ALARMING AXIS

THE POTENTIAL COOPERATION BETWEEN THE TALIBAN, CHINA AND PAKISTAN COULD BE A CAUSE FOR WORRY FOR INDIA, WHOSE CONCERN IS NO LONGER ABOUT THE REVIVAL OF TERROR, BUT IS STRATEGIC AND MILITARY

- R. PRASANNAN, NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA AND PRADIP R. SAGAR

The National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, got a tip-off from India’s Research and Analysis Wing last November about a Chinese spy ring in Kabul. The tip-offled the police to the apartment of a Chinese national who had come to Afghanistan three years ago to work in a Chinese company’s road-building project in Bamiyan, was teaching Chinese in a private school in Kabul, and also exporting pine nuts to Shanghai. The teacher-trader’s arrest in December led to the busting of a spy ring that involved 10 Chinese nationals living in Kabul, and an Afghan who ran the school.

That was perhaps the last hurrah one heard from India in the war-torn country. Though Vice President Amrullah Saleh, himself a former spy, protested to Beijing, China wanted its nationals back. Within days, the 10 Chinese nationals were put on a chartered flight without being charged, and sent home.

The tables have since turned, too dramatically. China’s diplomats are very much in their mission in Kabul now, even as their Pakistani friends are cheering the Taliban takeover of the country’s capital. India’s was among the first missions that shut shop and left, despite having spent $3 billion on building dams, roads, bridges, power stations, hospitals, schools and even the national parliament building.

Indeed, the return of the Taliban is bringing back memories of the troubled 1990s when, inspired by the Taliban and armed by Pakistan, insurgency peaked in India’s Kashmir, bombs went off in India’s shrines and markets, an airplane was hijacked to Kandahar, and terrorists were escorted to freedom.