Since Mr Nehru sent a plane to rescue Indonesian leaders fighting a war of national liberation against the Dutch in 1947, independent India has not made so daring a move as in inviting President Najibullah Khan in the wake of the Soviet decision to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Implicit in this observation is recognition of the self-evident fact that in doing so, Mr Rajiv Gandhi has taken a grave risk. For it is possible that the Najib set-up in Kabul may be swept away in coming months; or his rivals in the PDPA may replace him with someone more acceptable to the leaders of at least some Mujahideen groups; or, indeed, even that the Soviets may drop him as being inconvenient. The silence of the two Communist parties during President Najib’s visit to New Delhi should be noted, though it may be rash to draw the conclusion yet that the Soviet leadership is not keen on helping him out in the difficult days ahead. In inviting a leader in so precarious position as Dr Najib’s undoubtedly is, the Prime Minister has without doubt exposed himself to the danger of being overtaken by events. A more cautious man would not have made such a move, just as he would not have sent Indian troops into Sri Lanka without making it reasonably certain that the most powerful guerrilla fighting force there, the LTTE, would cooperate with them. But just as the LITE’S determined opposition to the Indian Peace-Keeping Force does not invalidate the decision to put it in Sri Lanka, the precariousness of President Najib’s position does not invalidate the Indian initiative in respect of Afghanistan.
The Indian initiative is not the product of the broad and continuing friendship with the Soviet Union. By the same token, it is not an expression of anti-Americanism, though it is a matter of great concern to New Delhi that instead of reducing the flow of sophisticated weaponry to Pakistan in view of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the US should have decided to step it up to include so big a force multiplier as an early air-borne warning and control system (AWACS). The initiative is genuinely Indian, intended to protect India’s interests and to promote whatever little chance there is of avoiding, or at least minimizing, further bloodshed in Afghanistan which has been ravaged beyond description in the past 10 years. It may fail. But that is no reason why India should not try. Which power has not met with such failures in recent years? Certainly the evidence of US, Soviet and Chinese failures is littered all over the world.
The issues have to be differently framed from the way they have been so far. It is, for example, irrelevant to ask what India can do to help President Najib survive. For there is nothing India can do in Afghanistan if that country’s future is going to be settled by the gun. New Delhi can be helpful only if a process of national reconciliation begins and gathers momentum. It is, therefore, only natural that it should try to promote such a process to the extent it can. It is perverse logic that while Pakistan is within its rights to wish to install the Islamic fundamentalists in power in Kabul, India must not lend even diplomatic support to the existing government in Kabul. Pray why not? India has always recognised those in power in Kabul as the legitimate government in Afghanistan; no one can deny that despite the rivalries and conflicts within it, the PDPA constitutes an important force which must figure in any genuine attempt at national reconciliation; and one must be dense not to see the obvious point that a coalition in Kabul which includes the PDPA is likely to be more friendly to this country than one that excludes it and indeed decimates it in the name of Islam.
And what is one to say of those who speak of Afghan nationalism and equate the US-backed resistance to the Soviet military presence with that nationalism? The Afghans are ferociously independent minded. But that does not make them a nation. Tribal loyalties remain strong in spite of the war against the Soviet intervention. The Mujahideen are too deeply divided to even constitute a nucleus for a would-be Afghan nation. Above all, he must be a strange Indian who would wish to leave Pakistan to do what it likes and can in Afghanistan and not even try to bolster friendly elements in Kabul even if for no stronger reason than to oblige Islamabad to recognise that India has a legitimate interest in a friendly Afghanistan and that it may be necessary for it to accommodate the PDPA in a future set-up in Kabul. Thus New Delhi has done well to play host to Dr Najibullah. It could not have either staked its claim to have a say in future discussions on Afghanistan or reaffirmed its interests in that country otherwise.
Afghanistan is a most unlikely place for a trial of strength between the two superpowers. But it has witnessed such a trial. It is pointless to go into its history except to say that so long as the US and the Soviet Union were locked in a combat in Afghanistan, the former through its proxies and the latter directly, there was not much India could do to end it and that New Delhi has no good reason at all to feel guilty about the low profile it of necessity maintained in that period. On the one hand, it could not have endorsed the Soviet intervention, however ill-conceived from Moscow’s own point of view, and, on the other, it could not have joined the US-led crusade against “godless communism” especially when the “holy war” in Afghanistan was accompanied by the arming of the “holy warriors” in Pakistan with weapons which could be useful to them only against this country. Unfortunately a lot of Indians suitably brainwashed by western propaganda feel guilty about the government’s neutralist stance and they create an atmosphere in which clear thinking becomes difficult. But fortunately Mr Rajiv Gandhi has not allowed himself to be immobilized. As in the case of Sri Lanka, he has acted in the country’s best interests, regardless of whether he succeeds or fails.
There has been a lot of talk of the desirability of having an Afghanistan which is genuinely non-aligned. This objective is now within reach. It is impossible to think of a regime in Kabul, whatever the area of its effective control, which is a puppet of the Soviet Union and it is unlikely that even the Peshawar-based Mujahideen leaders will for long agree to serve as proxies for the US, especially in view of the war Washington is waging on the Islamic Republic of Iran. The point is whether such a process can be expedited. One way to do it is to try to avoid a fragmentation of the country which could make it once again a battle-ground for the superpowers, and to offer an alternative source of support. By trying to avert another bloodbath and offering assistance for war-devastated Afghanistan’s reconstruction, New Delhi is doing just that. To repeat, the odds against success are extremely heavy. But it is precisely when the odds appear impossible that the character and the skills of a country are tested. India has undertaken a mission which, in rational terms, is beyond its means. But having undertaken it, it must persist with it.