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PM Modi’s significant reliance on NSA Ajit Doval and their shaping, especially, of India’s neighbourhood policy, seems to have tipped the balance in Russia’s mind.

The meeting between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week, on the margins of a meeting organized under the aegis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Afghanistan, is significant beyond measure.

Not just because it comes on the eve of the first anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, on 24 February, but because it demonstrates the shifting winds of geopolitics since Putin decided to throw caution into the Moskva and surprise even his own people by invading Ukraine.

First, though, the context. Duval is the first Indian leader, besides the various prime ministers of course, to have met Putin in the last 20-odd years since Brajesh Mishra. As former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NSA, Mishra was instrumental in shaping India’s foreign policy and keeping it on an even keel since Vajpayee took India nuclear in 1998. The meeting with Mishra and Putin, Russia’s president at the time as well, took place in 2001.

Since then, Putin has met no foreign minister from India from either the BJP or the Congress – not Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Pranab Mukherjee, Sushma Swaraj or the current incumbent, S Jaishankar. Nor has he met any NSA – neither JN Dixit nor MK Narayanan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s significant reliance on Doval and their shaping, especially, of India’s neighbourhood policy, seems to have tipped the balance in Russia’s mind. The fact that India has ably walked the tortuous middle path between America and Russia, since Moscow went to war with Kyiv one year ago, must go to Modi’s credit. Two of the PM’s key and trusted confidantes who have masterminded this policy are Doval and Jaishankar.

Phase-wise shift in Russia policy

Note, though, how India’s Russia policy has shifted over the last year. While Jaishankar has been responsible for articulating this policy publicly, at press conferences across the world, Doval has largely played his role behind-the-scenes.

One way to examine India’s Russia policy is to define it across the four phases it has passed through since the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine – when the world changed and every nation had to cleave itself to either Russia or the US.

In the first phase, India resisted the US pressure not to buy Russian oil, arguing that it would do what it had to do in national interest, because as a developing economy coming off the back of Covid, it would not tolerate the hypocrisy of the oil-fuelled West.

This phase was best articulated by Jaishankar’s now-famous one-liner: India buys Russian oil in one month, equivalent to what Europe buys in one afternoon.

The second phase is a more toned down version of the first. In this time, UN Security Council resolutions against Russia’s invasion are pouring in thick and fast, forcing India – as a non-permanent member of the UNSC – to abstain, again and again, because it doesn’t want to antagonise either its old friend Russia or its new natural ally, the US.

Remember that in this period, the US is sweetening the pill by publicly applauding India’s participation in Quad initiatives. India responds to the evolving Ukraine war by saying that it will “explore all options” on the purchase of fuel from abroad.

The third phase may be characterised by a hard evaluation of all the options on the ground. Russian oil? Hit by US sanctions. Iran oil (on which India has depended for decades)? Hit by US sanctions over the last ten years. Venezuela oil? Sanctioned by America. That largely leaves India at the mercy of Saudi Arabia and OPEC’s oil-producing cartel.

India begins to play hardball. “We will see what the market has to offer,” goes the argument. After all, as a developing country dependent on imported energy for 85 per cent of its needs, India will veer in the direction of the cheapest energy.

At this time, Modi – and Doval — take a leaf out of Deng Xiaoping. Ask not what the colour of the cat is, as long as it catches the mice. “We will buy energy as it is dictated by the market, won’t say yes or no to any seller,” goes the Indian point of view. US pressure on Delhi continues to pile up.

By December 2022, ten months into the Ukraine war, as Europe begins to flag because it is being forced to look for costlier alternatives and more recently, rumours of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe being blown up by US naval special forces begin to take hold – since stoutly denied by the Americans – India digs deep into its old strategic relationship with Moscow.

Clear strategy, with a new angle

By now, Doval has become the architect as well as the handler of the ties with Moscow. By now, India’s purchase of Russian crude is spiralling up. By now, America has moved the public criticism of India purchasing Russian crude oil to private conversations – they continue to point out that for a Quad member to break US-led sanctions doesn’t make the Americans look good, but India holds firm.

By now, the Russian energy pipeline is pumping as much as 1.3 million barrels a day to India. The Russians are also managing the complete transaction from start to finish – they are arranging the discount, producing the ships, getting the consignment insured and delivering it to India’s doorstep.

In this most interesting phase, India even stops explaining itself. It is buying such large quantities of Russian crude – of which a large part is refined and re-exported to Europe – as a result of which it simply stops listening to any implied or overt censure.

The confidence between Delhi and Moscow is touching unprecedented levels. But Delhi understands, equally acutely, that its relationship with the US is also increasingly important – which other companies are going to invest in India and help make it “atmanirbhar”? So when the US-India Business Council holds a summit in Delhi, as many as eight ministers of the Modi government find time to attend.

Significantly, as the Russia-Ukraine war goes into the tenth month, the second key arm of the India-Russia relationship begins to acquire an interesting new dimension. Delhi seems to be taking a second look at Moscow battle-testing several new weapons of war in the Ukrainian theatre.

Could India be interested or would even an intellectual consideration damage the India-US relationship ? With India succeeding in persuading the Americans to drop sanctions against Russia on the purchase of the S-400 missile system from Moscow, the question of what colour armaments to buy has always been a political decision.

So, as the Russia-Ukraine war nears its first anniversary, the question of how the world is turning out from what was predicted a year ago, is probably the most important one on the anvil.

That is why Doval met Putin in Moscow on the sidelines of a conference on Afghanistan. The answers that emerge from the overhaul sparked by middle Europe’s long war will be with us for a long time to come.

(Edited by Prashant)

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In an interview with ThePrint’s Senior Consulting Editor Jyoti Malhotra in Kabul, Afghanistan, the spokesman of the ministry of foreign affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Abdul Qahar Balkhi, spoke on a variety of issues, including how the Taliban helped Indian diplomats leave last year and they are now welcome back to Afghanistan. Mr Balkhi also spoke about womens rights and girls education and why terror groups like Islamic State don’t like the Islamic Emirate Watch

This story first appeared in ThePrint

The 18 June attack has made many in the already-dwindling community want to leave Afghanistan. But the Taliban realises that treating Sikh-Hindu community well may help relations with India.

Kabul: In a wealthy quarter of Kabul known as Kart-e-Parwan, Afghanistan’s tiny Sikh community has been in a huddle.

