Months after the members of the Taliban regime in Kabul attended a four-day ‘India immersion’ online course offered by the Ministry of External Affairs through IIM Kozhikode, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India rebutted claims suggesting change in Indian approach towards recognizing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
The course was part of the capacity-building assistance through the ITEC (Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation) programme to developing countries, including Afghanistan.
However, it has been seen as a welcome step as India tries to gain its footprint in Afghanistan post the return of the Taliban regime in August 2021. The emerging contours of the Afghan security environment have monumental implication for India’s own strategic and security environment. Therefore, India despite having reservations on the Taliban’s highly exclusionary and repressive governance model has no option but to engage the Afghan officials.
Wheat and medicines
Earlier, through the international organisation, the Government of India had supplied 50,000 MT of wheat for the people of Afghanistan. The wheat assistance was delivered in multiple consignments. Similarly, India had supplied 500,000 doses of COVAXIN, 13 tonnes of essential lifesaving medicines and 500 units of winter clothing to Afghanistan in 2022.
Even during the 1999-2001 period of the Taliban regime, it had been involved in humanitarian assistance mission in Afghanistan due to the lack of outright diplomatic outreach to the Taliban. After the devastating earthquake in Afghanistan on May 30, 1998, India continued to send humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In 1999, when thousands of Afghan people were displaced from the Shumali plains and Takhar province, 1000 tents, 25,500 blankets, 140 tonnes of food items and 15 tonnes of medicines, medical supplies and medical equipment were despatched by chartered flights.
The outreach was taking place even when the Taliban were able to force President Rabbani and Commander Masood with their forces to retreat from Kabul to the north. India had officially backed the Rabbani Government in Afghanistan, despite the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.
Development approach
Humanitarian diplomacy as a part of public diplomacy approach has been a constant tool of engagement for India in absence of concrete diplomatic outreach to some of the countries. Indian approach to the development is mainly humancentric, and humanitarian assistance has over a period of time become a component of the development partnership apart from grant-in-aid, cultural partnership, capacity building and technical assistance.
For decades, India’s primary tool of engagement with Afghanistan has been its time-tested humanitarian diplomacy either bilaterally or through the UN and related organisations, along with extensive and wideranging humanitarian, financial, assistance, undertaking projects related to building infrastructure as well as building human capitals.
India’s cooperation with Afghanistan has consistently focussed on areas which are of direct benefit to the Afghan people. It has relied on the softer part of the diplomacy primarily for two reasons – India lacks agency and capabilities to act alone in this part of the region, especially after the fall of the Kabul to the Taliban forces, and had historically been dependent on the major powers in her quest for strategic space in Afghanistan.
First it was dependent on Russia for its outreach to the anti-Taliban force, Northern Alliance, during the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. For humanitarian assistance, it was dependent on UN and its related organisations.
After the US intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, India had stressed on its soft power diplomacy rather than hard power tools in order to not upset tenuous Afghanistan-USPakistan equilibrium in the region.
The US presence in Afghanistan was the overarching security umbrella under which India’s multiple developmental activities, economic assistance, capacity building and technical assistance projects fructified.
