Air link with Kabul is in India’s interest

Former Ambassador

The Afghan Civil Aviation Authority has addressed a communication to India’s Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) seeking the resumption of its scheduled flights operated by Kam Air and Ariana Afghan Airlines on the Kabul-New Delhi sector under the existing bilateral civil aviation agreement.

The flights had been suspended since mid-August following the closure of the Afghan air space consequent upon the capture of Kabul by the Taliban. But the Kabul airport resumed functioning on September 20 and is open to commercial flights.

The Taliban request comes with no strings attached. India is under no obligations. Kabul is not asking for the resumption of the flights by Air India or SpiceJet. Nor is there going to be any requirement of an Indian physical presence in Kabul, leave alone ‘recognition’ of the Taliban government. In short, the Afghan side simply desires travel facilities for its people to come to India on private visits.

Of course, ‘suitcase trade’ is vital for the Kabul bazaar, and from our side, suppliers in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar or Paharganj will be happy that the Kabuliwallah is returning. The winter season is fast approaching and hosiery products are urgently needed, as indeed daily necessities. The Afghan traveller will probably bring in his suitcase as much dry fruits as he can.

Afghanistan is in the same sad plight as the ‘Stans’ when the Soviet Union collapsed. The Central Asian bazaars were teeming with Indian products in the 1990s. We must be capable of empathy.

Like Rahmat in the famous Tagore story, it is the heart-rending tale of innocence of a subsistence economy for which India is a lifeline. Then, there are people who want to come to India for medical treatment. Or, students seeking knowledge — or, those who simply want to breathe in the exhilarating freedom in the air, the clothes they wear.

The Indian papers say a decision on the Afghan request will be ‘a political call’. That means the bureaucracy will probably hold inter-ministerial consultations on the politico-security ‘implications’ of the Afghan request. Regrettably, once we start injecting geopolitics into the Afghan request, the tragic human condition becomes secondary.

Of course, this is a piquant situation in political and diplomatic terms. But consider the following. The Afghan civil aviation authorities most certainly acted on instructions from the Taliban. If so, it conveys a signal in positive terms. The political symbolism is unmistakable.

An overture of this sort was to be expected, but not so soon — a fortnight after the announcement of the Taliban government. In similar circumstances, the Mujahideen government that usurped power in Kabul in April 1992 took four months to reach out to India.

The main difference today is that the seizure of power in Kabul by the warlords 29 years ago was not challenged by the international community. President Najibullah who had taken shelter in the UN compound in Kabul was not inclined to rake up the ‘legitimacy aspect’ as he surveyed the debris of the house he built following the defection of Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum.

As for the Americans, once the Soviet troops withdrew by end-1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed by December 1991, they couldn’t care less that a bunch of warlords grabbed power in Kabul. The Burhanuddin Rabbani government got the UN seat by default!

Today, a new cold war is struggling to be born and Afghanistan is a turf in the ‘strategic competition’, as the Biden Administration calls it, among the US, Russia and China. All three big powers seem to visualise that a cooperative regime in Kabul will be to their advantage.

Washington is unlikely to grant recognition to the current authorities in Kabul unless and until it has re-established a meaningful conversation with them. Efforts are under way. But it will take time. The Biden presidency is badly wounded; the State Department and Pentagon blame each other; the generals are livid. Polls say public opinion wants Biden to step down. Afghanistan has turned into a hot potato.

Delhi should weigh its interests independently. The request from Kabul is a gratifying development that can open the door to a pathway for some degree of direct communication with Kabul. Certain regional states are already resorting to such a mode. The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, admitted last week that Qatar was “facilitating contacts with the authorities in Kabul and the Western world… (and) facilitating messaging to the Taliban.”

It is perfectly feasible and ‘legal’ to engage with the Taliban. What happened in Kabul is a reality and as things stand, there’s nothing restraining or hindering our contacts with the Taliban.

The UN Security Council resolutions do not prevent us. Curiously, those resolutions stipulate the need to promote a political process, and without working together with the Taliban, that isn’t possible. There are a sufficient number of exemptions from sanctions imposed on the Taliban. The rationale behind all that is the acknowledgment that the Taliban are an inalienable part of the Afghan society.

All indications are that the UK is accelerating a process of re-engagement with Afghanistan, with the US apparently leading from the rear. Plainly put, the equations are changing.

Delhi always factored in that Indian interests lay in keeping contacts with the authorities in Kabul at any given time. Air links facilitate travel between the two capitals and help nurture people-to-people contacts, which is an abiding part of the Indo-Afghan relationship. Restoration of trade and commerce is always welcome.

Above all, it becomes possible for India to dispatch humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. China is using Ariana Afghan Airlines to send supplies of vaccines, blankets, food, etc, under its emergency $31-million aid programme.