Grand Strategy | Delhi’s Kabul strategy and the role of Taliban
Even as Delhi works on ways to engage with the Taliban, it must cater to the needs of the Afghan people, who mostly hold positive views about India.
“We are thankful for India’s continuous help in capacity building of the Afghan cricket team. We really appreciate that.” Taliban’s head of political office, Suhail Shaheen told media when Afghanistan qualified for the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 semifinal, a historic first for the war-torn country. Unfortunately, the team lost in the semis played on an undercooked pitch to South Africa.
Shaheen’s statement is noteworthy for at least three reasons. One, the Taliban were once vehemently against sports and considered them unIslamic. Two, the Taliban were once anti-India. Images of the hijacked IC814 plane surrounded by gun-wielding Taliban in Kandahar continue to haunt Indians. Three, most of the international community treats the Taliban as an outcast and considers the outfit too radical to rule a country in the modern world.
Shaheen’s statement complicates all of these images. But even more importantly, it tells us a geopolitically compelling story about contemporary Afghanistan and India’s role in it. Let’s unpack that story a bit.
When New Delhi proactively engaged with the Taliban after it captured power in late 2021, its decision was roundly criticised by several countries, who were justifiably concerned about the Taliban’s inglorious human rights records. However, in retrospect, India’s decision to court Taliban 2.0 appears to have paid off.
Another noteworthy part of the story is that the Taliban have undergone some changes even if they continue to hold on to some obnoxious and abhorrent laws in governing the country. They have also failed to keep their promises regarding social reforms. But they have changed their attitude towards India as compared to the 1996-2001 period when they ruled Afghanistan. There also appears to be a growing recognition among the Taliban leadership that exporting terrorism or opium is bad policy. And, more controversially, the Taliban’s social outlook may also be undergoing some changes, albeit in slow and subtle ways. Its promotion of cricket is easily the best example. Compared to the 1990s, there is some rethinking amongst the Taliban senior leadership about girls’ education and women at work even as their policies continue to be unforgivably anti-women. If this process of slow change can be met with increased socialisation and reciprocal accommodation by the international community, rather than isolation and disengagement, we may see more changes on the ground. The attempt to isolate the Taliban has not worked, so why not give engagement a chance?
India’s carefully calibrated engagement with the Taliban is a fine example of New Delhi’s ability to balance soft power with hard strategy, adopt its own unique approach to the Taliban – not necessarily in line with its western/American friends – and use the relationship to create more space for geopolitical manoeuvrings in the restive region, all the while expressing its displeasure at how the Taliban treat half the country’s population.
While for much of the international community, the Taliban are a challenge and an outcast, for India, any regime in Kabul, including one headed by the Taliban, represents an opportunity to shape regional geopolitics more effectively and thereby moderate the Pakistan challenge. Even though India maintained friendly relations with the previous Afghan governments, pre-Taliban Kabul lacked the geopolitical agency to engage India keeping its own interests in mind. In that sense, the Taliban government is more helpful to India’s regional strategy than the Ghani administration whose India policy was challenged by Pakistan, on the one hand, and moderated by the United States (US), on the other.
Finally, there is the story of the Delhi-Islamabad-Kabul triangular balance of power. While it was primarily Pakistan’s sustained efforts that eventually brought the Taliban to power in Kabul, with the intent to undercut India’s influence, this policy has been a failure. The country that has gained the least from the return of the Taliban to power is Pakistan.
Considering that a strategic alliance between Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the one that existed during Taliban 1.0, is what Delhi fears the most, an adversarial relationship between Kabul and Islamabad doesn’t hurt Delhi. Therefore, the more Pakistan resists the Taliban’s exercise of geopolitical agency, the more the Taliban will seek to strengthen its engagement with India.
While all this sounds good, the challenge before Delhi is if it can have a moderating influence on the Taliban in the longer run. A puritanical Islamist Taliban regime, shunned by the international community and courted by radical elements, will eventually strengthen the region’s terror ecosystem. This could constrain India’s ability to continue its engagement with the outfit, as a friendless and resource-starved Taliban could be susceptible to influence by anti-India terror groups based in Pakistan or elsewhere. An ideal outcome for India is a moderate Taliban that safeguards its national interests and seeks to be mainstreamed into the international community.
Let’s return to the cricket story. My takeaway is soft power by itself is neither power nor useful to the practice of statecraft. The popularity of Bollywood, for instance, in Afghanistan may make us feel good, but it has little value as far as India’s strategic engagement with Afghanistan is concerned unless, of course, we can have a coherent strategy that can utilise such soft power for real power gains. Put differently, if India’s cricket diplomacy with Afghanistan were to be divorced from its general engagement with the Taliban, it would have produced no results for New Delhi’s relations with Kabul.
Let me end on a cautionary note. Even as Delhi works on ways to engage with the Taliban, it must cater to the needs of the Afghan people, who mostly hold positive views about India. There is no justification, for instance, for refusing to give more student or medical visas to Afghans who seek to come to India. That’s just a bad strategy.
