish in the troubled Xinjiang region, where the Uighurs have been at the center of a massive Chinese government campaign of “education,” including the detention of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Uighur Muslims. With the situation rather volatile there, China would want to avoid Taliban meddling in the region. China’s other agenda is simply to cement Pakistan’s position as the broker in the Afghan peace talks. It was with these objectives in mind that Beijing hosted a Taliban delegation recently.

Not to be left behind, Russia also joined the fray and recently hosted “Afghan-to-Afghan” talks in Moscow, where the Taliban held discussions with pro-government groups.

Though India has seen the writing on the wall for more than four years now, it has failed to move in a direction that could at least minimize its losses. India finds itself in a bind. It has not been able to convince other countries, notably the US, Russia, China and the Europeans, that all negotiations with the Taliban would be futile, as the extremist group is bound to go back to its old habits of flagrant human rights violations, terror and inciting trouble in other parts of the world.

Neither has India been able find the courage to get itself a seat on the negotiating table in order to ensure that its own best interests are protected in whatever deal the US and other nations may finally strike with the Taliban. India should use its political and economic capital with the US and Russia to ensure that the final peace deal with the Taliban addresses the key concerns of the Indian government, notably keeping India’s presence and activities in Afghanistan intact. It should also get the Taliban to forswear any support for any terror or militant groups in Kashmir and for the future Afghan or Taliban government to respect India’s geostrategic interests in peace and stability in Afghanistan.

None of these objectives are easy or a given. What is definitely a given is that, without a proactive policy of engagement and voicing its concerns and interests, India will soon find itself stranded, having missed the bus to peace in Kabul.

• Ranvir S. Nayar is the editor of Media India Group, a global platform based in Europe and India that encompasses publishing, communication and consultation services