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Two separate incidents.
Karachi one is a fire in a section of airport where old unused aircrafts are located.
Afghan incident is from today, donno if taliban claimed it or not.
India-Pakistan LoC/IB Skirmishes in the Aftermath of August 5 2019
- Thread starter tarunraju
- Start date
- Status
Karachi one is a fire in a section of airport where old unused aircrafts are located.
Afghan incident is from today, donno if taliban claimed it or not.
Deathstar
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Its not , many factions are Iranian controlled as well
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Taliban is not one group, there are afghan Taliban , there are paki taliban and there are taliban who are basically ISI.
Going by past precedent, paki burned American military supplies on their way to Afghanistan when there were disagreements. This could be similar tactic.
Let’s not forget the strategic depth principle, it’s imperative that US-taliban talks go in favour of Pakistan. They would do anything to make it happen.
Of course, all this is under the assumption that the aircraft was shot down.
Jameson Emoni
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Pakistan is making a tall claim that it controls Taliban. As such, it is in a position to act as a negotiator between USA and Taliban. Pakistan is doing this in a hope of earning some cash from USA.
There are two factions of Taliban: one is friendly towards Pakistan and another is downright hostile towards Pakistan. The unfriendly ones every now and then attack Pakistanese troops and capture them and put them on display in a mocking manner. Here is the funny part: the hardcore Taliban do not consider Pakistanese army Islamic. Even the friendly ones are not controlled by Pakistan.
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sorcerer
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Heat is good...put more heat and weld the pok Back to India.
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The Taliban that Kill or Behead Pakjabi Dogs are not related to the Afghan Taliban but instead a offshoot. They are called Pakistani Taliban or Taliban Movement Inside PorkiShitan or TPP. They are a Islamic Terrorist Group that Operates in the Pashtun and Baloch Areas Occuiped by the Pakjabis. Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban don’t mess with each other usually and stay out of each other’s business because they Considered Themselves as Pashtun and Pisslam as first. But that has changed a lot since the Initial US Invasion and Subsequent Occupation. The Afghan Taliban Like back in Soviet invasion days started to rely more on PorkiShitan military and Porki ISI for help and resources against Americans and Afghan Army this angered the Pakistani Taliban and has caused a wedge between both Brother Groups the Pakistani Taliban which was created to Fight the Pakjabi Dogs and drive them out of Pashtun lands and also create a unified Pisslamic Pashtun state. This Friendship between PorkiShitani Establishment and Afghan Taliban has caused the Pakistani Taliban to drift more towards the Afghan Government Side especially through the Effort of Afghan Intelligence Agency NDS which also means towards the Hand of India and RAW. India/RAW through our Proxy/Friend Afghanistan/NDS has been funding the Pakistani Taliban and groups that has similar ideology to them. India can fund them directly ones we capture POK From PorkiShitan.
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Afghan Taliban used to be under the control of Porkis back in the Time of Soviet Invasion since Porkis set it up in the first place. Porkis used the same model in Kashmir as well but that failed to extern extend. The US Invasion and later Initial Porki Support for there American Masters for money under Musharraf caused some Friction and sense of betrayal between Porkis and Afghan Taliban. This all changed when Musharraf was kicked out and ISI took over Taliban operation this Allowed for Realignment between Porkis and Afghan Taliban but there relations were never the same again. Afghan Taliban has acted independently of PorkiShitan for couple last years now but Porkis do have some control over them especially with Local Taliban Terrorist Commanders operating Near Durand line.
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it was a USAF Surveillance, Electronic Warfare and Communication Aircraft operating in Taliban Controlled Territory in the Mountains near the Durand Line in Ghazni Province of Afghanistan. People claiming it was a Afghan Passenger Aircraft is wrong. I believe the Plane is a Bombardier E-11 Aircraft a Variant of Bombardier Global Express Model 6000
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bhramos
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#Taliban Add that all High Ranking CIA Officers who were in the Flight for #Intelligence Mission in the Area are Dead. The Remainings of Aircraft & DeadBodies of killed Americans laying on the Ground. Reportedly burnt deadbodies of killed Americans also taken away by Taliban.
