New Delhi: When I step in carefully in Afghanistan, India will have a back-to-back opportunity next month to be involved in a developing situation with Russia and China, two leading players in the country hit by US war after the US departure.
While the BRICS summit will take place on September 9, Tajikistan will host SCO Summit a week later on September 17.
The Afghan security situation is likely to dominate the agenda for SCO meetings and also stand out in the Virtual BRICS meeting where leaders are expected to express concern for the deteriorating security environment.
India sees counter-terrorism as the main focus area for SCO and has used a forum to end terror financing.
Government sources say India will use both meetings to underline its concerns about the use of the Afghan region as a bearing launch for terrorist acts in the region.
India believes terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are active in Afghanistan with encouragement from Pakistan.
SCO cooperation is seen as important to suppress the spread of terrorist ideology, separatists and extremism and also to strengthen the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs.
India sees involvement with Russia as important as to handle security challenges from Afghanistan, expecting their views to be given a receptive hearing.
Both countries recently agreed to establish mechanisms to overcome terror and drug threats from Afghanistan.
While the Russian special envoy for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov has been quoted as saying India did not enjoy the influence of the Taliban, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was important to bring the Indian board and Iran in an effort to restore peace in Afghanistan.
While Russia and China seem to want to work with the Taliban in Afghanistan, both of them also expressed concerns similar to India about the problem of terrorism.
In a telephone conversation last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese partners XI Jinping were reported to have stated their readiness to increase efforts to fight the threat of terrorism and drug trafficking originating from Afghanistan regions from Afghanistan.
They also talked about “the importance of building peace” in Afghanistan and “preventing the spread of instability to adjacent areas”.
However, Chinese concerns were more related to the activities of the East Turkistan Islamic movement active in Xinjiang.