The Evolving Peace Process In Afghanistan

From India’s standpoint, New Delhi would do well to engage with the Taliban, which is being accorded increasing legitimacy

- Chayanika Saxena

In the last 18 years, the situation in Afghanistan has remained as tenuous as it had been in the three decades that preceded them. In fact, things do not look any different since 2017 when the so-called “mother-of-all-bombs” was dropped in Nangarhar to deter the extremists. Or in 2001 when 25 international stakeholders came together “determined to help the Afghan people end the tragic conflicts in their country...”

A lot of things have gone wrong both in and for Afghanistan since the 1970s. In recent times, however, the US has found itself at the center of most of these troubles, many of which have been of its own making. There is massive evidence that suggests American policies and practices have consistently demonstrated strategic and tactical disconnect from the demands and aspirations of Afghanistan.

This is not to suggest ill-intention or dictatorial behavior to (re) build Afghanistan in its own image. Rather, it shows how ill-equipped it has been (and continues to be) to handle matters related to expeditionary counter-insurgency operations.

While the US has demonstrated a flippant, self-contradictory attitude from time-to-time, the man of the hour in the present scenario, Zalmay Khalilzad — US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation — inspires little confidence.

From (effectively) sabotaging the return of Zahir Shah as the political leader of Afghanistan in 2001 to his purported negotiations with then-president Hamid Karzai to be made (an unaccountable) Prime Minister of Afghanistan in 2009 to his successive engagements with the Taliban since the 1990s, Khalilzad has a checkered past.