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CIA doesn’t operate this Aircraft type. They are mostly used by US Army or USAF for Reconnaissance and Communication Purposes when doing operation against Pisslamic Terrorist Groups or Non-State Actors in Afghanistan. The Talibani Terrorists don’t have the Capability or capacity to shoot down a Aircraft like this especially one like this which has a lot of Counter-Measures to protect it against Manpads and larger Surface to Air Missiles. This Plane must have hit the ground because of some Engine Malfunction or On-Board Systems Failure not because of Talibani Terrorists. Talibani Dogs like to claim alot of such incidents as them shooting them down which is a lie. The Ultimate Goal of Taliban is gain attention by taking credit for shit they didn’t do. I am pretty sure if indeed the Taliban did take the Bodies of US Military Personal they will surely use it as Bargaining chip in the US-Taliban Negotiations. Trump has to take back the bodies through negotiations with the Terrorists or through a Military operation against them.
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Assassin 2.0
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De diya danda Pakistan military m. :biggrin2:
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finally EU got consciousness
Waanar
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I love it.
Muslims getting their kids killed from kaafirs, what's not to like?
Next thing you know, he sends his daughter forward saying "RAPE HER!" "YOU RAPE WAAMIN" "RAPE HER" while screaming "UNDRESS! UNDRESS YOU BITCH, HE ISN'T GETTING HARD!"...
Their sheer brilliance is unmatched.
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WHAT OPINIONS DO YOU GUYS HAVE ON THIS SUBJECT? DO YOU GUYS THINK INDIA IS UP TO THE CHALLENGE? OR YOU DON’T WANT A INDIAN INTERVENTION?
Afghanistan's request for Indian troops — It’s an insane idea, which New Delhi must take seriously
Updated : January 27, 2020 06:45 AM IST
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense.
If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
“Legs and arms protruding from the snow, Europeans and Hindustanis half-buried, horses and camels all dead,” Subedar Sita Ram chronicled the annihilation of the imperial British garrison which began to march out of Kabul in the high winter of 1842. Perched in the hills, Sita Ram recorded, Afghan tribesmen shot at the British forces, leaving them “as helpless as a handcuffed prisoner”. “The men fought like gods, not like men”, he concluded. “But, alas!, alas!, who can withstand fate”?
Five thousand soldiers, and some 15,000 camp-followers —many women and children — had marched out of Kabul. Pop history holds just one, surgeon William Brydon, survived; the real number was a few hundred. For fifteen months, Sita Ram served as a slave, sold in the bazaar for Rs 240; the wives and children of other soldiers never saw their homeland again.
Early this month, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, used a visit to New Delhi to privately press a request for at least a Brigade — perhaps even a Division —of Indian troops to be deployed in a peacekeeping role, ahead of a peace deal with the Taliban which is expected to lead to the final withdrawal of United States forces. Kabul, diplomatic sources said, hopes to put together a multinational framework, perhaps United Nations-led, for this troop deployment.
To most in India’s strategic establishment, the idea appears insane: From the decimation of Britain’s 1842 army, which included thousands of Indians, to the grinding down of Soviet Union in 1979-1989, and the morass the United States has descended into since 9/11, intervention in Afghanistan hasn’t had happy outcomes.
For India, though, failure to intervene will also have costs —key among them, the risk that southern Afghanistan could become a safe haven for jihadists, and that protracted insurgency could eventually destabilise the West Asian states on India depends for its energy security. Put simply, Indian troops in Afghanistan might be an insane idea — but this insane idea needs to be considered very, very seriously.
Idea finds few takers
To understand why Afghanistan’s calls for Indian troops are becoming louder, one has to turn to the agreement now being hammered out between Taliban negotiators and United States diplomats in Doha. The deal is expected to include guarantees the Islamist insurgents will scale down violence — but bitter experience has taught Afghans to suspect the Taliban will resile on their word the minute the United States vacates its military bases.
New Delhi’s long-standing allies in Afghanistan’s north — who India, along with Iran and Russia funded and armed through their long, bitter battle against the Taliban until 9/11 — see an Indian Army as insurance against their cities being overrun by proxies for the Pakistan Army.
Few Indian military analysts see deployment in Afghanistan as sustainable. There is, critically, just no way to provide logistical support to an Indian garrison. The only workable route is through Iran’s Chabahar port, connecting by rail and road to the city of Herat. The route has been used by India before, to provide both civilian and military aid to Afghanistan — but with Iran-United States hostilities rising, the route may not be a reliable one.
Vivek Chadha, a former army officer now working at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Analysis in New Delhi, says that, decades after India’s ill-fated intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987-1990, the country just doesn’t have the logistical and technological means to support a counter-insurgency mission in a third country.
The Indian Air Force just isn’t equipped to provide cover for forces operating in hostile environments out-of-theatre; surveillance assets are limited; independent intelligence capacity almost non-existent.
“Experience also teaches us,” Chadha argues, “that missions like these tend to snowball. We’ll send troops; they’ll be attacked by Pakistan’s proxies, and we’ll have to send more troops to protect them.”
India’s partners in sustaining the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance have worked, in recent years, to make their peace with the Islamist insurgency. Iran’s intelligence services have long enjoyed a robust tactical relationship with the Taliban — using them to harry the United States, on the one hand, while at once arming and equipping Shi’a proxies opposed to the insurgents. In the event of a Taliban effort to capture power, Tehran would likely back its opponents — but at arm’s length, as it did in the 1990s.
For its part, Russia sees the Taliban as an ally against the Islamic State on the borders of its central Asian allies. Afghan authorities have bitterly complained that Russia is providing covert military assistance to Taliban units operating in the country’s north — a claim Moscow denies. Beijing, similarly, has cultivated close links to the Taliban, in return for help with jihadists seeking to target Xinjiang province.
The United States, of course, doesn’t care deeply about the prospect of Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for jihadists: the country protected from the immediate fallout by sheer distance, and capable of operating against targets using its global network of bases.
New Delhi, though, just doesn’t have the option of relying on the Taliban’s goodwill. Even though Taliban negotiators have reached out to New Delhi, seeking diplomatic engagement, the group remains deeply enmeshed with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. It also has disturbing links with a welter of anti-India jihadist groups — ranging from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to al-Qaeda’s Indian subcontinent unit.
Al-Qaeda’s last subcontinent chief, Uttar Pradesh-born jihadist Sana-ul-Haq, was in the company of Taliban when he was killed in a drone strike, intelligence sources note.
But against this counter-terrorism concerns, New Delhi must weigh the costs — in cash and blood — of a physical presence in Afghanistan, which are likely substantial. The question will be: Are a few terrorists really worth the enormous financial burdens and risks which come with committing troops overseas?
India's status as a regional power
The answer will, of course, lie partly in what kind of multinational framework is stitched together to secure Afghanistan once the United States withdraws — and how much pressure there is on Pakistan to abide by it. The signs, for now, aren’t heartening. President Donald Trump’s government seems content to hand over management of a post-deal Afghanistan to Islamabad, and is already working to ease sanctions imposed by the multinational Financial Action Task Force.
But New Delhi also needs to ask itself a harder question: If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security. For decades, New Delhi’s sought a seat at the global high table, but has shied away from the responsibilities that come with it. India was conspicuously absent, even in a humanitarian role, from helping its West Asian allies push back against the Islamic State. New Delhi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis, similarly, led neighbours Bangladesh and Myanmar, similarly, to turn to China to mediate.
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense. For more than 2,500 years, Afghanistan was a stable and prosperous part of one empire or the other, from the Kushans to the Persians. The Soviet war of 1979-1989, or the United States post-9/11 war, failed because of errors in planning and execution, not some mystical property of the Afghan soil.
New Delhi has the opportunity here to bring something genuinely new to the table on what multinational peacekeeping should look like the insurgency-torn which litter Asia, and what the global order to govern them should be. Even if New Delhi turns its back on Afghanistan, it’s going to face similar challenges again — perhaps sooner than it imagines. The time to stop dithering, and prepare for the challenge, is now.
Afghanistan's request for Indian troops — It’s an insane idea, which New Delhi must take seriously
Updated : January 27, 2020 06:45 AM IST
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense.
If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
“Legs and arms protruding from the snow, Europeans and Hindustanis half-buried, horses and camels all dead,” Subedar Sita Ram chronicled the annihilation of the imperial British garrison which began to march out of Kabul in the high winter of 1842. Perched in the hills, Sita Ram recorded, Afghan tribesmen shot at the British forces, leaving them “as helpless as a handcuffed prisoner”. “The men fought like gods, not like men”, he concluded. “But, alas!, alas!, who can withstand fate”?