A second gurudwara attack within two years by the Islamic State (IS) has put the fear of god into what once was a prosperous group, controlling regional trade and being a key part of professional occupations like medicine and engineering.

While the most recent attack came on 18 June at the Gurdwara Dashmesh Pita Guru Gobind Singh Karte Parwan in Kart-e-Parwan, killing two Sikhs, a previous attack in 2020, at another gurdwara in Kabul, had killed 25.

The Taliban government in Afghanistan, which celebrated a year of return to power on 15 August, has not just ordered a 24-hour security detail to be placed outside the Dashmesh Pita Guru Gobind Singh gurudwara since the June attack, but promised a sum of 40 lakh Afghanis (nearly Rs 40 lakh) for the reconstruction of the gurudwara.

“The Taliban have been asking us, again and again, how can we help. Voh har tareekay se madad karna chahte hain (They want to help in every possible way). They want to help us in any way we want,” says community leader Ram Sharan, who was born in Afghanistan. Sharan admits that only 100-120 Sikhs and Hindus are left in the country today, but refuses to acknowledge that they may be nearing the end of a 200-year-old heritage.

Abdul Qahar Balkhi, the spokesperson of the ministry of foreign affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, echoes Ram Sharan.

In an exclusive interview with ThePrint in Kabul earlier, Balkhi had said, “Afghanistan is the shared home of all Afghans. We have minority groups here, including Hindus and Sikhs, they have a long history in Afghanistan. We have provided them with protection. We have returned them the properties that were usurped and taken by force by the previous administration in Jalalabad and elsewhere”.

Clearly, the Taliban government realises that if it can treat its tiny Sikh-Hindu community with both compassion and financial kindness, it would go a long way in glossing over its reputation for awful violence and the curtailment of human rights of its own citizens.

Moreover, if India is to be reassured into returning to Afghanistan — which would imply, not just formal recognition, but also completing unfinished projects left behind when the ancient regime’s leaders fled, besides starting new ones — then the treatment of its Sikhs and Hindus could become the first tools to help develop trust between Kabul and Delhi.

India does not recognise the Taliban interim government, or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, but the embassy in Kabul — closed when the Taliban made a return to power in the the country — was reopened in June, when New Delhi deployed a “technical team” consisting of diplomats and others to the Afghan capital to “closely monitor and coordinate” the delivery of humanitarian assistance there.

There’s a third reason for the Taliban’s assurances of help and protection to the country’s Sikh community.

The Islamic Emirate knows that it cannot allow the Islamic State to challenge its control over Afghanistan, for which it has fought both foreign forces and fellow Afghans for the past 21 years. The Emirate believes that the question of “who is a better and purer Muslim” was settled on 15 August 2021, when it walked into Kabul without firing a shot, and former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country with a few key aides.

According to Balkhi, “ISIS has been engaged in violence against innocent people, but the government has been successful to a large extent in neutralising those groups and we will continue our efforts until they are completely eliminated from Afghanistan”.

He added: “The Islamic State, or Daesh, believe they are the only Muslims on the face of this planet. They excommunicate the majority of Muslims  — the Sufis, other Muslims that aspire to different interpretations. The significant point is that they have no support inside Afghanistan”.

Living in fear

At the gurudwara in Kart-e-Parwan, Afghan workers have been working night and day since the June attack to return the structure to its original sanctity. Jalalabad’s green granite slabs are being stuck on some of the walls, white marble on others. The ceiling is being given a coat of paint.

On the periphery of the property, tall deodar trees stand as mute witnesses to the suicide attack by the Islamic State suicide squad, which came around 6.30 am on that fateful morning in June. The outer wall remains pockmarked with splinters that flew when the suicide-bomber rammed his truck into the gate of the gurudwara.

An awning of grapevines leading off from the entrance — now padlocked several times behind a thick steel door — impart an unusual character to this house of god. The ‘khanda’, the emblem of Sikh faith, stares back from the inner gate. The Guru Granth Sahib (the holy religious scripture of Sikhism, considered to be a living Guru by the Sikhs) itself is missing from the gurudwara building and has been kept in one of the houses of the pious laity, while the gurudwara is being reconstructed.

It will be returned to its rightful place when the gurudwara is made whole again — with more than a little help from the Taliban.

The impact of the attack was so hard that not only was the glass front of the Hakim Narinder Khalsa Folic Medicalist shop next door — which deals in Unani and Ayurvedic medicines — shattered, but the glass windows of houses of Sikhs as far as a couple of streets away rattled.

Surpal Singh’s huge house in Kart-e-Parwan was one such. A fortnight ago he dropped his young wife and four-year-old daughter (“the Guru gave her to us after seven years of marriage,” he told ThePrint) at Kabul airport to catch a flight to Delhi.

Surpal was born in Kabul, like his father before him. His wife is Afghan Sikh. The decision to return to India was a difficult one, but with the “situation, the haalaat, so bad,” he said, it was really a simple one to take.

Like Ram Sharan, Surpal Singh cannot bring himself to say that the days of the Sikh community in Afghanistan are numbered. But the roll call of attacks continues with dreadful regularity — 2018 in Jalalabad, 2020 in Shor Bazaar in Kabul in which 25 Sikhs were killed and 2022 in Kart-e-Parwan, in which two Sikhs lost their lives.

Luckily, that morning in June, there weren’t that many people around because the ardas, or morning prayer, was supposed to start at 7:10 am and the suicide bomber arrived at the gurudwara gates about 45 minutes before.

Days after the attack, a nervous community requested the Modi government for visas to come to India.

While some have already made the move since, more batches would leave in successive months.

The ones currently in Afghanistan didn’t really celebrate India’s 75th independence day Monday — India isn’t their country yet, even if it’s the only place in which they feel secure — or, like their fellow Afghan Muslims, did anything else special to commemorate the first anniversary of the Taliban’s return to power.

Caught in this pincer of fear and uncertainty, Afghanistan’s Sikhs have locked themselves in. They seem reassured by the new rulers in the place they have always called home, but they aren’t taking any bets yet. As for “home” on the other end of the recently revived Kabul-Delhi flight, it’s a thought worth holding on to.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

The Taliban and India are joined at the hip by a single date – 15 August. The similarity ends there.

