Competitive World

Category: State PCS

  • India’s Taliban Challenge (India’s Options)

    In this article, we will discuss India’s Taliban Challenge (India’s Options). So, let’s get started.

    India’s Options

    • Broader Diplomatic Engagement: India should consider appointing a special envoy dedicated to Afghanistan. The envoy can ensure that Indian views are expressed at every meeting, and broaden engagement with the Taliban.
    • Decoupling of Taliban-Pakistan: Although Pakistan’s leverage over the Taliban is real, it may not be absolute.
    • The Taliban is bound to seek a measure of autonomy from Pakistan. India will have to wait a while before the current issues between India and the Taliban can be overcome.
    • Balancing the Opportunities in Afghanistan: Structuring the internal balance of power within Afghanistan has always been hard. A deeper Sino-Pak partnership in Afghanistan will inevitably produce countervailing trends.
    • However, for a patient, open-minded and active India, there will be no dearth of balancing opportunities in Afghanistan.
    • Leverage Indian Infrastructural Developments: Indian USD 3 billion assistance to Afghanistan is in concrete projects that serve its population and have earned it their goodwill that will endure.
    • The need today is to not stop the development work in Afghanistan and continue the good work.
    • Global Cooperation: There is a lot less global acceptance of terrorism today than in it was in the 1990s.
    • No major power would like to see Afghanistan re-emerge as a global sanctuary of terror.
    • The world has also imposed significant new constraints on Pakistan’s support for terror through mechanisms like the Financial Action Task Force.

  • India’s Taliban Challenge

    In this article, we will discuss India’s Taliban Challenge. So, let’s get started.

    Challenges For India

    • Issue of Indian Security: The restoration of Taliban rule in Afghanistan presents some very serious potential challenges for Indian security.
    • The challenges range from securing its development infrastructures to safely evacuating Indians stranded in troubled Afghanistan.
    • Spread of International Terrorism: For India, a bigger challenge will be about the Taliban’s renewed support for international terrorism and Pakistan’s re-direction of jihadi groups that have allegedly fought with the Taliban towards India.
    • Religious Fundamentalism: Like all radical groups, the Taliban will have trouble balancing its religious ideology with the imperatives of state interests.
    • India faces a challenge to deradicalise the region for long lasting peace and stability.
    • New Regional Geopolitical Developments: There can be new regional geopolitical alignments (such as China-Pakistan-Taliban) which may go against the interests of India.
    • Meanwhile, the US withdrawal compels the creation of a new balance of power system in and around Afghanistan.
    • Moreover, the US and the West will try to shape the international attitudes towards the new regime.
    • No Contiguity With Taliban: Unlike Pakistan, China and Iran, India has no contiguity with Afghanistan.
    • Russia has a security treaty with Tajikistan, for instance, and has deployed more troops there to prevent a destabilising spill over from the turmoil in Afghanistan into Central Asia.
    • India has no such security responsibilities and no direct access to Central Asia.
    • This may give reasons to the Taliban to hit back at India through Pakistan in J&K, given that LeT and Jaish are operating in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban.