Mr C V Subba Rao, Sr. Vice President, MMA and Managing Director, Sanmar Shipping Ltd delivered the welcome address.  Mr Peter Rimmele, Resident Representative to India, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung delivered the Introductory Remarks. Ms Indrani Bagchi, Diplomatic Editor, Times of India moderated the panel discussions. The distinguished panelists who participated were:

• Ambassador Rakesh Sood, IFS (Retd), Distinguished Fellow, ORF
• Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, SM, VSM & BAR, Former General Officer Commanding 15 Corps (Srinagar), 21 Corps & Military Secretary
• Captain Alok Bansal, Director, India Foundation.

Introductory Remarks

“On the first day of the second instance of Taliban rule in Kabul, the scenes played out at the city’s international airport reminded many of us of the end of Vietnam War,” said Mr Peter Rimmele in his introductory remarks. “The clock has been turned back by 20 years,” he said and regretted that KAS- Afghanistan, which had been active in Kabul since 2002 supporting several educational projects and other peace initiatives, had to close its office now. According to him, the withdrawal of the US military was a hasty political decision and one that was poorly executed.

Mr Peter Rimmele felt that during these 20 years, the US focused more on military aspects than on development. “Because of corrupt officials, the humanitarian aid did not reach the people.” He sounded a note of caution that the Taliban assurances of not meddling in Kashmir cannot be trusted. The earlier regime of Taliban was a safe haven for terrorists, he pointed out.

He opined that the vacuum created in Afghanistan cannot be filled by Taliban and that their control is limited. There will be infighting and power battles in Afghanistan and as an offshoot, terrorism will be a problem for India, he predicted.

Panel Discussions

Initiating the panel discussions, Ms Indrani Bagchi wondered if what happened in Afghanistan will be restricted just to Afghanistan. She urged the panel to deliberate, among other things, on the degree of control that can be exercised by Taliban, their political messages, the resistance they face in some pockets of their country, the role of Pakistan and China, the fate of India’s investments made in Afghanistan’s infrastructure development and military training and the fate of ISI sponsored terror.

Ambassador Rakesh Sood rued that many myths abounded in the narrative on the Afghan developments and busted many of those myths. Was it America’s longest war? No, he said. They just fought for one year. He attributed US army’s inability to weaken Taliban to the frequent changes of army generals and the failure of the US to destroy the safe havens of terrorists.

While people say that Afghan forces cannot fight, the fact is that they have been fighting the Taliban all these years, losing over 50,000 men while the US lost 67 soldiers since 2015. He also demystified the statement that US spent 2 T$ in Afghanistan. Of this, close to 175 B$ was spent on the US military including on US war veterans and the interest payments. Just 143 B$ was spent for Afghan reconstruction.

He also disagreed with claims that US withdrawal was sudden. He was firm that Taliban 2.0 will be very much the same as Taliban 1.0, drawing inference from multiple reports of UN agencies. 

Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain focussed on the origin of Islamic radicalism and traced it to Gen Zia-ul-Haq taking over the power in Pakistan in 1977 to form an Islamic state. It was the combination of US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that created and funded the Mujahaideens since 1981 and this led to many major developments including the rise of Osama Bin Laden and 9/11, he pointed out. “Kashmir was the main target of Islamic radicalism and Afghanistan was only an interim point in their journey,” estimated Lt Gen Hasnain.

He added that India has been doing great work in Kashmir since 2017, busting the terror networks. He opined that expectations of severe ripple effects of Afghan crisis in Kashmir is far-fetched. However, he hastened to add, that in the present situation, one should not merely focus on Kashmir but look beyond, not just in other places of India but in the neighbouring nations like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, for the effects of terrorism.

Captain Alok Bansal said that one should have a thorough understanding of Islamic theology to unravel the developments and how it will develop. “The Taliban assurances do not mean anything,” he said and attributed the Taliban’s quick march into Kabul to a dramatic change in their strategy by taking over the country’s border posts and starving the supply chains for the ANF (Afghan National Forces). He said that this strategy was perhaps drawn by ISI. He concluded that India will eventually have to fight the Taliban. The only question is – will it be in Kashmir, Afghanistan or at the Wagah border?

Ms Indrani Bagchi moderated a Q&A session with the panellists and posed many questions including what should be India’s response, why the US is now legitimising the Taliban after fighting with them and if the Taliban will not regroup with the terrorists.

Concluding Remarks

In his concluding remarks, Mr Sathiya Moorthy, Director, ORF Chennai thanked the panellists for sharing their views. He was of the opinion that the Afghan developments are just over two weeks now and it is too early to come to conclusions, with the situation being hazy. However, he suggested that India must engage with the Taliban. 

Group Captain R Vijayakumar (Retd) VSM and Executive Director, MMA proposed a vote of thanks. The session which started at 6.00 pm ended at 7.45 pm. Over 1500 participants watched the programme live on various social media platforms. As a token of appreciation and on behalf of the panellists, MMA has arranged for distribution face masks and mini sanitiser bottles to the local community.

To continue reading, kindly find the full outcome report attached as a pdf on this website.