The rise and fall of empires have neither diminished Kabul’s beauty, nor its brilliance. On the eve of the first anniversary of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan coming to power on 15 August, also India’s 75th Independence Day, India gave in just a little bit more to the ‘charms’ of Kabul’s newest ruler and upgraded the head of its “technical mission” to the level of a mid-ranking diplomat.

The spokesperson of the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, an articulate young man with the tinge of a Cockney-cum-Australian-cum-South African accent, tweeted Saturday: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan welcomes India’s step to upgrade its diplomatic representation in Kabul. Besides ensuring security, we will pay close attention to the immunity of diplomats and cooperate well in (its) endeavours.”

The upscaling of India’s mission a full year after the former Ambassador and his team left the city overnight when Kabul fell to the Taliban on 15 August 2021 is not just a good move, it has also been overdue for some time.

When India left

Some things are far more clear during my visit to Kabul this time. As the largest nation in South Asia and an aspiring regional power, India has to learn to overcome its own timidity in playing the great game. India is incredibly keen to be perceived as a serious player abroad and, in the past, with the smallest of teams, has outshone, outsmarted and out-manoeuvred much larger establishments in Afghanistan.

The decision to invert the traditional emphasis on intelligence gathering and playing spoilsport that has been the nature of the beast for decades in Afghanistan, and instead focus on what the people want, has been a triumph of India’s foreign policy there for the last 20 years.

This single-minded investment in the youth, giving them hundreds and thousands of scholarships in India, sending wheat to alleviate malnutrition via the World Food Programme, cutting a cheque to pay for medical treatment of as many as 450-500 newly born children with congenital heart ailments every year, is what has won the hearts and minds of Afghanistan.

So, when India thoughtlessly dropped a huge brick wall on India-Afghan relations last year after the Taliban walked into the city without firing a shot, it set back the tie in known and unknown ways. The rest of the world took the fleeing Afghans in – the US, with whom the Afghans have a special love-hate relationship, Germany, Canada, the UK, Turkey, Tajikistan and the other Central Asian countries; Pakistan, whose economy is fast resembling a coffin with the last nail driven in, opened its doors; Iran offered shelter to those from the former government and continue to maintain very close ties with the Taliban.

Except India. It’s not clear from where the directions came, but they seem to have emerged from the very top of the Indian establishment. No Afghans can be allowed into India. Full stop. New Delhi’s ‘fatwa’ did such significant damage to the relationship that it is finally being–slowly–rolled back.

New Delhi’s orders to unfreeze

Finally, after a full year, orders to cautiously unfreeze the relationship seem to have been given in New Delhi. A small, three-member team, including diplomats with experience in evacuating Indian nationals as part of the great escape from Afghanistan last year, is in place in Kabul. This team will soon be strengthened by more diplomats and other experts who will once again be tasked with reviving the great India-Afghan relationship.

The move is being welcomed by several sections of Afghan society, especially students – who were unable to either finish their programmes, or wanted to return to pick up their certificates – as well as sick people, whose medical treatment was cut short by India deciding to shut down the relationship.

India also closely watched the initial rebellion undertaken by the Panjshiris against the Taliban, which the latter won convincingly. India also realised that several of those who left their country – their ‘watan’ – were not going to be able to withstand the powerful Taliban, which basically inherited a readymade country.

Today, the Taliban in Kabul walk around the streets cradling their automatic weapons. You can double-take on the sight, but it is the reality on the ground. The Taliban are firmly sitting on the throne and for the moment at least, there is no Opposition worth its salt that is capable of firing at someone.

It is this likely realisation that the Taliban isn’t leaving in a hurry that seems to have persuaded India to bite its tongue about their obvious excesses, especially around women and children, and embark upon a new course in diplomatic engagement. No wonder the embassy is being expanded.

High time, too.

Between the gun and democracy

The lack of common ground is clearly terrible for a huge country like India. The Taliban’s refusal to endear itself to the local population, which is particularly watchful of the manner in which the State is still refusing to redeem itself, is hardly going to help matters. When a handful of women protested over the weekend, demanding that basic needs such as food and work be fulfilled by the regime, Taliban guards quickly broke up the meeting by firing into the air.

By expanding its mission in Kabul, India is hoping that it will be seen as a nation that keeps its word. Perhaps, Delhi can help moderate some of the Taliban’s excesses – including the denial of women’s freedoms. Moreover, India’s presence in a region where other players have the potential to carry out unfriendly acts may also pose a deterrent.

Fact remains, the Taliban want India too. They want old unfinished projects to be finished and new ones begun. They want trade with the biggest nation in South Asia to be restarted. The Taliban is becoming vulnerable to the Islamic State terrorist group; they want to feel less vulnerable.

The gamble could work, but for the moment it’s a tall order. Democracies like India cannot fully accept and work alongside movements that have still not made the full transfer to egalitarian states. There are too many stories about the Taliban’s use of unnecessary force that prevent it from becoming India’s new best friend.

Meanwhile, the Taliban and India are joined at the hip by a single date – 15 August. The world’s largest democracy and the Islamic Emirate, where power flows from the barrel of the gun, have at least this in common.

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

As former Taliban fighters roamed the streets of Kabul to mark their victory over the old regime, several Kabulis stayed at home out of fear.

Kabul: Taliban foot-soldiers were out on the streets in full strength in Kabul Monday to mark their first anniversary of coming to power in Afghanistan, machine guns mounted on the back of pick-up vans or simply slung along their shoulders, while cries of Allah-o-Akbar were peppered with celebratory gunfire.

The government was shut down in honour of the anniversary. The bazaars were meant to have stayed open, but fear was disguised as concern and most citizens stayed in. The anything-can-happen sentiment was all-pervasive. The city was on high alert.

And everywhere you went, the faces of former Taliban fighters would be wreathed in smiles when they heard that this reporter was from India.

“Hindustan hamaara humsaya mulk hai. India dost hai. India ki hamko zaroorat hai. Yeh accha hai ki India Afghanistan vaapas aa raha hai (India is a close and compassionate neighbour. India is a friend. We need India. It is good that India is returning to Afghanistan),” went the chorus of comments.

It was as if the city was divided down the middle. Cars of all makes, sizes and models ruled the day. Huge petrol-guzzling Land Cruisers and Toyota Prado and other SUVs without number plates, with well-kept men of authority who sat behind darkened windows; as well as ancient motor cars predating even the first Taliban regime from 1996-2001, carrying poorer Taliban foot-soldiers, were being driven around the city. The ubiquitous black-and-white flag of the Islamic Emirate with the “shahada” emblazoned on it (“there is no God, but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger”) fluttered in the wind.