Five thousand soldiers, and some 15,000 camp-followers —many women and children — had marched out of Kabul. Pop history holds just one, surgeon William Brydon, survived; the real number was a few hundred. For fifteen months, Sita Ram served as a slave, sold in the bazaar for Rs 240; the wives and children of other soldiers never saw their homeland again.
Early this month, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, used a visit to New Delhi to privately press a request for at least a Brigade — perhaps even a Division —of Indian troops to be deployed in a peacekeeping role, ahead of a peace deal with the Taliban which is expected to lead to the final withdrawal of United States forces. Kabul, diplomatic sources said, hopes to put together a multinational framework, perhaps United Nations-led, for this troop deployment.
To most in India’s strategic establishment, the idea appears insane: From the decimation of Britain’s 1842 army, which included thousands of Indians, to the grinding down of Soviet Union in 1979-1989, and the morass the United States has descended into since 9/11, intervention in Afghanistan hasn’t had happy outcomes.
For India, though, failure to intervene will also have costs —key among them, the risk that southern Afghanistan could become a safe haven for jihadists, and that protracted insurgency could eventually destabilise the West Asian states on India depends for its energy security. Put simply, Indian troops in Afghanistan might be an insane idea — but this insane idea needs to be considered very, very seriously.
Idea finds few takers
To understand why Afghanistan’s calls for Indian troops are becoming louder, one has to turn to the agreement now being hammered out between Taliban negotiators and United States diplomats in Doha. The deal is expected to include guarantees the Islamist insurgents will scale down violence — but bitter experience has taught Afghans to suspect the Taliban will resile on their word the minute the United States vacates its military bases.
New Delhi’s long-standing allies in Afghanistan’s north — who India, along with Iran and Russia funded and armed through their long, bitter battle against the Taliban until 9/11 — see an Indian Army as insurance against their cities being overrun by proxies for the Pakistan Army.
Few Indian military analysts see deployment in Afghanistan as sustainable. There is, critically, just no way to provide logistical support to an Indian garrison. The only workable route is through Iran’s Chabahar port, connecting by rail and road to the city of Herat. The route has been used by India before, to provide both civilian and military aid to Afghanistan — but with Iran-United States hostilities rising, the route may not be a reliable one.
Vivek Chadha, a former army officer now working at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Analysis in New Delhi, says that, decades after India’s ill-fated intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987-1990, the country just doesn’t have the logistical and technological means to support a counter-insurgency mission in a third country.
The Indian Air Force just isn’t equipped to provide cover for forces operating in hostile environments out-of-theatre; surveillance assets are limited; independent intelligence capacity almost non-existent.
“Experience also teaches us,” Chadha argues, “that missions like these tend to snowball. We’ll send troops; they’ll be attacked by Pakistan’s proxies, and we’ll have to send more troops to protect them.”
India’s partners in sustaining the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance have worked, in recent years, to make their peace with the Islamist insurgency. Iran’s intelligence services have long enjoyed a robust tactical relationship with the Taliban — using them to harry the United States, on the one hand, while at once arming and equipping Shi’a proxies opposed to the insurgents. In the event of a Taliban effort to capture power, Tehran would likely back its opponents — but at arm’s length, as it did in the 1990s.
For its part, Russia sees the Taliban as an ally against the Islamic State on the borders of its central Asian allies. Afghan authorities have bitterly complained that Russia is providing covert military assistance to Taliban units operating in the country’s north — a claim Moscow denies. Beijing, similarly, has cultivated close links to the Taliban, in return for help with jihadists seeking to target Xinjiang province.
The United States, of course, doesn’t care deeply about the prospect of Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for jihadists: the country protected from the immediate fallout by sheer distance, and capable of operating against targets using its global network of bases.
New Delhi, though, just doesn’t have the option of relying on the Taliban’s goodwill. Even though Taliban negotiators have reached out to New Delhi, seeking diplomatic engagement, the group remains deeply enmeshed with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. It also has disturbing links with a welter of anti-India jihadist groups — ranging from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to al-Qaeda’s Indian subcontinent unit.
Al-Qaeda’s last subcontinent chief, Uttar Pradesh-born jihadist Sana-ul-Haq, was in the company of Taliban when he was killed in a drone strike, intelligence sources note.
