1 September 2021
Think piece 3 on Afghanistan – Can be freely used with due credit to SAHRDC
The Indian Express of 30 August 2021 mentions that 260 Indians are still stranded in Kabul. Representatives of Indian NGOs from the health, education and medical sectors have informed SAHRDC that over a 100 of them are NGO workers. Most of them have little money to buy even the bare necessities. Banks in Kabul opened a few days ago. Each account holder is allowed to withdraw small amounts. Most of the Indian NGO staff is resigned to losing their savings from their employment in Afghanistan.
The same story in the Indian Express reports that India was reduced to making frenetic phone calls to the US, Russia and “ some old friends in Kabul — Karzai and Abdullah were tapped.” This was done to organise safe passage for 150 odd Indians which included the Ambassador, other diplomatic officials and security staff. No quarrel with this. You must call anyone from Shangri La to Xanadu if it could save the lives of Indian citizens. The problem is with the asinine decision to close down the Indian Embassy and pullout diplomatic and security staff when those countries, still at war with the Taliban had their embassies open? The Taliban had also given public assurances that no harm would befall any diplomatic staff or mission. And such good old friends that the two Afghan bandicoots who stayed behind in Kabul having cut their private deals in Doha with the clearly ascendant Taliban, did not tip off their “old friends” in New Delhi.
There is clearly no manual in South Block on what to do in sticky situations.
The first coup d’état, in Fiji took place on 14 May 1987; a second coup d’état on 28 September ended the monarchy,
T P Sreenivasan was India’s high commissioner in Fiji in 1987, when Sitiveni Rabuka toppled the Indian-dominated government there. Mr. Sreenivasan is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party presently.
“As the High Commissioner of India to Fiji at that time, I was instructed not to recognise the military regime and to fight for the rights of the Fiji Indians. After two years of a diplomatic battle, Rabuka asked me to leave Fiji in 72 hours. The Indian high commission and the Indian Cultural Centre were closed down within six months.”
“….I was told that it was necessary to send a signal to all overseas Indians that India would stand by them if the local government took a confrontationist position against them.” The Prime Minister then was Mrs. Indira Gandhi. The present lot is more interested in the jamborees that the Overseas Indians Department organizes than any real protection for Tamils in Sri Lanka or Sikh students who cannot wear their turbans to state schools in France.
The political leadership is yet to be questioned by a single opposition party or media outlet as to how orders were given to the Ambassador to scamper away leaving over 260 Indian citizens to fend for themselves. This ruling party is a creature of the RSS. Neither the 56 inch chest or the vainglorious statement of the RSS chief in February 2018, which obliquely ran down the Indian army stating, “Preparing an army takes six to seven months but we [RSS cadres] will be battle ready in two-three days…this is our capability and discipline that marks us apart..” Not a squeak from these worthies about the Indian nationals being left behind! Embarrassed by their own cowardice, a few Indian consular officials were asked to go back to Kabul. No one with any heft to talk to senior Taliban leadership about the early evacuation for the remaining Indian nationals.
The first major diplomatic contact was established on 31 August between the Indian Ambassador in Qatar and the head of the Taliban’s political office there.
The RSS engineered government had more than 8 years notice of the endgame in Afghanistan. The Taliban opened their representative office in Doha, Qatar, in June 2013. This had been preceded by Taliban contacts with the US for two years. This was accompanied by the Taliban sending representatives to conferences on Afghanistan in Germany, Japan, and France. And for all Rafale jets India bought at grossly inflated prices, Quai d’Orsay did not whisper into Hindutva ears that they had started their evacuation in May 2021 having withdrawn their soldiers in 2014!
New Delhi with all its Hindutva folklore, forgot what Chanakya said, “In trans-border relations, there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies or even permanent borders. There are only permanent interests and everything should be done to secure these interests.”
They had all the signals. Canada had withdrawn its troops in 2014.
Allow me to dwell on one smoke signal which New Delhi could not have missed. Writing in the Kashmir Times in June 2013 and it bears an extensive quote “He (Mr. Steiner, the then German Ambassador in Delhi ) is reported to have been key to getting his then boss, the German President to agree to the deployment of German troops in Afghanistan. This allegedly, in the face of opposition from the then Green Foreign Minister, Mr. Joschka Fischer in the German Coalition government. Steiner served as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2012 from where he came to New Delhi as ambassador.
German interest in what is now known as the AF Pak region is not new. From the Treaty of Gandomak in 1879 and the Treaty of the Durand Line in 1893, the good Kaiser gave Calcutta, Delhi, Simla and London many sleepless nights. There are too many stories to recount here about the sparring that went on in the area between Imperial Germany and Imperial India under the British crown. German Industry then as Krupp and now as a clutch of armament manufacturers was not a disinterested participant in the great game. It would be useful if the pundits in Delhi visited the India office in London and reread the Viceroy’s dispatches. If that is arduous, they could perhaps start with reading Hopkirk.
The Germans hosting the Munich security conference each year have been hosting the Afghans, Pakistanis, Iranians and Indians not only to Bavarian beer and Brotzeit but also have been taking readings on their involvement in the area.
According to Der Spiegel, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), in 2006 was intercepting and reading SPIEGEL reporter Susanne Koelbl’s e-mail correspondence with Afghan Commerce Minister Amin Farhang. The BND leadership as early as 2005 had unofficial negotiations with certain representatives of the Taliban in Zurich. In November 2010, Steiner’s Bavarian and BND connections were once again visible. Commentator, Ahmed Rashid, stated that secret talks were held with Taliban’s Syed Tayyab Agha, long-term aide to Mullah Muhammad Omar. Also present was a prince from Qatar’s ruling family, whom the Taliban had asked to be present.
In late 2008, the BND was allegedly using employees of the German Agro Action (Welthungerhilfe) to obtain counterinsurgency intelligence. Agro Aid warned that this would endanger NGOs “neutrality. Hopefully, New Delhi is keeping its eyes and ears open on Germany’s new found interest in Kashmir University, development, et al.”
How could New Delhi keep its eye on the Afghan ball? They were as per proceedings in a UK court too busy abducting the daughter of the ruler of Dubai on the High seas far outside India’s territorial waters and handing over the hapless girl to imprisonment. This as late as 2018!
If only there was a free media in India and an informed opposition as in the US, our Hindutva government would not be caught with their khaki pants down!
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SAHRDC Think Piece 1 on Afghanistan is given below:
SAHRDC Think Piece 2 on Afghanistan is given below:
Afghanistan- A tragedy foretold – The setting of the Card table with cardsharps all around