And then there were those Kabulis who had shuttered themselves inside, ignoring the Taliban celebrations and going about their day as if the first anniversary belonged to some other country.

“What are we celebrating? There are no jobs, and those who do have jobs have their salaries slashed. The Taliban is only interested in whether women have covered themselves up properly, they seem obsessed with women’s issues.

“In India you are celebrating your country’s independence and each of you has a flag in your hand. But look at us — we don’t want to carry the Taliban flag,” went the sentiment.

‘We must choose peace for all Afghans’

Clearly, though, even those celebrating among the Taliban foot-soldiers seemed aware that while it was alright to wave their automatic guns in front of the CNN camera and abuse America, some tough choices would have to be made, sooner than later, on improving conditions for the people.

The subject of girls’ school education resulted in the sobering down of the most enthusiastic Taliban fighter. The older men, especially, realised what the stakes could be in the coming months. Significantly, there was not one woman amongst all those celebrating anywhere in the city.

“It is true that our girl children must go to school. Our senior leadership must look at these issues quickly. We have been fighting a war for so many decades that now we must choose peace for all Afghans,” said an older Talib.

But here was a third kind of Kabuli who celebrated the day.

On top of the Wazir Akbar Khan hill, where until the Taliban came, the flag of the Islamic Republic — a gift from India — fluttered from a long flagpole, ordinary folk danced the traditional Pashtun “attan” dance and sang alongside. They wore all kinds of colours — blue and pink and red kurta shirts, a far cry from the black favoured by the Taliban fighters.

Hadn’t the Taliban banned music and dance? Yes, came the reply, musical instruments had been banned, but Afghans could still sing their stuff. On the other hand, perhaps the Emirate was making an exception for the day. It was 15 August, after all.

Later in the afternoon, senior ministers in the government, including Mullah Yaqoob, defence minister and son of the Taliban founder Mullah Omar, deputy prime minister Abdul Salam Hanafi, foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, finance minister Hidayatullah Badri and refugees minister Khalil Haqqani came together at the National Radio & TV to give a report card of their one year in power.

The sacrifices that the Taliban had made these past 21 years in which as many as two million people had died, the Taliban leaders said, topped the speeches. But there was also the plea that Afghans who had fled last year when the Taliban rolled in should come back home.

Outside the building, Emirate soldiers in top security gear stood in protection mode — night vision goggles, black face masks, the M-4A1 automatic machine gun cradled in front of the chest, a dagger slung on the side, knee caps and boots. Above all, black face masks that only left the eyes visible.

The soldiers posed for pictures, quietly. This was not the picture of a bedraggled army, but a disciplined force. The message that spoke louder than words was that this was a fight to the finish. That the Taliban had no option, but to survive.

(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

In an exclusive interview with ThePrint in Kabul, Abdul Qahar Balkhi also spoke on issues of girls’ education, the late al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri’s presence there & Islamic State attacks.

Kabul: The Taliban helped give safe passage to India’s diplomats and other citizens when they wanted to leave Kabul amidst the chaos that overtook the city exactly a year ago — on 15 August, 2021 — when former President Ashraf Ghani fled the country with a few key aides and the Afghanistan capital was taken over by the Taliban, said the spokesman of the now Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s ministry of foreign affairs, Abdul Qahar Balkhi.

In an exclusive interview with ThePrint in Kabul, Balkhi said that “India temporarily suspended its operations (of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan) last year” when the Taliban walked into Kabul, although several nations like Russia and China stayed, adding, “we gave safe passage to India to leave”.

One year later, as India celebrates its 75th independence day and the Islamic Emirate its first anniversary in power, Balkhi said that today, “we welcome (India’s) return” to Kabul.

India does not recognise the Taliban interim government, or the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, but the embassy in Kabul — closed when the Taliban made a return to power in the the country — was reopened in June, when New Delhi deployed a “technical team” consisting of diplomats and others to the Afghan capital to “closely monitor and coordinate” the delivery of humanitarian assistance there.

India had also introduced an e-visa system in August last year for Afghans visiting India. But issuing of visas started only recently.

“We, (the Islamic Emirate) congratulate India on its independence day. We are also glad and happy that Afghanistan has finally regained its sovereignty after 43 years…the conflict is over, criminal elements and syndicates will try and disturb the peace, but we will always try and neutralise those threats,” said Balkhi.

In a statement on Saturday Afghanistan’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson had welcomed “India’s step to upgrade its diplomatic representation in Kabul”, to the level of a senior diplomat, a minister-counsellor position.

When ThePrint pointed out that India had, in fact, not recognised the Islamic Emirate yet, Balkhi said, “de facto recognition has taken place, direct flights have been resumed between the two countries and we are working on visa issuance and consular services”.

He added: “We have civilisational ties with India and steps are being taken for de jure recognition. It is not in the interest of any country to see Afghanistan unstable and be a centre that proves to be a challenge to other countries.”

On the question of Indian visas for Afghans — thousands of Afghan students studying in Indian educational institutions, as well as patients dependent on Indian doctors were forced to look at alternatives in the wake of the Indian visa clampdown when the Taliban took power — Balkhi indicated that some relaxation was in the offing.

But he was outright dismissive of Indian concerns that the reason Afghan visas had been blocked was because Afghan passports with valid Indian visas could have been misused by other countries.

“I don’t believe that this fear is warranted. It holds no basis. It is irrational,” Balkhi said.

That’s why, he added, countries have visa sections and consular wings, to prevent incidents like this from taking place.

Balkhi also spoke at some length about the situation in Afghanistan in the past year, including the challenges faced by the Islamic Emirate — on the question of women’s rights, freedoms denied to girl children from going to high school and suicide attacks by the Islamic State terror group in which scores of innocent people have been killed.

‘Afghanistan shared home of all Afghans’

Answering ThePrint’s question on what al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was doing in Kabul, before he was killed last month by an American missile launched from a drone, Balkhi denied that the Taliban leadership was even “aware” of al-Zawahiri’s arrival or presence in Kabul.

“We don’t agree with the US assessment (that he was found in a house in the heart of Kabul). We will continue our investigation and try to separate fact from fiction. That investigation is ongoing,” Balkhi said.

