India Returns to Afghanistan with Small Diplomatic Presence
VOA News
July 7, 2022
Anjana Pasricha
NEW DELHI, INDIA — India has reestablished a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan by sending a technical team to reopen its Kabul embassy, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes, but analysts see it as an effort to secure New Delhi’s strategic interests in the conflict-ridden country, where the Taliban’s return has put Pakistan in a dominant position.
India closed its embassy after the Taliban takeover last August in what was seen as a major strategic setback for New Delhi.
The Ministry of External Affairs said the team is to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance but analysts cite other reasons for the move.
“Reopening the Indian Embassy is really about keeping our eyes and ears on the ground and exploring the possibility of a working relationship with the Taliban, which includes security assurances that Afghan territory would not be used, particularly by Pakistan against India,” Gautam Mukhopadhaya, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan, said.
“It’s an opening gambit so to speak, in some ways you are back in the game,” he said.
India has been concerned that Afghanistan will become a haven for militants from Pakistan who have been at the forefront of a three-decade violent separatist insurgency in Indian Kashmir.
India and the Taliban have long been fiercely opposed to each other, but both sides have shifted their stance slightly. Analysts say that while New Delhi has accepted that the hardline Islamist group is there to stay for the foreseeable future, Afghanistan’s new leadership has also reached out to India.
“The Taliban has sent signals that it would like India to be present because they are trying to engage with the rest of the world and India is an important country in the region. From the Indian point of view, if the possibility emerged of keeping a presence in Afghanistan, then why not?” said Sushant Sareen, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
“However, this is in no way an endorsement of the Taliban regime. India has only gone back in a small way,” he added.
India has consistently called for an inclusive administration in Afghanistan and expressed concern at the erosion of women’s and girls’ rights under Taliban rule.
The first signal of rapprochement between the two sides came when India began sending food and medicine to the country earlier this year. So far it has sent 20,000 tons of wheat. It also sent aid in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake that wracked Afghanistan last month, along with the technical team posted to Kabul.
After India reopened its embassy, Afghanistan called on other countries to do the same thing.
“The arrival of Indian diplomats in Afghanistan and reopening of [Indian] embassy demonstrates that security is established in the country and all political and diplomatic rights are respected,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, Taliban spokesperson said.
The next step could be to facilitate student and medical visas for Afghans wanting to come to India. Hundreds of students, including many who were given scholarships by the Indian government, were enrolled in Indian universities before the Taliban takeover but many had returned to Afghanistan during the COVID-19 pandemic, as colleges switched to online learning. India was also a popular destination for Afghans seeking medical treatment.
After a meeting between Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, and Afghan students this week, the Taliban said that Kabul will approach New Delhi to grant visas to students who have not been able to return to India after COVID restrictions were lifted.
“The premise on which India has gone back to Afghanistan is for the welfare of the people. If that is so, then giving student and medical visas are likely to be on the table although it may not happen in the near future,” Sareen said.
“India will first wait and watch whether the Taliban is willing to do business with us,” he said.
The Taliban outreach to India is also seen as helping the group as Afghanistan faces huge challenges.
“The Taliban better positions itself to make pitches for badly needed financial assistance from a major source of aid – even though New Delhi likely won’t make commitments to anything beyond humanitarian aid,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “And it can help the Taliban earn some backing from a public that has resented the Taliban’s historic deep ties to Pakistan,” he said.
However, India’s engagement with the Taliban is likely to be a slow, cautious process as it assesses the group’s attitude toward New Delhi.
“It is unlikely India will upgrade the embassy anytime soon or maybe at all, depending on the direction that the Taliban takes. You are treading water but with your foot in,” Mukhopadhaya said.
From the standpoint of India’s Western allies, such as the United States, New Delhi’s return to Afghanistan is a welcome development according to analysts.
“It’s important for Washington that it’s not just rivals like Pakistan, China, Russia, and Iran that are engaging with the Taliban,” according to Kugelman. “The US will also likely view India as an important player in its efforts to get the Taliban to improve its rights record.”
The embassy reopening could also be a step toward New Delhi, which some had thought sidelined in the region in August, regaining some of the leverage that it has lost in the country, where for two decades following the 2001 U.S. invasion it had built soft power with a slew of development projects such as roads, schools and hospitals.
