New Delhi: Does India withdraw from Afghanistan at the right time? Should it have evacuated his previous people, or have to wait longer? Contingent planning for this possibility began almost six months ago, according to the sources involved in this exercise.
After the DOHA agreement and more specifically, after the Taliban began their attacks that were not announced since the beginning of this year, the planner in the Indian government knows the time will soon come when New Delhi must receive a call whether to stay or leave Afghanistan.
“We prioritize the security of our officials on the ground as our most important concern,” said a source that did not want to be named.
While making a decision to withdraw or reduce the Indian mission in Afghanistan, the government is aware that the message will be sent to Afghanistan.
India has built different relationships with Afghanistan for the past two decades and enjoyed a very different profile in the country.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaishankar told UNSC, before the Taliban took over, India had a development project in all 34 provinces.
So the benchmark for India will be very different from the parameters followed by Western countries.
Two worries queuing Indians – First, the lack of adjacent borders means that all evacuation plans must be more complicated and taken with the approach of all the governments, and the second, India has no security trail in Afghanistan.
“We don’t want to be the first to leave,” said the source.
India wants to be among the last to go – which will only if the situation becomes unable and security threats.
Over the past three months, a group of close officials, monitored by NSA Ajit Doval and Jaisankar Foreign Minister, conducted a sustainable, detailed security assessment, which was updated virtually every day.
When the district after the district began to fall to the Taliban, Indian plans began to move to teeth higher.
Taliban first took the northern province, but when they began to move in the key provinces in the south that activity increased in India.
When the Taliban took over the district side by side around Kandahar, such as Panjwai and Spin Boldak, the Indian government made a decision to close the Indian consulate in Kandahar and move Indian officials.
Similarly, when Sheberghan fell, the Indian system activated plans to cleanse from Mazar-e-Sharif.
But the source said, even then, Indians included the last to leave.
Russia, for example, has gone in January.
Likewise turkeys.
Towards the end, there is only India, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan at Mazar-e-Sharif.
Kabul is different and more complicated.
When the Taliban came to Qargo in the outskirts of Kabul, a general assessment among Afghanistan leadership was the Taliban to surround the city and negotiate the agreement to share power with the Ghani government.
Two things happen.
Ghani escaped and the Taliban walked to Kabul without resistance – policy and security forces had disappeared.
The time has come to evacuate Indians – an Indian airplane took many of the first people when the Taliban took over.
The second air flight did not land when the photos of Afghanistan climbed the plane at Kabul Airport passing throughout the world.
India does not want this to happen to Indian aircraft, the memory of Kandahar’s piracy is still fresh.
Over the next few days, Indians held a complicated maneuver with the risk of exiting.
India is currently focusing on getting all other Indians to be repatriated to India in the coming days.