But against this counter-terrorism concerns, New Delhi must weigh the costs — in cash and blood — of a physical presence in Afghanistan, which are likely substantial. The question will be: Are a few terrorists really worth the enormous financial burdens and risks which come with committing troops overseas?
India's status as a regional power
The answer will, of course, lie partly in what kind of multinational framework is stitched together to secure Afghanistan once the United States withdraws — and how much pressure there is on Pakistan to abide by it. The signs, for now, aren’t heartening. President Donald Trump’s government seems content to hand over management of a post-deal Afghanistan to Islamabad, and is already working to ease sanctions imposed by the multinational Financial Action Task Force.
But New Delhi also needs to ask itself a harder question: If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security. For decades, New Delhi’s sought a seat at the global high table, but has shied away from the responsibilities that come with it. India was conspicuously absent, even in a humanitarian role, from helping its West Asian allies push back against the Islamic State. New Delhi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis, similarly, led neighbours Bangladesh and Myanmar, similarly, to turn to China to mediate.
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense. For more than 2,500 years, Afghanistan was a stable and prosperous part of one empire or the other, from the Kushans to the Persians. The Soviet war of 1979-1989, or the United States post-9/11 war, failed because of errors in planning and execution, not some mystical property of the Afghan soil.
New Delhi has the opportunity here to bring something genuinely new to the table on what multinational peacekeeping should look like the insurgency-torn which litter Asia, and what the global order to govern them should be. Even if New Delhi turns its back on Afghanistan, it’s going to face similar challenges again — perhaps sooner than it imagines. The time to stop dithering, and prepare for the challenge, is now.
Last edited:
Agraj
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Afghanis are a good friend of ours,though the intentions are there,don't think we can sustain 'boots on foreign soil' at the moment.but if there's a Govt. Who can surprise us, it's gonna be Modi ji at the helm.WHAT OPINIONS DO YOU GUYS HAVE ON THIS SUBJECT? DO YOU GUYS THINK INDIA IS UP TO THE CHALLENGE? OR YOU DON’T WANT A INDIAN INTERVENTION?
Afghanistan's request for Indian troops — It’s an insane idea, which New Delhi must take seriously
Updated : January 27, 2020 06:45 AM IST
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense.
If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
“Legs and arms protruding from the snow, Europeans and Hindustanis half-buried, horses and camels all dead,” Subedar Sita Ram chronicled the annihilation of the imperial British garrison which began to march out of Kabul in the high winter of 1842. Perched in the hills, Sita Ram recorded, Afghan tribesmen shot at the British forces, leaving them “as helpless as a handcuffed prisoner”. “The men fought like gods, not like men”, he concluded. “But, alas!, alas!, who can withstand fate”?
Five thousand soldiers, and some 15,000 camp-followers —many women and children — had marched out of Kabul. Pop history holds just one, surgeon William Brydon, survived; the real number was a few hundred. For fifteen months, Sita Ram served as a slave, sold in the bazaar for Rs 240; the wives and children of other soldiers never saw their homeland again.
Early this month, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, used a visit to New Delhi to privately press a request for at least a Brigade — perhaps even a Division —of Indian troops to be deployed in a peacekeeping role, ahead of a peace deal with the Taliban which is expected to lead to the final withdrawal of United States forces. Kabul, diplomatic sources said, hopes to put together a multinational framework, perhaps United Nations-led, for this troop deployment.
To most in India’s strategic establishment, the idea appears insane: From the decimation of Britain’s 1842 army, which included thousands of Indians, to the grinding down of Soviet Union in 1979-1989, and the morass the United States has descended into since 9/11, intervention in Afghanistan hasn’t had happy outcomes.
For India, though, failure to intervene will also have costs —key among them, the risk that southern Afghanistan could become a safe haven for jihadists, and that protracted insurgency could eventually destabilise the West Asian states on India depends for its energy security. Put simply, Indian troops in Afghanistan might be an insane idea — but this insane idea needs to be considered very, very seriously.
Idea finds few takers
To understand why Afghanistan’s calls for Indian troops are becoming louder, one has to turn to the agreement now being hammered out between Taliban negotiators and United States diplomats in Doha. The deal is expected to include guarantees the Islamist insurgents will scale down violence — but bitter experience has taught Afghans to suspect the Taliban will resile on their word the minute the United States vacates its military bases.
