Four Decades of India’s Afghan Policy: Still Looking for a Direction

Abstract

Since the last four decades, India’s Afghan policy continues to be in a state of flux. New Delhi has attempted to provide some sort of consistency and continuity to its Afghan policy in the last forty years by collaborating twice with both the Super powers, but unfortunately both the times it could not yield the desired outcomes except leaving it in lurch. In 1980s, India has to compromise with her policy of Non-alignment and support Soviet intervention to remain an active player in Afghanistan. But this Indian policy could not be sustained for long because of Soviet Union’s withdrawal in 1989 and the subsequent assassination of President Najibullah and the ensuing chaos as Afghanistan fell into the hands of the hard-line Islamist forces. On Taliban’s assumption of power in 1996, New Delhi lost whatever little footprint it had in Afghanistan. India could not gain much by supporting the Ahmed Shah Masood led Northern Alliance which was fighting against the Taliban. In 2001, once again the Indian government got the opportunity to restore its age old civilizational ties with Afghanistan when the US and its allies militarily intervened to oust the Taliban from power. India seized the opportunity and actively supported post-2001 Bonn agreement and subsequent efforts made by the US and the international community to restore peace and stability in Afghanistan. During the period, New Delhi followed a ‘Soft power’ approach and desisted from any kind of political or military involvement in the peace process. She invested more than 3 billion dollars in developing the vital infrastructure and other developmental projects. But the sudden US withdrawal from Afghanistan following the Doha deal and the subsequent recapture of political power by the Taliban forcing the Ghani administration to flee the country once again left India’s Afghan policy in quandary.