On the question of why the Islamic Emirate didn’t allow girls studying in grades above six to go to school, when boys could do so, Balkhi said that the government was “working very hard” to address the concerns of parents.

He said high schools for girls were open in more than a dozen provinces of Afghanistan — the country has a total of 34 provinces.

While Balkhi was mildly critical of Taliban guards firing into the air to contain a group of women protestors in downtown Kabul on the weekend, who had raised slogans of “Bread, work and freedom”, saying that security officials need to be trained better to handle such unsanctioned protests, he added that the “important thing was that no one was hurt”.

The Afghanistan foreign ministry spokesman appealed for understanding for the behavior of young Taliban men frightening young women in several parts of the country and holding them in detention on the charge of not being accompanied by a male escort. “We have gone through 43 years of conflict. There will be and continue to be incidents like this, but our government will hold individuals responsible for violating the law,” he said.

On the question of why Islamic State (IS) suicide bombers were continuing to target innocent people and Taliban ideologues like Rahimullah Haqqani, who was killed in a bomb blast last week, Balkhi alleged that the IS “believes they are the only Muslims on the face of this planet. They excommunicate the majority of Muslims — Sufis, other Muslims that aspire to different interpretations. The significant point is that they have no support inside Afghanistan.”

He said the government would not rest until IS was completely eliminated from Afghanistan.

Asked whether people of all religions, including Hindus and Sikhs, were welcome in the Islamic Emirate, Balkhi pointed to the support given to Afghanistan’s small Sikh community in the defence of its faith.

“Afghanistan is the shared home of all Afghans. Minority groups like Hindus and Sikhs have a long history (here). We have provided them with protection. We have returned them the properties that were usurped and taken by force by the previous administration in Jalalabad and elsewhere,” Balkhi claimed.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

As Taliban inches towards completing a year in power, exodus from Afghanistan continues. But more countries are coming to realise one can’t ignore the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Kabul: At the Kah Faroshi bird market in Kabul’s old city, the question of whether the ruling Taliban has become an improved version of itself turns on the question of what they think of the buying and selling of birds, if not outright gambling.

It’s Friday, the day of the week sacred to all Muslims worldwide — and the weekly off in Afghanistan — in deference to which the city has more or less shut down. Traffic to Kah Faroshi is slow. The muezzin calls at you more clearly. The Taliban are about, roaming the streets in their distinctive black-and-white turbans.

At one checkpoint in Sherpur, in the heart of the city, not far from where the al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed just two weeks ago, two young Talib are sitting on a plastic grass mat, drinking green tea, cradling their automatic guns, while a ribbon of bullets lies carefully unspooled in front.

This is their city and they know it. First, ask if you can take a few photos. Yes, a slight nod of the head. Second, ask if you can ask questions. Yes, okay, says Mustafa, 23, from nearby Wardak province, while Ahsanullah, 30, from Logar province, pours tea for his guests.

Mid-sip, Mustafa believes enough is enough. Please do not defile the plastic grass mat with your presence anymore. You have outlived your welcome. The foot-soldier’s fatwa is final.

My translator offers a second interpretation of the scene just played out. Taliban sudhar raha hai, he says. The Taliban is improving itself. Earlier, there would be absolutely no question of them allowing a foreign woman to address them in a public space.

A security guard from a nearby bank strolls up. He half-winks at us. “I have got my visa for Germany. I am leaving next month. Main jaa raha hoon.”

As the Taliban’s first anniversary in power on 15 August inches closer, the exodus from Afghanistan continues. According to UNHCR, as many as 683,000 people fled the country after the Taliban came to power a year ago, while another 239,000 are seeking asylum abroad.

But the truth is that more and more countries are coming around to the fact that you cannot ignore the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), even if the UN has refused to recognise it so far. As many as 14 countries have reopened their missions in the country, including India, which still calls its relatively small presence a “technical mission”. Diplomats say they are keenly watching the unpredictable security situation.

The big powers are all here, in one way or another. Russia and China never left, while the US continues to wield enormous power through its influential NGOs. Pakistan openly ramped up its presence and the Central Asian states followed suit. Iran and Tajikistan, neighbours on either end of Afghanistan, Turkey and the European Union, are all key players in town.

Much has changed, much hasn’t

Two women who work for one such influential US NGO in Herat in western Afghanistan, point out that the Taliban’s worst failure lies in the manner in which they have dealt with women’s rights and freedoms this past year. Girls above Class 6 cannot go to school, university classes for men and women are separate as are office spaces where both sexes work, and public parks — including the world heritage site, the Bagh-e-Babur, where lies the grave of the first Mughal emperor, Babur — have been bifurcated into ‘mardana’ (men only) and ‘zenana’ (women only) sections.

The two out-of-town women notice how Kabuli women have become more conservative, wearing longer tunics, like women from Kandahar and Herat in the south and west.

One of the women has brought her father along; he is her ‘mahram,’ a family male escort who must accompany an adult woman if she’s travelling out of town, as decreed by the Islamic Emirate; her husband is busy all week. The other woman sought special permission from her office — which in turn is in constant touch with the local Taliban — to be exempt from the ‘mahram’ rule, because neither husband, nor brother or father, were available. The Taliban allowed her to travel alone.

Who pays for the ‘mahram’? The office, of course. So in the name of protecting an Afghan woman’s chastity, the Taliban has also decreed that the organisation in question picks up the tab for the ‘mahram’ too.

Both women also pointed out that Taliban rule had certainly improved security conditions; nobody dares mess with them. Earlier, in the time of the Islamic ‘jamhooriyat’, or republic, the infighting between warlords and pretenders in most provinces meant that women had to be much more careful when they left the house.

En route to Kah Faroshi, a big, fat Lexus SUV — without number plates — that costs at least $80,000, emits a few bars of melody, shattering the hot, morning silence. (It’s only the SUV reversing.) Music is banned by the Taliban, which means that the Kuch-e-Kharabat, where you could buy commonly loved musical instruments like tablas and sarangis, has been obliterated. ‘Afghan Star’, the beloved singing competition, has been banned. TV channels cannot showcase any music shows.

But the music has been pushed inside, behind closed doors. So you cannot sing and dance at weddings, but a DJ can do the honours. “When I drive home from work,” says IT technician Ahmad Shah, “I put the music on in my car. The Taliban really doesn’t care. It is a different Taliban from the last time around.”