New Delhi’s long-standing allies in Afghanistan’s north — who India, along with Iran and Russia funded and armed through their long, bitter battle against the Taliban until 9/11 — see an Indian Army as insurance against their cities being overrun by proxies for the Pakistan Army.
Few Indian military analysts see deployment in Afghanistan as sustainable. There is, critically, just no way to provide logistical support to an Indian garrison. The only workable route is through Iran’s Chabahar port, connecting by rail and road to the city of Herat. The route has been used by India before, to provide both civilian and military aid to Afghanistan — but with Iran-United States hostilities rising, the route may not be a reliable one.
Vivek Chadha, a former army officer now working at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Analysis in New Delhi, says that, decades after India’s ill-fated intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987-1990, the country just doesn’t have the logistical and technological means to support a counter-insurgency mission in a third country.
The Indian Air Force just isn’t equipped to provide cover for forces operating in hostile environments out-of-theatre; surveillance assets are limited; independent intelligence capacity almost non-existent.
“Experience also teaches us,” Chadha argues, “that missions like these tend to snowball. We’ll send troops; they’ll be attacked by Pakistan’s proxies, and we’ll have to send more troops to protect them.”
India’s partners in sustaining the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance have worked, in recent years, to make their peace with the Islamist insurgency. Iran’s intelligence services have long enjoyed a robust tactical relationship with the Taliban — using them to harry the United States, on the one hand, while at once arming and equipping Shi’a proxies opposed to the insurgents. In the event of a Taliban effort to capture power, Tehran would likely back its opponents — but at arm’s length, as it did in the 1990s.
For its part, Russia sees the Taliban as an ally against the Islamic State on the borders of its central Asian allies. Afghan authorities have bitterly complained that Russia is providing covert military assistance to Taliban units operating in the country’s north — a claim Moscow denies. Beijing, similarly, has cultivated close links to the Taliban, in return for help with jihadists seeking to target Xinjiang province.
The United States, of course, doesn’t care deeply about the prospect of Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for jihadists: the country protected from the immediate fallout by sheer distance, and capable of operating against targets using its global network of bases.
New Delhi, though, just doesn’t have the option of relying on the Taliban’s goodwill. Even though Taliban negotiators have reached out to New Delhi, seeking diplomatic engagement, the group remains deeply enmeshed with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. It also has disturbing links with a welter of anti-India jihadist groups — ranging from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to al-Qaeda’s Indian subcontinent unit.
Al-Qaeda’s last subcontinent chief, Uttar Pradesh-born jihadist Sana-ul-Haq, was in the company of Taliban when he was killed in a drone strike, intelligence sources note.
But against this counter-terrorism concerns, New Delhi must weigh the costs — in cash and blood — of a physical presence in Afghanistan, which are likely substantial. The question will be: Are a few terrorists really worth the enormous financial burdens and risks which come with committing troops overseas?
India's status as a regional power
The answer will, of course, lie partly in what kind of multinational framework is stitched together to secure Afghanistan once the United States withdraws — and how much pressure there is on Pakistan to abide by it. The signs, for now, aren’t heartening. President Donald Trump’s government seems content to hand over management of a post-deal Afghanistan to Islamabad, and is already working to ease sanctions imposed by the multinational Financial Action Task Force.
But New Delhi also needs to ask itself a harder question: If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security. For decades, New Delhi’s sought a seat at the global high table, but has shied away from the responsibilities that come with it. India was conspicuously absent, even in a humanitarian role, from helping its West Asian allies push back against the Islamic State. New Delhi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis, similarly, led neighbours Bangladesh and Myanmar, similarly, to turn to China to mediate.
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense. For more than 2,500 years, Afghanistan was a stable and prosperous part of one empire or the other, from the Kushans to the Persians. The Soviet war of 1979-1989, or the United States post-9/11 war, failed because of errors in planning and execution, not some mystical property of the Afghan soil.
New Delhi has the opportunity here to bring something genuinely new to the table on what multinational peacekeeping should look like the insurgency-torn which litter Asia, and what the global order to govern them should be. Even if New Delhi turns its back on Afghanistan, it’s going to face similar challenges again — perhaps sooner than it imagines. The time to stop dithering, and prepare for the challenge, is now.
