Daily Times

It’s a bit rich of Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to call a conference of his regional counterparts in New Delhi to discuss the situation in Afghanistan when India is clearly not in favour of letting the new Taliban government settle down. Therefore, Pakistani NSA Dr Moeed Yusuf’s snub was appropriate as well as timely, saying “a spoiler cannot be a peacemaker” as he turned down Doval’s invitation. Perhaps, it would have worked better if Delhi had first silenced its loudest hawks still lamenting the fall of the Ghani administration in Kabul and reminding everybody that India, despite its constraints, provided $3 billion to prop up the dying regime.

While Yusuf’s street wisdom and survival instinct sometimes leave a little to be desired, he has called this one pretty correctly. The Indians would also be frustrated because they would have counted on letting their savage press loose on the Pakistani NSA, but Pakistan is approaching this issue far too seriously to let such irritants get in the way. Islamabad did, for all intents and purposes, show the West the way out of the quagmire and had also foretold just how things were going to develop. That is because being Afghanistan’s immediate neighbour and also the one that has had to bear the brunt of most of its problems has given it a unique vantage point.

Right now, the most urgent matter of the day is avoiding a major humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan, not scoring political points against regional arch-rivals. It would be far better if every country in the region joined hands to pressure the West to remove sanctions imposed on Kabul and release its blocked funds in foreign accounts, even if immediate recognition is out of the question. That would also be a much better way of getting the Taliban to fall in line, so to speak, and be a lot more accommodating of religious and ethnic minorities as well as women.

So far, India’s national security establishment has done and said nothing to show that it is even remotely interested in lasting peace in South Asia. Doval, in fact, built something of a YouTube following by uploading videos explaining how he would bring fourth- and fifth-generation warfare to Pakistan. Therefore, neither he nor his masters have the credibility to play peacemaker in these parts. *