No time to lose on Afghanistan

In the aftermath of the fall of Kabul, India did not explore the options of reaching out to the erstwhile government, currently headed by Vice-President Amrullah Saleh

Policy-making is about exploring all available options before arriving at informed decisions. However, in the context of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, strategic analysts and experts, waxing and waning eloquently about whether India should engage with the Taliban or not, seem to gloss over the fundamental reality that the Taliban do not subsume the entirety of Afghanistan. Even after the fall of Kabul, Afghanistan is not just about the Taliban alone. Hence, India’s future options in that country need not be Taliban-centric. This truism must be factored into the official policy in an age when an all-out embrace of the Taliban has become