Strategically placing our assets in Afghanistan would move a lot of eyes,the sheer presence and projection of our might is needed if we ever want to be in the Security council.but there will be consequences
apoorv465
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Nope Nope Nope. Afghanistan is rightly called grave of civilizations. There is no need for our soldiers to get martyred for nothing. At most India should send a few soldiers to advise and train ANSF.WHAT OPINIONS DO YOU GUYS HAVE ON THIS SUBJECT? DO YOU GUYS THINK INDIA IS UP TO THE CHALLENGE? OR YOU DON’T WANT A INDIAN INTERVENTION?
Afghanistan's request for Indian troops — It’s an insane idea, which New Delhi must take seriously
Updated : January 27, 2020 06:45 AM IST
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense.
If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security.
PRAVEEN SWAMI
“Legs and arms protruding from the snow, Europeans and Hindustanis half-buried, horses and camels all dead,” Subedar Sita Ram chronicled the annihilation of the imperial British garrison which began to march out of Kabul in the high winter of 1842. Perched in the hills, Sita Ram recorded, Afghan tribesmen shot at the British forces, leaving them “as helpless as a handcuffed prisoner”. “The men fought like gods, not like men”, he concluded. “But, alas!, alas!, who can withstand fate”?
Five thousand soldiers, and some 15,000 camp-followers —many women and children — had marched out of Kabul. Pop history holds just one, surgeon William Brydon, survived; the real number was a few hundred. For fifteen months, Sita Ram served as a slave, sold in the bazaar for Rs 240; the wives and children of other soldiers never saw their homeland again.
Early this month, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, used a visit to New Delhi to privately press a request for at least a Brigade — perhaps even a Division —of Indian troops to be deployed in a peacekeeping role, ahead of a peace deal with the Taliban which is expected to lead to the final withdrawal of United States forces. Kabul, diplomatic sources said, hopes to put together a multinational framework, perhaps United Nations-led, for this troop deployment.
To most in India’s strategic establishment, the idea appears insane: From the decimation of Britain’s 1842 army, which included thousands of Indians, to the grinding down of Soviet Union in 1979-1989, and the morass the United States has descended into since 9/11, intervention in Afghanistan hasn’t had happy outcomes.
For India, though, failure to intervene will also have costs —key among them, the risk that southern Afghanistan could become a safe haven for jihadists, and that protracted insurgency could eventually destabilise the West Asian states on India depends for its energy security. Put simply, Indian troops in Afghanistan might be an insane idea — but this insane idea needs to be considered very, very seriously.
Idea finds few takers
To understand why Afghanistan’s calls for Indian troops are becoming louder, one has to turn to the agreement now being hammered out between Taliban negotiators and United States diplomats in Doha. The deal is expected to include guarantees the Islamist insurgents will scale down violence — but bitter experience has taught Afghans to suspect the Taliban will resile on their word the minute the United States vacates its military bases.
New Delhi’s long-standing allies in Afghanistan’s north — who India, along with Iran and Russia funded and armed through their long, bitter battle against the Taliban until 9/11 — see an Indian Army as insurance against their cities being overrun by proxies for the Pakistan Army.
Few Indian military analysts see deployment in Afghanistan as sustainable. There is, critically, just no way to provide logistical support to an Indian garrison. The only workable route is through Iran’s Chabahar port, connecting by rail and road to the city of Herat. The route has been used by India before, to provide both civilian and military aid to Afghanistan — but with Iran-United States hostilities rising, the route may not be a reliable one.
Vivek Chadha, a former army officer now working at the Institute for Defence and Strategic Analysis in New Delhi, says that, decades after India’s ill-fated intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987-1990, the country just doesn’t have the logistical and technological means to support a counter-insurgency mission in a third country.
The Indian Air Force just isn’t equipped to provide cover for forces operating in hostile environments out-of-theatre; surveillance assets are limited; independent intelligence capacity almost non-existent.
“Experience also teaches us,” Chadha argues, “that missions like these tend to snowball. We’ll send troops; they’ll be attacked by Pakistan’s proxies, and we’ll have to send more troops to protect them.”
