DM Monitoring
NEW DELHI: Engulfed in fear that the Taliban’s resounding victory in Afghanistan could reignite the freedom movement in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), India has proposed to host an in-person meeting of the National Security Advisors (NSAs) on Afghanistan issue in New Delhi next month, inviting “key stakeholders” including Russia and archrivals Pakistan and China.
According to details, India has suggested two dates, November 10 and 11, for the meeting in its capital. The invitation has been extended to Pakistan’s NSA Moeed Yusuf amid increased tensions in IIOJK. All stakeholders have to be engaged to defuse the impending humanitarian and security crises in Afghanistan following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.India is also due to participate in the Moscow Format meeting on the Afghan situation on October 20.
The development comes at a time when fears were growing in New Delhi that the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan could ignite the freedom movement in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. About 40 people have been killed in shootings and clashes in the two months in the Himalayan region since the Taliban overran Kabul on August 15.
Occupied valley’s Sikh and Hindu communities have been targeted in the gun battles in which many soldiers and separatists were also left dead.India has not openly blamed the Taliban takeover for the uptick in violence, but it has intensified patrols near Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and fortified some army camps, according to residents and security officials.
Modi told a G-20 summit in Rome earlier this week that international efforts were needed to make sure Afghanistan does not become a safe haven for “radicalisation and terrorism”. He has also raised India’s concerns with US President Joe Biden.
In September, he told the UN General Assembly that no country must be allowed to use Afghanistan “as a tool for its own selfish interests” – a comment widely seen as a reference to Pakistan, the chief backer of the Taliban’s 1996-2001 regime. India worries that weapons and fighters could reach the occupied Jammu and Kashmir region.
“What we can say and learn from the past is that when the previous Taliban regime was in power, that time definitely we had foreign terrorists of Afghan origin in Jammu and Kashmir,” said India’s military chief of staff General MM Naravane.
Protests are virtually impossible in IIOJK because of restrictions imposed by New Delhi since the region’s semi-autonomous status was revoked in 2019.
But some in the region have quietly welcomed the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan as a victory against the odds that they too can aspire to one day. “If they can defeat the world’s largest military power, we see a possibility that we too can win our freedom,” one businessman in Srinagar told AFP, declining to be named.
A former separatist who trained in Afghanistan in the 1990s and fought alongside Afghan mujahideen in Kashmir added: “The Taliban victory has already supplied oxygen to our movement.” Given India’s inhumane clampdown on IIOJK, Naravane and other military chiefs are confident that Delhi can cope with any surge. But speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior security official in IIOJK said: “there is some panic” inside the security establishment.