At Asif’s bird stall in Kah Faroshi, an elderly buyer is negotiating the price of a “kowk”, a highly prized partridge with black-and-white feathers that he plonks into a deep cloth bag so that the bird has no chance for escape. The market is packed with men of all ages and all tribes — Pashtun and Tajik and Hazara and Turkmen and Uzbek, all notoriously individualistic outside the market, but consumed with an overriding passion for partridges, pigeons, parrots and other small and big birds that line the stalls on either side of this ancient market.

“The Taliban love birds too, after all they are Afghan,” says Asif, adding, “And for all those who say that there is a lot of poverty in Afghanistan after the Taliban came to power in this country, come here and see for yourselves. We love our birds. Yeh hamaara shauq hai. This is our passion. I don’t know what we love more.”

The deal is sealed at 4,000 Afghani, about Rs 3,500. Asif teases the buyer. “Yeh hamara Seth Dharam Das hai,” he laughs and everyone crowding into the stall laughs along. Hindi films are obviously still ubiquitous in these parts, despite two years of Covid and a near-complete ban on Indian visas for Afghans since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan a full year ago.

Last time around, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, bird gambling was banned because all gambling was banned. This time around, at least for now, it seems as if the Taliban is taking a more lenient view of things. At least the Kah Faroshi bird market is applauding.

(Edited by Gitanjali Das)

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Shahr-e-Naw, literally, The New City, used to be a cauldron of noise & activity — streets choked with cars, pavements buzzing with people. But this Kabul seems to have retreated into itself.

Kabul: There was a hush at the Kabul International airport Thursday evening as the much-delayed Kam Air flight from Delhi disgorged its passengers, unloaded its enormous cargo and crawled back to the hangar. The passengers quickly walked to the parking lot on the other side of the airport, the men leading the women — some carefully clothed in pitch black, others more careless about the shimmery sequin patterns on their green burkha sleeves — past the three, young Taliban guards at the passenger entrance, past the white and black Islamic Emirate flag fluttering in the breeze, past the “I love Afghanistan” signpost opposite the main terminal building.

The airport no longer bears the names of two distinguished Afghan leaders — Ahmad Shah Massoud — the Tajik leader, whose brooding portrait reminded everyone of his assassination two days before the Taliban bombed America on 11 September, 2001 — and Hamid Karzai — the Pashtun leader, who refused to leave Kabul with his wife and three daughters on 15 August last year, when the Taliban walked into the capital without firing a shot.

The airport seems like a ghost version of itself, catering to a few flights and even fewer people.

The hush extends into the city.

Earlier in the evening, an Islamic State suicide squad burst into a seminary and killed a key Taliban ideologue, Rahimullah Ansari.

The Taliban, admittedly, are nervous — this is their first anniversary week and they don’t want any hardline, extremist groups to spoil the party. Only a few days ago, the Americans brought Afghanistan back to the front pages of newspapers, when they plucked the senior-most al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri from a balcony in the heart of Kabul, and killed him with a Hellfire missile launched from a drone. Today, there’s enough Taliban with enough weapons at that crossing to prevent pesky journalists from taking photos, to make up a small armoury.

Shahr-e-Naw, literally, The New City, used to be a cauldron of noise and activity, the streets choked with cars, the pavements buzzing with people of all ages, shapes and sizes. It was like a fashion parade — Kabuli women strutting their tent-like outer garment known as the “chadaree” in colours anything but black, luxuriating in the confidence brought about by 20 years of education — while the fruit sellers and currency converters and restaurants did brisk business on the backs of lavish Western aid.

But this Kabul seems to have retreated into itself. An unseasonal shower that sends everyone running home adds to the feeling that something is missing. A young boy still caresses his pet parrot, Toti, in a shoe shop as he waits for the rain to ebb.

Further down the street, Chara-i-Ansari, or Chowk Ansari, Aimuddin’s shop still sells the best vanilla ice cream in all South Asia, as his muscular, fellow worker hand-grinds the ingredients in an aluminium ‘deg’ that is embedded in cubes of ice.

‘Happy India has opened embassy in Kabul’

The sense of incompleteness had begun at the airport itself — the airport that has no particular name.

As we wait for our luggage at one of the two carousels, it’s heartening to note that the air-conditioning is running nicely. We ask one of the porters the cause for the luggage delay, and he turns around and says, “It’s because the cargo from Delhi has brought ‘paan’.”

Paan? Yes, paan (betel nut). He adds, “Like, khai-ke paan Banaraswallah,” a line from an old and much-loved Amitabh Bachhan starrer.

According to this porter, the cargo from Delhi, along with medicines and clothes and whatnot, also includes the betel nut. No one knows if this is true, but by now he has launched into “Hum toh thehre pardesi,” another Hindi film song of unknown vintage.

The luggage shows no signs of showing up.

A slim, young girl in nicely coordinated trousers and long tunic is standing close by, her non-resident Afghan look accentuated by an Australian accent. Afghanistan has changed so much. One sister left, evacuated, when the Taliban came to Kabul last year, and is now in the US. Another sister, recently married, refuses to leave the house. “They broke our hearts. The Taliban broke our hearts,” she said.

Meanwhile, the three young Taliban guards at the passenger entrance inside the airport, aged 21, 22 and 28 years — the older man once worked with the much-villified former president, Ashraf Ghani’s security — have no hesitation in speaking about Hindustan.

Hindustan is an old friend. We would like to revive communication with Hindustan. Pakistan and Iran are territorial neighbours and India is a bit far, but we will not allow our soil to be used by foreign countries against India, said one of them.

Back in Shahr-e-Naw, the Taliban and its mandate dominate the conversation.

Aimuddin is most eloquent. “The Americans destroyed the country. The Taliban are good for Afghanistan.”

Another young man at a burger joint pipes up in perfect English, “You cannot imagine what the Taliban can do to people.” A middle-aged Afghan-American, with several properties in the city, insists, “Afghanistan must be run by Afghans. Not by foreigners.”

Fazal Ahmad, a middle-aged Taliban gentleman from Kandahar, with four daughters — two working as doctors and the other two students — is escaping the rain at a shop which sells sweetmeats and birthday party paraphernalia made in China. He has been to India four times, twice for medical treatment.

