India observing Afghan situation, yet to close Kabul embassy

Even as the Taliban militants entered Kabul and the government led by President Ashraf Ghani collapsed, India has not yet shut down its embassy in the capital of Afghanistan.

A few senior officials of the Afghan Government however arrived in New Delhi on Sunday.

India is closely monitoring the fast-changing situation in Afghanistan to decide on the evacuation of its diplomats from the capital of the war-torn country, a source said in New Delhi on Sunday. Though Ghani left Afghanistan, New Delhi is keeping tab on efforts by his predecessor Hamid Karzai, the chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation and veteran warlord and politician Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to form a coordination council as well on negotiations with Taliban to set up a transition government in Kabul.

Though some officials of the Embassy of India in Kabul returned to the country on board Air India’s regular Kabul-Delhi flight AI 244 on Friday, New Delhi has not yet evacuated its senior diplomats from the capital of Afghanistan.

New Delhi had shut down the Embassy of India in Kabul when the Taliban had taken over power in Afghanistan in 1996. India’s then acting envoy to Afghanistan, Azad Singh Toor, and other officials had left Kabul by a special aircraft of Ariana Airlines on September 26, 1996 – just before the Taliban entered the capital city and taken over power. The Taliban militants had not found any Indian diplomats when they had raided and ransacked the Embassy of India in Kabul.

India joined the United States and several other nations to warn the Taliban repeatedly over the past few weeks that if it returned to power in Kabul through violent means without going through a political process or without working out a negotiated settlement, its government would lack legitimacy and Afghanistan would turn into a pariah State.

New Delhi, however, has not yet made it clear if a transition government comes to power in Kabul as a result of the Taliban’s negotiations with the coordination council led by Karzai, Abdullah and Hekmatyar. A source in New Delhi, however, said that the Government of India would also factor in the possibility that the transition government could just be a prelude to the complete return of the Taliban to power in Kabul.

India evacuated its officials from its consulates in Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad in Afghanistan over the past few weeks – before the four provincial capitals – along with many others – came under the control of the Taliban. The consulates were not officially shut down, but left to be run only by the local employees, who continued to issue visas to people seeking to leave Afghanistan and travel to India.

India’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Rudrendra Tandon, had a meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Hanif Atmar on Saturday. He was also in touch with senior officials of the Afghan Government as well as with some of India’s old friends in Afghanistan on Sunday, even after the Taliban reached close to the outskirts of the national capital and Afghan President left the country. He was also in touch with Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who monitored the situation from New Delhi.

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