Author : Maya Mirchandani

Expert Speak Raisina Debates
Published on Aug 18, 2021 Updated 10 Days ago
The burial of another superpower in the graveyard of empires resets the regional security balance in South Asia with New Delhi being left to make some tough choices
The realignment of geopolitics after the Taliban takeover and what it means for India This article is part of ORF's Research and Analyses on the unfolding situation in Afghanistan since August 15, 2021.

Nearly 20 years to the day since the 9/11 attacks that catalysed the Global War on Terror, and three presidents later, Joe Biden defended his decision to withdraw the last American soldier from Afghanistan by sticking to a deadline negotiated by his predecessor, Donald Trump. A deal that left the civilian government of Afghanistan out in the cold, as Trump, along with his special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, legitimised the same Taliban that had provided safe haven to Al Qaeda as its leader Osama Bin Laden plotted against America when they were last in power.

In hindsight, the engagement that began when Trump first invited (and then reneged) the Taliban to Camp David in September 2019, and later initiated a dialogue in the Qatari capital Doha after February 2020, was less about a “peace deal” for Afghanistan, but more an exit deal for US forces to leave an unwinnable, two-decade long war. Today, Biden argued that walking away from the Doha agreement would have meant a third decade of war for American soldiers, and one handed down, after him, to a fifth US President since it began in 2001—neither was an option for his administration, Biden stated. The President claims he will now use ‘diplomacy, international influence and humanitarian aid” as leverage, as his administration moved to freeze Afghan government reserves in US bank accounts, denying billions of dollars to a new Taliban-led regime.

No one could have imagined the startling pace of Afghanistan’s descent into chaos, as the Taliban marched across the country, straight into the capital, Kabul, in a matter of weeks. Memories of the group’s brutal oppression, especially of women and religious minorities two decades earlier, have provoked fears about the future for many ordinary Afghans who have spent the last 20 years rebuilding their country. However, as desperation poured through the images streaming from the tarmac at Kabul airport, Biden was resolute. “After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw US forces,” he said, arguing that the Afghan people—their government and their army—had chosen not to stand up and fight the marauding forces of the Taliban.

No one could have imagined the startling pace of Afghanistan’s descent into chaos, as the Taliban marched across the country, straight into the capital, Kabul, in a matter of weeks. Memories of the group’s brutal oppression, especially of women and religious minorities two decades earlier, have provoked fears about the future for many ordinary Afghans who have spent the last 20 years rebuilding their country

Many amongst Biden’s own supporters wonder at the cold calculation made in his White House. A president ostensibly committed to the restoration and preservation of human rights around the world seems to have made the  opposite choice in Afghanistan. A choice to brave the backlash of Washington’s foreign policy elite as the news from Kabul raises concerns hourly, while betting on popular US opinion to end the war and bring US soldiers home, irrespective of the fallout. The fatigue of two decades of combat without end is his political ally.

Reams will be written explaining or analysing actors, events and rationales that have brought Afghanistan to this all-too-familiar turn once again. But, now that the coffin of the United States is lowered in the proverbial graveyard of empires that the war torn country is so often called, the question amidst an unfolding humanitarian crisis is a simple one: Who is next in line to brave the security challenge that Afghanistan poses regionally and globally now that the last American is out?

A new phase of great power rivalry between Washington and Beijing could be tested in the Afghan theatre, as the Chinese seek commitments from the Taliban to keep its border areas in the Wakhan corridor free from Islamist support to separatist Uighurs in the Xinjiang province, in exchange for Chinese  recognition of the Taliban and economic aid to Afghanistan. With the Chinese giving the Taliban’s Mullah Baradar the respect of summit level optics when they met in Tianjin last month, could it simply be, then, that America has decided to let the Chinese try where so many others have failed?

As a part of the Russia, China, US Troika on Afghanistan, Beijing has moved swiftly to say it is willing to support “friendly relations” with the ‘new’ Taliban. Russia, more circumspect, is biding its time to see “how the regime will behave”, said President Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, before committing to formal recognition of the Taliban, still banned by Moscow. The Prime Minister of the fourth, additional member of the Troika Plus—Pakistan—has already welcomed the entry of the Taliban into a Kabul as the end of US “slavery” in Afghanistan.

None of this bodes well for India, for which it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. It may be curtains for America’s war on terror in Afghanistan, but the chaos it leaves in its wake makes India even more vulnerable than before to the security threat posed by the links between Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban. After all, the Taliban’s key role as interlocutors during the IC 814 hijack in December 1999 is far from forgotten. If anything, visuals of three terrorists—Jaish leader Masood Azhar, Lashkar e Taiba’s Omar Shaikh and Kashmir’s Mushtaq Zargar—being driven out of Kandahar airport where the aircraft had been parked in Taliban custody, in Taliban escorted land cruisers across the border to Pakistan, are emblazoned in Indian memory, and the American withdrawal so many years later could once again pose a clear and present danger to India.

Twenty years ago, weeks after 9/11, India’s then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh had told CNN, “what the United States of America grievously experienced on September 11th is something that we, in India, have been going through for the last 20 years or thereabouts. In the region, we know clearly who is perpetuating these acts, what lies at the heart of it, and how it is to be dealt with.”  In October 2001, still bleeding from the impact of 9/11, Washington became a ready and willing ally that helped manage the threat of jihadi networks fuelled by the nexus between Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while India worked on helping the Afghans in other ways—by building their parliament building, highways and dams, and schools and hospitals.

In October 2001, still bleeding from the impact of 9/11, Washington became a ready and willing ally that helped manage the threat of jihadi networks fuelled by the nexus between Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while India worked on helping the Afghans in other ways—by building their parliament building, highways and dams, and schools and hospitals.

Today, all that work and effort seems at risk. Even as we speculate on Biden’s motivations to see the withdrawal through in spite of enough evidence of its humanitarian aftermath leading up to the events of this week, it is abundantly clear that the Biden administration has decided it is time for regional powers to take charge of their own backyard in Central Asia, rather than constantly look to Washington to maintain a security balance and secure their interests. As India tiptoes around a humanitarian crisis and waits to see how the Taliban settles into its second phase in power, and China readies itself to enter the great game with all its might, Delhi will have to ask itself whether it will choose to engage with a group it abhors for tactical reasons, or whether it can attempt to decisively step in and fill the vacuum America leaves behind instead of leaving it to Beijing (and by proxy, Islamabad) to do so.

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Author

Maya Mirchandani

Maya Mirchandani

Maya Mirchandani is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and Head of Department, Media Studies at Ashoka University. Maya is the Chair of ...

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