India against US reconciliation with Taliban

New Delhi believes that Washington needs to decide if it wants to be responsible for establishing a regime that is “a complete antithesis to the lofty ideas of human rights and women’s empowerment that the US champions worldwide.” Highly-placed sources said that New Delhi conveyed its concern over the pitfalls of a move for reconciliation with the Taliban to the visiting US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs Robert Blake.

Blake was in a tour to India from Thursday to Saturday. He will also travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan. “There cannot be a distinction between good Taliban and bad Taliban. There is nothing called good Taliban, and we still believe the Taliban are bad,” said a senior official.

He, however, pointed out that New Delhi was in favour of reintegration of Taliban elements into the system of governance in Afghanistan, if they eschew violence.
“This is what we are doing with the insurgents and extremists in our country too and we think this is what can be done to initiate a political process in Afghanistan if the international community believes that the problem could not be resolved militarily,” he added.

Military training

New Delhi also made it clear that it would not scale down its “development partnership” with Afghanistan in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Kabul on February 26 last, and was even ready to provide military training to a larger number of personnel of the Afghan National Army in institutions in India, if President Hamid Karzai’s government asked for it.

The terrorist attack in Kabul on February 26 last resulted in the death of 16 people, including six Indians. The terrorists apparently targeted the Indian Medical Mission.