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US-तालिबान समझौते से शांति की कितनी उम्मीद और भारत की चिंताएं?
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Misguided Talks With the Taliban Won’t Bring Peace to Afghanistan
Dark, bizarre, surreal: we are short of adjectives to accurately capture the current political situation in Afghanistan. On May 8, even as they were in talks with the US, the Taliban attacked the Kabul office of a US aid NGO, killing nine. On May 5, the Taliban mounted attacks on armed forces outposts in northern Afghanistan, killing more than a dozen servicemen.Earlier in March, the Taliban’s shadow police subjected women to public lashings evoking comparisons to their brutal medieval-era style rule between 1996 and 2001. This is to say nothing of the 75,000 plus Afghan civilians who have been killed in heinous acts of terrorism since 2001. And despite all this, the US seems determined to strike a deal with the Taliban through negotiations which erode the authority of the Afghan national unity government, a government midwifed by them and one that couldn’t have survived this long without them. On May 9, the US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad tweeted that slow but steady progress was made on the framework to end the Afghan war and the Doha round of talks were now getting into the ‘nitty-gritty’.If we are to believe Khalilzad, the US remains hopeful of forming an interim government involving the Taliban on the basis of this quid pro quo: the US will scale down its presence in Afghanistan in return for security guarantees by the Taliban. Though the details are yet to be worked out, there appears to be an in-principle agreement on this broad arrangement between the US, the Taliban, and the Taliban’s minders – the ISI. If it works out, President Trump will appeal to the voters in the 2020 presidential elections that he has brought soldiers back from Afghanistan – from a war he now refers to as “ridiculous”.
This article first appeared in The Wire
India will stay relevant in Afghanistan, Taliban or no Taliban
The way ahead for India rests on reconciling Indian interests with the recent changes in the political landscape, many of which are outside Indian control. The turning global tide against Pakistan’s policy of using terror gives India some breathing space. It should participate in political processes in order to add weight to the demands of India's friends in Afghanistan. Beyond this supplementary role, there is little that India has to gain from starting new peace processes. India's comparative advantage in Afghanistan comes from its contribution to state capacity building and economic development and for this reason alone it will continue to stay relevant in Afghanistan, Taliban or no Taliban.
The action is fast and furious. Taliban representatives have attended peace talks in Moscow for the first time. Almost simultaneously, the US special envoy has broken a taboo and opened direct talks with the Taliban office in Qatar. Pakistan has released one of the founding members of the Taliban after eight years. In Afghanistan itself, a US general has been wounded in a Taliban attack and there are daily reports of the ever-increasing numbers of Afghans getting killed by Taliban terrorists.Such is the fluid state of political affairs in Afghanistan today that these highly divergent events are all unfolding concurrently.Amidst all these fast-moving political developments, it was the Moscow round of talks that attracted the most attention in India. India has consistently maintained that it supports an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned reconciliation process. So, sending retired diplomats as observers at the Moscow round of talks naturally sparked speculation that India was reversing its policy on Afghanistan. Interestingly, some commentators have, in the past, accused India of doing exactly the opposite — blocking attempts by the Afghan government to negotiate with elements such as the Taliban.Read more here>