“In Afghanistan, there is never any endgame,” Sareen said, “Every endgame is the beginning of a new Great Game.”
Taliban Offer Free Pass to Former Corrupt Officials
Akmal Dawi
VOA News
July 6, 2022
The Taliban say they will not hold former Afghan officials accountable for the massive corruption that derailed donor-funded development projects and contributed to the collapse of the former Afghan Republic.
“Those who nurtured and enriched themselves during the previous invasion and from the U.S.’s system own their properties and assets and it will remain so,” Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA’s Pashto Service.
Former officials suspected of corruption will face courts, he said, only if they seized private properties or public assets during the past two decades.
Asked about properties some former Afghan officials might have acquired via corrupt practices in the former Afghan government, Mujahid said, “individuals who abused the previous system” would not face legal accountability and will keep their wealth.
Bankrolled by foreign donors, the former Afghan Republic was consistently ranked among the five most corrupt states in the world.
“Corruption inflicted significant damage to U.S. efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan and strengthen its institutions,” said Philip LaVelle, director of public affairs for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a U.S. government monitor for aid to Afghanistan. He spoke to VOA.
From 2002 to 2021, the U.S. spent more than $145 billion on reconstruction and development projects in Afghanistan while other donors such as the European Union also channeled billions of dollars for the same purposes.
“Corruption was a major cause of the republic’s ignominious collapse,” Wahed Faqiri, an Afghan-American analyst, told VOA. “It undermined the entire system. It severely undermined the legitimacy of the republic. It strengthened the Taliban. Corruption made Taliban’s propaganda effective, real, and tangible.”
Mohammad Halim Fidai, a former senior Afghan official, said corruption was one factor but not the underlying cause of the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, as the country was named from 2004 to 2021.
“Highlighting corruption is aimed at diverting attention from the wrongdoings by U.S. policymakers,” Fidai told VOA, adding that Taliban insurgents were also involved in corruption as they levied taxes and extorted money from development projects.
LaVelle said U.S. spending was flawed and even fueled corruption in Afghanistan.
“The United States failed to recognize the magnitude of corruption early on, empowered warlords and other corrupt actors, and poured too much money in so quickly it couldn’t be absorbed,” he said.
No anti-corruption body
Nearly a year in power, the Taliban have neither announced a policy nor appointed a government body to counter corruption.
The leadership’s anti-corruption performance has received mixed results.
Citing the findings of a survey of Afghan traders, Andrea Mario Dall’Olio, the World Bank’s lead economist for Afghanistan, said in April that corruption appears to have been “curbed significantly” at customs and border checkpoints.
Others say Taliban officials are succumbing to all sorts of corruption and abuses of power.
“On the whole, the Taliban are relatively cleaner than the republic. However, as time goes on, nepotism is creeping in. Corruption is taking root. Luxury is showing its ugly face,” said Faqiri.
Fidai, the former Afghan official who now lives abroad, accused the Taliban of more than monetary corruption.
“Occupying all political government posts by Mullah without merit and even having three ministers from one family in the cabinet is corruption,” he said, referring to the powerful Haqqani family that occupies several top cabinet positions in the ruling Taliban leadership.
Officials return to immunity
As the Taliban consolidate their grip on power, they have allowed and even facilitated the return of some former Afghan officials, including at least two ministers, offering them “immunity cards” against persecution.
Women, as in the Taliban’s other policy arenas, have been excluded from the process as no prominent female politician or former official has been repatriated to Afghanistan so far.
While the returning officials say they have come back to their country and want to live with their people, some observers say former officials want to retain the assets they could not take abroad when the former Afghan government abruptly collapsed last year.
The Taliban’s unconditional offer to let former Afghan officials return and retain their assets, and the group’s assurance of immunity from prosecution, could protect those who illicitly made riches out of projects and programs that aimed to build effective and viable institutions and services for Afghanistan.
SIGAR, which has investigated numerous cases of corruption and abuse in U.S. spending in Afghanistan — several cases of which have been heard in U.S. courts — said it will not cease criminal investigations into “theft, fraud, and abuse of U.S. reconstruction dollars, and we go where the facts and the evidence lead us.”
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US Says ‘It’s Too Early’ to Consider Recognition of Taliban
Ayaz Gul
Navbahor Imamova
VOA News
July 6, 2022
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON — The United States says no foreign government is contemplating legitimacy for Taliban rule in Afghanistan, even as the insurgent-turned-Islamist group next month will mark the first year of its return to power in Kabul.
