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| Taliban trigger security nightmare for India | | Delhi not for sending troops to Afghanistan | |
NEW DELHI, OCT. 2
Indications from Delhi's power corridors are clear on the Congress-led coalition government's unpublished decision against sending Indian troops to Afghanistan to join the NATO-led forces. Although India has pledged 650 million dollars for the socio-economic reconstruction of war-torn Afghanistan, its options are limited. India is not willing to send troops to help NATO-led forces, which continue to face a tough time against the Taliban.
Quite a serious development for New Delhi: A resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and growing number of casualties for NATO forces are making Afghanistan a security nightmare for India. This phenomenon is impacting directly on Delhi's stakes in the region. The Manmohan Singh government is, at present, viewing the changing scenario in Afghanistan with alarm.
Manmohan Singh recently stated that India had stakes in a "stable, democratic and prosperous" Afghanistan. Now the UPA government at the Centre appears worried about the re-grouping of the Taliban militia. The Taliban have already been found having linkages to Al Qaeda and terrorist outfits targeting Jammu and Kashmir. Afghanistan's grim situation recently sparked the public recrimination between the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, and his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Musharraf.
Whatever the shortcomings of the Afghan President, it is widely believed in official circles that he is stating the fact that Pakistan is not doing enough to stop the Taliban fighters from infiltrating into Afgthanistan. It is a different mater that Karzai is becoming a prisoner in Kabul. All this at a time when the Taliban have become a very visible phenomenon in southern Afghanistan.
Again, it is officially admitted that the rise of Taliban poses a signifcant threat to India's interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia. India sees its interests in the region being linked to a stable Kabul under a not-unfriendly dispensation. The resurgence of Taliban has been noticed at a time when India's profile in Afghanistan is growing. New Delhi's relations with Kabul are becoming broad-based, in sharp contrast to the situation over five years ago when it had not contact with the Taliban militia.
Quite a significant move by India: Since India cannot afford to lose a strategically situated region to unfriendly fundamedntalist forces, it (New Delhi) has stepped up its diplomatic offensive to sensitise the international community about the dangers from the Taliban and their patronage by Pakistan.
The Taliban's revival is, obviously, part of the long-term Pakistani plan to extend its influence not only in Afghanistan but also in Central Asia. For India, which regained some influence in Afghanistan, a gateway to the resource-rich Central Asia, after the ouster of a hostile Taliban in late 2001, the escalating violence in that country is clearly bad news.
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