Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met with the new Afghan ambassador to India Farid Mamundzay on Tuesday over the security situation in Afghanistan amidst reports of steady takeover by Taliban as the US combat troops prepare to leave the country completely by September after an almost 20-year deployment since 9/11.
The meeting was also attended by JP Singh, joint secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs, who has earlier served in India’s embassy in Afghanistan and is now handling the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division. The meeting assumes even more significance amidst speculations, that were denied by the ministry, that India was planning to close its embassy in Kabul and its consulates in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif.
However, the tweet from India specified that New Delhi is closely monitoring the situation in Kandahar and Mazar-e-Sharif. This after the fall of a key district in Kandahar to the Taliban a day ago. The Taliban took over Panjwai district in their former bastion of Kandahar within days of the US troops leaving the Bagram Air Base– their largest military base in Afghanistan.
Last week, CNN reported from Kabul that 100 districts out of the 374 were taken over by the Taliban. However, those in the know of the topography and population distribution in Afghanistan argued that the districts being taken over by Taliban are largely rural and in far-flung corners and are not strategically important. They added that most of the urban areas and the vast population that resides in these areas was well under the Afghan government control.
However, a US intelligence report and more recently former White House Advisor Richard Clarke have predicted that the Afghan government will fall within six months of the US withdrawal. Amidst these reports, President Ashraf Ghani and High Council for National Reconciliation Chairman Dr Abdullah Abdullah visited America two weeks ago where it was communicated to them that the troop pullback timeline will remain unchanged, however, the White House readout said, “The US and Afghan leaders firmly agreed that although US troops are leaving Afghanistan, the strong bilateral partnership will continue.”
Meanwhile, India remains concerned about the fallout of the troops’ exit and steady take over by the Taliban. India has invested deeply in Afghanistan. It has undertaken about 400 development programmes in Afghanistan in its 34 provinces since the fall of the Taliban. During the Taliban regime in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, India’s relationship had shrunk to virtually zero and as India stares at a changed equation yet again, it has tried to talk to the Taliban as well. Though MEA has denied any meeting between external affairs minister S Jaishankar and Mullah Baradar, however, it has said India is engaged with “all stakeholders.”
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