Happymon Jacob teaches India’s foreign policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and is the founder of the Council for Strategic and Defence Research, a New Delhi-based think tank. The views expressed are personal
“We are thankful for India’s continuous help in capacity building of the Afghan cricket team. We really appreciate that.” Taliban’s head of political office, Suhail Shaheen told media when Afghanistan qualified for the ICC T20 World Cup 2024 semifinal, a historic first for the war-torn country. Unfortunately, the team lost in the semis played on an undercooked pitch to South Africa.
Shaheen’s statement is noteworthy for at least three reasons. One, the Taliban were once vehemently against sports and considered them unIslamic. Two, the Taliban were once anti-India. Images of the hijacked IC814 plane surrounded by gun-wielding Taliban in Kandahar continue to haunt Indians. Three, most of the international community treats the Taliban as an outcast and considers the outfit too radical to rule a country in the modern world.
Shaheen’s statement complicates all of these images. But even more importantly, it tells us a geopolitically compelling story about contemporary Afghanistan and India’s role in it. Let’s unpack that story a bit.
When New Delhi proactively engaged with the Taliban after it captured power in late 2021, its decision was roundly criticised by several countries, who were justifiably concerned about the Taliban’s inglorious human rights records. However, in retrospect, India’s decision to court Taliban 2.0 appears to have paid off.
Another noteworthy part of the story is that the Taliban have undergone some changes even if they continue to hold on to some obnoxious and abhorrent laws in governing the country. They have also failed to keep their promises regarding social reforms. But they have changed their attitude towards India as compared to the 1996-2001 period when they ruled Afghanistan. There also appears to be a growing recognition among the Taliban leadership that exporting terrorism or opium is bad policy. And, more controversially, the Taliban’s social outlook may also be undergoing some changes, albeit in slow and subtle ways. Its promotion of cricket is easily the best example. Compared to the 1990s, there is some rethinking amongst the Taliban senior leadership about girls’ education and women at work even as their policies continue to be unforgivably anti-women. If this process of slow change can be met with increased socialisation and reciprocal accommodation by the international community, rather than isolation and disengagement, we may see more changes on the ground. The attempt to isolate the Taliban has not worked, so why not give engagement a chance?
India’s carefully calibrated engagement with the Taliban is a fine example of New Delhi’s ability to balance soft power with hard strategy, adopt its own unique approach to the Taliban – not necessarily in line with its western/American friends – and use the relationship to create more space for geopolitical manoeuvrings in the restive region, all the while expressing its displeasure at how the Taliban treat half the country’s population.
While for much of the international community, the Taliban are a challenge and an outcast, for India, any regime in Kabul, including one headed by the Taliban, represents an opportunity to shape regional geopolitics more effectively and thereby moderate the Pakistan challenge. Even though India maintained friendly relations with the previous Afghan governments, pre-Taliban Kabul lacked the geopolitical agency to engage India keeping its own interests in mind. In that sense, the Taliban government is more helpful to India’s regional strategy than the Ghani administration whose India policy was challenged by Pakistan, on the one hand, and moderated by the United States (US), on the other.
Finally, there is the story of the Delhi-Islamabad-Kabul triangular balance of power. While it was primarily Pakistan’s sustained efforts that eventually brought the Taliban to power in Kabul, with the intent to undercut India’s influence, this policy has been a failure. The country that has gained the least from the return of the Taliban to power is Pakistan.
Considering that a strategic alliance between Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the one that existed during Taliban 1.0, is what Delhi fears the most, an adversarial relationship between Kabul and Islamabad doesn’t hurt Delhi. Therefore, the more Pakistan resists the Taliban’s exercise of geopolitical agency, the more the Taliban will seek to strengthen its engagement with India.
While all this sounds good, the challenge before Delhi is if it can have a moderating influence on the Taliban in the longer run. A puritanical Islamist Taliban regime, shunned by the international community and courted by radical elements, will eventually strengthen the region’s terror ecosystem. This could constrain India’s ability to continue its engagement with the outfit, as a friendless and resource-starved Taliban could be susceptible to influence by anti-India terror groups based in Pakistan or elsewhere. An ideal outcome for India is a moderate Taliban that safeguards its national interests and seeks to be mainstreamed into the international community.
Let’s return to the cricket story. My takeaway is soft power by itself is neither power nor useful to the practice of statecraft. The popularity of Bollywood, for instance, in Afghanistan may make us feel good, but it has little value as far as India’s strategic engagement with Afghanistan is concerned unless, of course, we can have a coherent strategy that can utilise such soft power for real power gains. Put differently, if India’s cricket diplomacy with Afghanistan were to be divorced from its general engagement with the Taliban, it would have produced no results for New Delhi’s relations with Kabul.
Let me end on a cautionary note. Even as Delhi works on ways to engage with the Taliban, it must cater to the needs of the Afghan people, who mostly hold positive views about India. There is no justification, for instance, for refusing to give more student or medical visas to Afghans who seek to come to India. That’s just a bad strategy.
Happymon Jacob teaches India’s foreign policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and is the founder of the Council for Strategic and Defence Research, a New Delhi-based think tank. The views expressed are personal