“There is no need to be afraid of the Taliban. You can go where you like. We are happy that India has opened a “safarat”, an embassy, in Kabul. Right now it is small, it should be made bigger, so that Afghans can get visas to travel and Indians can come here,” he says.

The rain has eased. The Taliban leader makes his way home. The shopkeeper deals with a couple of late stragglers. Kabul is shutting down for the night, pushing its unresolved issues to another day.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

Bangladesh has been transformed into an economic success story and Hasina is aware that victory at the 2023 polls lies through economic prosperity.

Almost ten years to the day after the World Bank withdrew its financing of the bridge over the river Padma in Bangladesh in 2012, citing “credible evidence” of corruption, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is inviting the Bank’s president as well as key Opposition leader Khaleda Zia, Nobel laureate Mohammed Yunus and other key figures who had opposed its construction to its inauguration on 25 June.

It’s not clear if all these important people will attend, but Hasina is clearly drawing attention to something else. That in the teeth of international pressure and domestic criticism, she has succeeded in creating a piece of infrastructure that will transform the lives of the people of Bangladesh.

It is on this determination that the 2023 election may even turn. Not just on the “bridge of pride,” which is how the Bangladeshis lovingly describe the Padma project, or the plethora of development initiatives that are being undertaken with the help of several nations — including India, China, Russia and Japan — but on the exhibition of a steely will to redesign Bangladesh that may enable Hasina to become Prime Minister for the fifth time.

Story of the bridge

After the World Bank pulled out, the government decided to fully fund the two-level steel truss Padma bridge at a cost of $3.6 billion. Ordinary people donated 5 taka (Rs 4.2) and 10 taka (Rs 8.4) to an improvised Bridge Fund. A Chinese company won the contract and construction began in late 2014.

A visit to the bridge site last week by a group of Indian journalists, including ThePrint, demonstrates the incredible marvel of engineering that it is — 6.15 km long with 42 pillars that stand like enormous trunks in the choppy waters; a four-lane highway on the upper level and a single railway track on the lower level. This is the longest bridge not just on the Padma, but anywhere on the Ganga river, which originates in the Himalayas and whose progeny the former is.

More than anything else, the bridge has boosted the can-do spirit not just of the government, but of the people too. In 2020, according to the IMF, real GDP growth in Bangladesh fell to 3.5 per cent, but went up to 5 per cent in 2021; in contrast, real GDP growth for India in 2020 sank to -6.6 per cent, rising to 8.9 per cent in 2021. But as it emerges from the pandemic, Bangladesh is on course to outstrip the competition and exit from the least developing country (LDC) status by 2026.

Certainly, it has buried former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s disparaging description of the country in 1971 as a “bottomless basket.”

According to the IMF, Bangladesh’s per capita GDP overtook India in 2020 – a remarkable achievement, even if India’s economy is ten times bigger and its population six times larger, both key factors in the calculation of per capita income – climbing steadily from being 50 per cent of India’s per capita in 2007, to 70 per cent in 2014 and levelling with it in 2020.

The comparison with Pakistan, from which it broke away in 1971, is even more staggering – Bangladesh’s per capita income is today 37 per cent higher.

The striking turnaround is certainly visible. Travelling through Dhaka and parts of Bangladesh last week, it’s clear that the grinding poverty, which Kissinger once so graphically described, no longer exists. This is true not just for the glitzy parts of the capital, like Gulshan, where international brands like Huawei, Farzi Café and the Marriott hotels compete for attention. Even in the old city, beyond the newspaper offices of Prothom Alo and The Daily Star in Karwan Bazar or the Jatrabari area on the outskirts of Dhaka, where thousands of people live cheek-by-jowl – it’s a bit like walking through the old parts of Kolkata – you no longer see emaciated figures doubling up as human beings.

“There is not one beggar in all of Dhaka,” Bangladesh information minister Hasan Mahmud expansively told the visiting Indian journalists in Dhaka over the weekend.

Whether or not the claim is true, Mahmud is certainly confident about his country’s economic prowess. Bangladesh introduced a certain flexibility in its labour laws when it became independent, which drove its shift towards industrialisation and reduced dependence on agriculture. Today, the textile industry contributes 20 per cent to the GDP — it accounts for 80 per cent of Bangladesh’s export basket – while the services sector follows a close second.

Women in the workforce are encouraged, alongside an NGO-government partnership focused on improving socio-economic parameters like infant and maternal mortality, health, sanitation and drinking water and education. Unlike in India, NGOs are not anathema.

But the politically astute Hasina is keenly aware that NGOs are not going to deliver the economic prosperity that aspirational Bangladeshis demand – and which is surely going to underwrite her bid to an unprecedented fifth term in power.

So, over the last 14 years, she has thrown open her nation’s doors to all colour of aid as well as investment. She has learnt the Sri Lanka lesson, which once sought to exclusively woo China, and has diversified the awarding of contracts to a variety of nations.

The Padma bridge was constructed by a Chinese company; the Rooppur nuclear power plant is being built by the Russians at a cost of $12 billion; the Maitree thermal project at Rampal is a 50:50 joint venture with India’s NTPC; the Dhaka metro is being built with considerable aid from Japan; a Chinese company is constructing the tunnel under the Karnaphuli river in Chittagong to connect with the Asian Highway; Dhaka’s revamped airport is being funded by the Japanese; a Chinese company will partially build the Payra sea port, while a Belgian company is dredging the 75-km-long channel at Payra.

The balancing act

Significantly, Hasina seems acutely aware of the geopolitics at play in her region. She knows it’s easy to be tempted by China’s economic miracle which pushed it to become Bangladesh’s largest trading partner in 2015, surpassing India. Time was when China and Bangladesh signed deals during Chinese president Xi Jinping’s 2016 visit totaling $13.6 billion.

So, in 2019, Hasina, soon after her visit to Beijing, announced that China could use the Chittagong and Mongla ports. A Chinese-built submarine base, which will house two Chinese submarines, is already coming up close by. It is well-known that Bangladeshi defence forces use Chinese frigates, fighter jets and tanks, making it the second largest buyer of Chinese arms after Pakistan.

But PM Hasina also knows that to become the undisputed queen of the Bay of Bengal, her destiny lies within South Asia.

So this April, she offered India the use of the Chittagong port so that Indian goods could traverse Bangladesh for intended use in the North-East, thereby cutting down both cost as well as time taken – the first experimental cargo had reached Tripura back in July 2020. Only last March, she and PM Modi had virtually inaugurated the Feni Bridge connecting Bangladesh with Tripura. Dhaka is now hoping to conclude a free trade treaty with India in the coming year.

