President joe biden’s promise to end America’s longest war. Finally, all American troops left Afghanistan on august 31st, 2021, but India’s strategic and security interests in Afghanistan are currently severely harmed by u.s foreign policy. However, India’s external affairs ministry led by s j Shankar remains silent to maintain the appearance of a happy collaboration with the world’s top superpower. U.
Turned its back on India. India is clueless about Afghanistan because the u.s denied new Delhi’s diplomatic presence in Kabul, despite several requests for stationing a core team of Indian officials. Before and after Kabul’s fall, the u.s denied new Delhi’s diplomatic presence within Kabul airport, which is considered the safest site in Afghanistan because it was under.
US control which resulted in a complete Indian withdrawal with no mission or men left in Afghanistan. On the other hand, the us gladly accommodated the united kingdom, France, Germany, and other nato members but cited a space constraint for keeping India out in the last few days. India has been allowed to operate two flights per day to evacuate its citizens from Kabul, and the nato forces in control of the Kabul airport are operating as many flights each day to evacuate their citizen’s weaponry and equipment from Afghanistan. Such shocking blocking out of India has been found in the cut out of several quadrilateral arrangements, for example, the main negotiations held by the troika plus, consisting of us, Russia, China and Pakistan, which pushed for a more inclusive government by including the Taliban. The alternative grouping of Russia, Iran, China, and Pakistan, formed a regional arc that has today enabled them to retain their embassies in Kabul, and India is nowhere.
In these arrangements. Washington chose Pakistan over India when it came to Afghanistan. However, the u.s selected Islamabad, which is still a major non-nato partner to deliver the Taliban, us also left India out of the Doha talks. Importantly, Russia also kept India out of the Moscow negotiations because it was upset with India for buying us armaments and restricting Russian weapons supplies to India.
Neither India’s so-called traditional strategic and defense partner, Russia, nor its currently fastest-growing global strategic partner. The united states considered it important to include India in any confabulation or insist that their envoys meet with Indian officials cold-shouldered by the us and Russia and targeted by china and Pakistan. India clung to the stuttering Afghan government only to be sidelined, marginalized, and ultimately elbowed out in a major foreign policy debacle. Last month, Washington announced a new connectivity quad group, which includes us, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This grouping establishes a trade corridor from Tashkent to Pakistan’s Gwadar and Karachi ports, which directly hurts India’s interests.
Evidently, India is useful to America only in the indo-pacific region. As a key member of the coalition of democracies, including Japan and Australia, known as the quad, which is also led by the us for countering china, India’s engagement in Afghanistan, India was the first country with which Afghanistan established a strategic partnership and the only country with which It embarked on risky but ambitious projects such as the construction of a new parliament, building the zaranj delirium highway and the surbahar port project in Iran, which provides transit trade infrastructure. As a result, India is the only country that continuously ranks first among the countries that afghans trust. It appears inconceivable and incomprehensible that the Indian government could choose to abandon such capital-invested and cultivated assets, regardless of the developments in Afghanistan and the domestic political considerations in India and the geopolitical sensitivities of some neighbors. Therefore, it would be the responsibility of the Indian government to consider all of its options for keeping engaged with Afghanistan for the sake of the country’s future and the ordinary Afghans who fearlessly placed their trust in Indian leadership.
India was unable to assure its diplomatic staff that they would be secure from Taliban fighters in order to keep diplomats in Kabul. As a result, India was unable to establish a diplomatic outpost at Kabul airport, which would have allowed it to station a core team. As the united states, the united kingdom and other nato countries had done, this plainly played against India’s interests up till now, and this indicates India’s foreign policy needs to be reset and a new diplomatic strategy should be implemented.
