Why did India close Jalalabad consulate?

In a sudden and surprising development in March last year, India closed its consulates in Jalalabad and Herat. Jalalabad is 65 km from the Torkham border crossing with Pakistan, and Herat about 120 km from Iran.

Though there was no official statement, one newspaper reported that a high-level security group had recommended closure over heightened security threats and Covid-related concerns. The closure was said to be temporary, and reopening would await a review. India has had consulates at these cities even in the years when fighting raged.

Jalalabad has characteristics that make it unique. An adage is that the road to Kabul runs through Kandahar. Whilst that makes Kandahar the fulcrum, it is Jalalabad which is the cultural capital. It is a ‘city of poets’ where every street has its share of poets. Afghans love poetry and have a couplet for every conceivable occasion. This is the city that Pakistan covets.

Founded by Mughal emperor Babur, it gets its name from his grandson Jalaluddin Akbar. It is where foreign invaders were tested in the ‘Great Game’ -- the phrase made famous by Rudyard Kipling in his book Kim.

It was here that the Anglo-Afghan wars played out. The British military suffered its greatest disaster at Gandamak, 40 km away, losing 16,000 men in the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42). The British commander, Maj Gen Elphinstone, died in captivity and was buried in an unmarked grave in Jalalabad.

In the Second Anglo-Afghan war (1878), it was the Afghans who were bested and forced to sign an agreement, again at Gandamak, ceding Quetta, Pishin, Sibi, Harnai, Kurram and Khyber to the Raj and surrendering control over foreign relations. This was formalised, in 1893, through an agreement signed by Sir Mortimer Durand and Emir Abdur Rehman Khan demarcating the border between British India and Afghanistan. This created a buffer between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Britain’s possessions. In the process, it split the Pashtun heartland, dividing tribes and families, and the area ceded by Afghanistan became the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The Afghans never reconciled to their lands becoming part of Pakistan when the British withdrew and opposed Pakistan’s inclusion in the UN. This is part of the reason for Pakistan’s fear – that this lingering problem could fuel Pashtun nationalism.

Jalalabad tested even the Soviets. The Afghan Army’s 9th Division virtually all crossed over to the Mujahideen. To relieve pressure on Jalalabad, the Soviets brought a young Uzbek commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum, into the frontline to lift the siege of Khost. The siege was more of an ISI operation. Dostum impressed the Soviets but deserted Najibullah once they left.

In early March 1989, it was Pakistan’s turn. The ISI strong-armed the Mujahideen into assembling a 10,000-strong force and helped plan a massed attack on Jalalabad. The Mujahideen, unused to such tactics, were routed, losing an estimated 3,000. Another 15,000 civilians were killed and about 10,000 had to flee.

The Mujahideen “never recovered from Jalalabad,” according to the ISI’s Brig Mohammad Yusuf (in his book The Bear Trap). The setback allowed Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to sack the DG-ISI and replace him with a hand-picked retired major general.

Strategic importance

Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province, is surrounded by Pakistan on three sides. To the north is Kunar, where the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) is active; to the south is Loya Paktika, comprising the provinces of Khost, Paktiya and Paktika -- long considered Haqqani Network territory. It is this swathe that Pakistan has long sought to control.

Pakistan has never hidden how crucial eastern Afghanistan is to its plan to convert the country into a client state -- to contain Pashtun nationalism and to formalise control over the Durand Line. It is here that the predominantly Pakistani Punjabi LeT was born and the terror groups that operated in India were trained.

There are other reasons why Jalalabad is important for Islamabad. Pakistan is water-stressed. The River Kabul, which flows through Jalalabad, is the source of water to Peshawar and the fertile Peshawar valley. There is also a dam across the river at Warsak and it then goes on to augment the flow of the Indus at Attock.

Jalalabad is where the Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, spent seven years in exile. Though he died in Pakistan, he chose to be buried in Jalalabad. The Soviets and the Mujahideen declared a ceasefire for his burial in 1988 and permitted both Afghan President Najibullah and Shankar Dayal Sharma, India’s then vice president, to attend the funeral.

Pakistan has long sought the closure of the Jalalabad consulate, arguing that it is from there that India dabbles in Pakistan’s internal affairs. This has been the refrain since Nehru’s days. Pakistan even complained to the US which, in a self-appointed role of regional monitor, concluded that there was no evidence of the consulates doing anything more than routine consular functions.

The reality is that the consulate is small, and so boxed in that, given security considerations, its outreach and access is limited. It is essentially a flag post. Pakistan’s complaints persist for reasons that have more to do with hegemonic interests than any real fears. They view continued Indian presence there as detrimental to their plans.

Pakistan’s strategic doctrine

Pakistan has long coveted Afghan real estate – influenced first by British soldier and diplomat Sir William Kerr Fraser-Tytler, who argued, shortly after Partition, that history “suggests a fusion (of Afghanistan and Pakistan) will take place, if not peacefully, then by force.” In the 1950s, Ayub Khan proposed a federation of the two. Finding no purchase, he expanded it to suggest a confederation of the Muslim contiguous states of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. The rationale being that a confederation would provide Pakistan with the resources and numbers to stand up to India.

Later, during the Soviet intervention, Pakistan’s support to the Mujahideen was justified as necessary to prevent encirclement by India and Soviet-backed Afghanistan. In the late ’80s, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, Pakistan’s then Chief of Army Staff, used the term ‘strategic depth’ to suggest an area where Pakistan could relocate arms and personnel to absorb an initial thrust and regroup in the eventuality of an Indian attack. As a concept, this is militarily bankrupt, it gives no thought to the fate of Pakistan’s 200 million citizens while its military could safely ‘regroup’.

Then, in 2010, then Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani argued that strategic depth was to safeguard Pakistan’s western borders by having a “peaceful, friendly and stable” relationship with Afghanistan. This meant, he elaborated, that Afghan institutions, including the army and police, should be kept in check so that they do not pose a threat to Pakistan’s ‘strategic interests.’ Essentially, this is an alternative to the land-grab thesis using a different argument and intended to transform Afghanistan into a client state beholden to the Pakistan military.

One reason for Pakistan now assisting in the rapprochement between Kabul and the Taliban is that it gets to push for its favourites into controlling that part of the Durand Line extending from Kunar to Loya Pakhtika. They will also seek that a Haqqani nominee be appointed as Minister of Frontier Affairs and that they exercise some say over the appointment of governors to these provinces. The argument would be that Pakistan needs to safeguard its interests, and the US is simply too tired to argue and will see it as a small price to pay.

Wrong signal

While security is a worrisome factor, the consulate, which was shut during the Taliban years, has lived through equally bad times, being attacked four times since it was re-opened in 2001.

There were grenade attacks in 2007 and 2013, a suicide attack in 2015, and a more serious one in 2018. Covid certainly is a reality, but the pandemic is not as big a factor as earlier anticipated. There is also limited interaction between the consulate staff and the locals.

Whatever may be the reason – security, Covid or whether we wilted under pressure or whether financial considerations forced a closure, the fact is that it sends wrong signals. But then a truism, which the city of poets is painfully aware of, is that nothing ever goes according to script in Afghanistan.

(The writer, a former special secretary, R&AW, is with the Takshashila Institution, Bengaluru)