But more was to come. The plan to develop a deep-sea port at Sonadia Island by the Chinese has been quietly dropped. Instead, Japan will likely develop a deep-sea port in Matarbari, 25 km from Sonadia.

It is now learnt that the Hasina government is cancelling the Chinese proposal to build the Dhaka-Chittagong railway. The penny seems to have dropped that the project is not economically viable. Moreover, Dhaka, is not believed to have taken kindly to China lecturing it not to join the Quad (there is no proposal so far) or participate in “bloc politics.”

So as PM Hasina juggles between the competing geopolitics of her region, three things are clear.

First, Bangladesh has been transformed into an economic success story, fifty years after it became independent. Second, Hasina is keenly aware that the route to the hearts and minds of her people – and victory at the 2023 polls – lies through economic prosperity. And third, the feisty Bangladesh PM is not averse to using the security establishment to keep tabs on civil society and the media in order to achieve the goal of a harmonious and prosperous nation.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

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This story first appeared in ThePrint

As many as 20 countries and organisations have issued statements, but not Bangladesh. It has clearly understood at whose door the power lies in India.

When the sun meets the sea in Cox’s Bazaar, at the very tip of Bangladesh, it’s easy to forget that only a few kilometres beyond, in Teknaf, protests were held last week against the derogatory remarks recently made about Prophet Muhammad by two BJP politicians. When your feet sink into the softest sand on the world’s longest natural beach, it’s tempting to drown out the anti-India slogans at the Baitul Mukarram mosque in faraway Dhaka with the gentle roar of the waters of the Bay of Bengal.

India is never far away from Bangladesh, but last week it was particularly close. Two former BJP leaders were the cynosure of all eyes as the Islamic world erupted in anger against insulting comments they had made against the Prophet. As many as 20 countries and organisations have issued statements, while a few summoned the Indian ambassador for a dressing down – but Bangladesh has remained absolutely quiet.

“We are not compromising on the honour of the Prophet. We strongly condemn any insult to the Holy Prophet whenever and wherever it happens. But the government of India has taken action and we thank them for it. We congratulate them. Now the law will take its own course,” Bangladesh information minister Hasan Mahmud told a group of visiting Indian journalists, including me, over the weekend.

Mahmud’s fulsome praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is certainly unusual. For the first time since Modi came to power, the PM has been on the back foot regarding his foreign policy because of the comments about the Prophet by his own ruling party. The criticism by the Islamic world is clearly hurting.

But the PM will likely travel to the UAE by the end of June, on his return journey from the G-20 summit in Germany, when India takes over the chair, clearly to make the point that the Nupur Sharma-Naveen Jindal duo were speaking against the party line.

Why UAE? Abu Dhabi criticised the BJP politicians’ comments, but did not summon the Indian ambassador. Moreover, an important free trade agreement has been recently signed between India and the UAE. Modi’s visit to Dubai and Abu Dhabi is sure to send the signal that the Prime Minister won’t allow anyone to undermine the achievements of his Gulf policy.

Forged in blood

Like the UAE, Bangladesh has clearly understood at whose door the power lies in India. The Congress’ Indira Gandhi may have helped Bangladesh win its liberation war 50 years ago, but that party today mostly manifests its angst by tweeting and fulminating on social media. Other regional parties are powerful in their own right, but the fact remains that there is no national alternative to Narendra Modi today.

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, among the most politically astute leaders in the region, is keenly aware of this. China is a significant presence in Bangladesh, building bridges and roads and railway lines, but India is so omnipresent that it cannot be ignored.

At the interaction with Indian journalists in Dhaka over the weekend Mahmud and his colleagues repeated the statement that “ties between India and Bangladesh are forged in blood.” They were of course referring to the ultimate sacrifice paid by about 3,900 Indian soldiers as well as 10,000 wounded in the 1971 Bangladesh war. It is a sentiment widely heard across Bangladesh. From students to shopkeepers to politicians, the line that “India shared its home and hearth with the people who wanted to be free” resounds across the country.

That’s why the ruling Awami League’s refusal to criticise Narendra Modi and his government, on the Prophet controversy or otherwise, is embedded in the realisation that he is among the most powerful leaders in South Asia. That is why when Home Minister Amit Shah made his undiplomatic comments calling Bangladeshi infiltrators “deemak” or termites some years ago, Bangladeshis either ignored the insult or swallowed it.

Here’s another example. At the informal interaction in Dhaka over the weekend, Mahmud was asked whether the sharing of the Teesta river waters would be on the agenda when PM Hasina visits New Delhi a few months from now.

Mahmud responded with some alacrity. “On Teesta, the problem is the provincial government (West Bengal), not the Central government. So PM Hasina can visit India even if Teesta is not yet done. But we do hope that the issue will be resolved as early as possible,” he said.

Mahmud’s refusal to indict the Modi government and instead, lay the blame on West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s shoulders, on what has been an emotive issue inside Bangladesh for several years, is indicative of the mood in the Hasina establishment.

The Bangladesh model

In any case, the Bangladeshis rightly reason, the anti-India protests on the Prophet issue that took place after the Friday prayers outside several mosques across the country are sending two messages to India:

The first, “see what we are up against,” and the second, “that is why there is no option but the Awami League.”

Both messages seem to have been properly received in Delhi. Moreover, the fact that the Awami League can control the anti-India slogans in the mosques and not let them get out of hand and still come up with a congratulatory comment about India is bound to put Sheikh Hasina and Bangladesh on the frontline of Modi’s friends and partners abroad.

The opposite also holds true. While the BJP hasn’t been able to control its own foul-mouthed spokespersons who got so carried away by their anti-Islamic rhetoric that they forgot the red lines, Hasina has dealt with anti-Hindu protests with a severe hand. The damage to property at a Durga Puja pandal last year in Comilla and similar incidents elsewhere were swiftly contained on direct orders by the Bangladesh PM.

Mahmud confirmed that the victims have been well compensated for their losses, up to two or three times.

So as the sea recedes into the horizon at Cox’s Bazaar and darkness falls, one wonders if the Bangladesh model of a secular, Muslim-majority republic, born out of the womb of an Islamic nation 50 long years ago, can become a model for the rest of South Asia?

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