“I think there’s actually a global consensus to include Moscow and Beijing and Iran, that it’s too early to look at recognition,” Donald Lu, U.S. assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told VOA in an interview.
“Yes, some countries are beginning a very slow process of normalization of relations. No one is talking about formal recognition,” Lu said.
The U.S. diplomat noted that international discussions instead were focused on seeking an engagement with the Taliban that can help improve the situation on the ground in Afghanistan in terms of the rights of women and girls, and security.
“We, as partner countries, should also be working with authorities in Afghanistan to create a better world for Afghan people … to try to influence what is happening in Afghanistan for the betterment of the people of Afghanistan, but also a stable region.”
The Taliban seized power last August when U.S. and NATO partners withdrew their final troops, ending almost two decades of foreign military intervention in the country.
The hardline group installed an all-male interim government, which has placed restrictions on women, limiting their access to work and education. The Taliban have disallowed teenage Afghan girls from returning to secondary school education in breach of their repeated pledges.
“It’s critical that all of us work together to try to encourage the Taliban onto a constructive path,” Lu said. He emphasized the Islamist group “now has to get to the business of governance.”
Washington has made it clear repeatedly that no legitimacy is possible unless and until the Taliban reverse their restrictions on women and induct representatives of other ethnic Afghan groups into the government.
Lu cautioned the Islamist rulers that the investment made by the global community over the past 20 years “will shape the future” of the country, and they “cannot merely impose their own will” on millions of Afghans.
“They have grown to expect certain freedoms in life, a certain standard of living with the economy. Those demands will help to shape the policies of the Taliban going forward,” he said.
The Taliban, who call their government the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, defend restrictions on women and other policies, saying they are strictly in line with Afghan culture and Sharia, Islamic law — claims that scholars in other Muslim countries dispute.
The Taliban’s reclusive supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, said last week he would run the country in accordance with Sharia and would not compromise.
He renewed his resolve Wednesday in a message he issued in connection with this week’s Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.
“The Islamic Emirate is committed to upholding all the rights of its citizens, as Islam commands us to grant and protect the rights of all people. And within the framework of the Sharia law, the rights of women will be ensured,” Akhundzada said.
“Within the framework of mutual interaction and commitment, we want good, diplomatic, economic and political relations with the world, including the United States, and we consider this in the interest of all sides,” the Taliban chief argued.
Neighboring and regional countries, including China and Pakistan — which shares a long border with Afghanistan — have kept their diplomatic and trade contacts open with the Taliban government, citing dire humanitarian and economic emergencies facing the country’s estimated 40 million population.
But these nations also are pressing the Islamist group to rule the country through a politically inclusive administration, ease curbs on women and desist from cracking down on dissent before they decide to consider the Taliban’s call for a formal recognition of their government.
“We hope Afghanistan to be stable, peaceful, pursues a moderate policy and to meet the expectations,” said Wang Yu, China’s ambassador to Kabul, while addressing a rare news conference Tuesday in the Afghan capital.
ISIS threat
Lu told VOA that Central Asian countries also are worried about security threats coming from Afghanistan. The U.S. is talking with them about how it can help with cross-border security and “facilitate conversation with this very unusual Taliban government,” he added.
The regional affiliate of the self-proclaimed Islamic State terrorist group, known in South and Central Asia as the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover.
Additionally, the group claims it has launched rocket attacks against military targets in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from Afghan soil in recent weeks.
“Central Asian governments, the United States and other partners can talk to the Taliban about how we work together against a common threat of ISIS,” Lu said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
On Tuesday, the Uzbek government reported that five shells were fired into its territory from Afghanistan, although they did not explode and caused no casualties. The Foreign Ministry statement said there was “minor damage” to houses near the Afghan border.
There were no immediate claims of responsibly for the attack.
In April, ISIS-K claimed it had carried out a rocket attack on Uzbekistan from an Afghan terror base, but authorities in the neighboring country said at the time the claim was false.
Akhundzada reassured Afghanistan’s neighbors and the world at large Wednesday that the Taliban would not allow anyone to use their territory to threaten the security of other countries.
VOA’s Uzbek Service contributed to this report.
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