India’s partners in sustaining the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance have worked, in recent years, to make their peace with the Islamist insurgency. Iran’s intelligence services have long enjoyed a robust tactical relationship with the Taliban — using them to harry the United States, on the one hand, while at once arming and equipping Shi’a proxies opposed to the insurgents. In the event of a Taliban effort to capture power, Tehran would likely back its opponents — but at arm’s length, as it did in the 1990s.
For its part, Russia sees the Taliban as an ally against the Islamic State on the borders of its central Asian allies. Afghan authorities have bitterly complained that Russia is providing covert military assistance to Taliban units operating in the country’s north — a claim Moscow denies. Beijing, similarly, has cultivated close links to the Taliban, in return for help with jihadists seeking to target Xinjiang province.
The United States, of course, doesn’t care deeply about the prospect of Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for jihadists: the country protected from the immediate fallout by sheer distance, and capable of operating against targets using its global network of bases.
New Delhi, though, just doesn’t have the option of relying on the Taliban’s goodwill. Even though Taliban negotiators have reached out to New Delhi, seeking diplomatic engagement, the group remains deeply enmeshed with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. It also has disturbing links with a welter of anti-India jihadist groups — ranging from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, to al-Qaeda’s Indian subcontinent unit.
Al-Qaeda’s last subcontinent chief, Uttar Pradesh-born jihadist Sana-ul-Haq, was in the company of Taliban when he was killed in a drone strike, intelligence sources note.
But against this counter-terrorism concerns, New Delhi must weigh the costs — in cash and blood — of a physical presence in Afghanistan, which are likely substantial. The question will be: Are a few terrorists really worth the enormous financial burdens and risks which come with committing troops overseas?
India's status as a regional power
The answer will, of course, lie partly in what kind of multinational framework is stitched together to secure Afghanistan once the United States withdraws — and how much pressure there is on Pakistan to abide by it. The signs, for now, aren’t heartening. President Donald Trump’s government seems content to hand over management of a post-deal Afghanistan to Islamabad, and is already working to ease sanctions imposed by the multinational Financial Action Task Force.
But New Delhi also needs to ask itself a harder question: If India intends to be taken seriously as a regional power, a status it often seeks, it also needs to be a provider of collective security. For decades, New Delhi’s sought a seat at the global high table, but has shied away from the responsibilities that come with it. India was conspicuously absent, even in a humanitarian role, from helping its West Asian allies push back against the Islamic State. New Delhi’s silence on the Rohingya crisis, similarly, led neighbours Bangladesh and Myanmar, similarly, to turn to China to mediate.
To any half-competent historian, the idea that Afghanistan is a land of untameable savages where order cannot be restored —a favourite trope of Western reportage — is nonsense. For more than 2,500 years, Afghanistan was a stable and prosperous part of one empire or the other, from the Kushans to the Persians. The Soviet war of 1979-1989, or the United States post-9/11 war, failed because of errors in planning and execution, not some mystical property of the Afghan soil.
New Delhi has the opportunity here to bring something genuinely new to the table on what multinational peacekeeping should look like the insurgency-torn which litter Asia, and what the global order to govern them should be. Even if New Delhi turns its back on Afghanistan, it’s going to face similar challenges again — perhaps sooner than it imagines. The time to stop dithering, and prepare for the challenge, is now.
HindaviSwarajya
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No boots on Afghan soil. Do not want to loose our men fighting some terrorist when there is a high risk of been targetted by paki proxis and also due to logistics issue, it will put too much financial strain and we first need to get our people out of poverty
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I Feel like India should Send in Covert Advisors and Special Forces Operatives To Operate Along side ANA and There SF and Commando Groups. I feel like Indian Army and Our SF lack the training and experiences Necessary to operate in highly Arid Mountainous Terrain found in inner parts of Pakjab, POK and KPK in a future war. Afghanistan will give our Special Forces the experience that need to operate these Areas and also this will help our forces to conduct operations against PorkiShitani Pakjabi Army in KPK and supporting rebel Balochi and Pashtun forces operating in Balochistan and KPK. The Terrorists Trained by Pakistan encountered in Afghanistan like Taliban and others in KPK are more dangerous than ones found in Kashmir. POK especially Gligit Baltistan is full them. So attacking and killing them now is great opportunity for India. If Afghanistan goes back to Taliban Rule everything is lost and violence in Kashmir and India as a whole will go up back to the olden days.
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