Afghanistan has been the top headline in the Indian newspapers for five reasons.
First, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) opened negotiations with a regime it does not formally recognise, thereby blurring the distinction between the de facto and the de jure. We have resumed aid, albeit at a reduced scale, but the indication is clear—we are willing to examine our foreign relations from the prism of realpolitik.
Second, and even more significantly, the feisty women of the Indian press corps achieved what the government could not. They literally forced their way into the Taliban Press conference and asked some difficult questions.
Third was the visit of the Taliban delegation to Deoband, the seminary in Saharanpur, from which they claim to derive their ideological moorings, and the tumultuous welcome received by them from the locals. The ecosystem was quite apart from the one at Hyderabad House and FICCI headquarters in New Delhi.
Fourth, the visit coincided with the outbreak of fierce fighting between Afghanistan and Pakistan—thereby shattering the myth of the Islamic Ummah (brotherhood) with many commentators in Islamabad attributing this to the newfound friendship between India and Afghanistan.
Last, but not least, is the very interesting turn of events in which Russia and China, along with India and Pakistan, find themselves on the same page with respect to Trump’s attempts to place US troops in the Bagram base—a strategic blunder committed by the US in 2021.
However, this column will discuss something different—the 106-kilometre border of India with Afghanistan. As per the first schedule to Article 1 of our Constitution, which defines the territory of India, we share a 15,107-kilometre border with seven countries.
In the official note of the Border Management Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Afghanistan is described as the neighbour with the shortest border with India’s UT of Ladakh. India’s longest border of 4,097 kilometre is with Bangladesh, followed by 3,488 kilometre with China and 3,323 kilometre with Pakistan. The length of the Nepal and Myanmar borders is 1,751 kiometres and 1,643 kilometres, respectively. We also share a 699-kilometre border with Bhutan.
The contiguous neighborhood
The contiguous neighbourhood had always been accepted, but was never reiterated with force and conviction till Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019, in which citizenship rights were extended to Hindus and Sikhs from Afghanistan. India’s failure to insist on Afghanistan’s membership as a founding nation of SAARC in 1985 was a missed opportunity, which was rectified in 2007 at the 14th summit in New Delhi.
In this context, the recent joint statement of S Jaishankar and Amir Khan Muttaqui, acknowledging Wakhan as their contiguous neighbourhood assumes importance. This also puts the spotlight on the Gilgit-Baltistan region, over which India has asserted its territorial claims by virtue of having been part of the princely state of J&K, which acceded to India on 26 or 27 October 1947.
The official name of J&K till its accession to India was Riyasat-e Jammu-wa-Kashmir-wa-Ladakh-wa Tibet Ha (the state of Jammu, Kashmir, Ladakh, and Tibet). Gilgit-Baltistan was part of the Ladakh district, which, because of its strategic importance, had been ‘leased’ to the British Government of India to be administered directly by the Viceroy.
However, in the aftermath of the Indian Independence Act of June 1947, it was returned to Maharaja Hari Singh on 29 July 1947. On 1 August 1947, the British flag was replaced by the Riyasat, and Brigadier Ghanshara Singh, a Dogra general, was appointed as the Governor of Gilgit-Baltistan. After the accession of the state to India, Major William Alexander Brown, the then CO of the Gilgit Scouts, mutinied along with all the Muslim officers and officials, surrounded the Governor’s house, and replaced the Indian flag with that of Pakistan.
Two days later, on 3 November, the brigadier, along with Colonel Abdul Majid Khan of the JAK Infantry, was put under house arrest. It was clear that an influential section of the British army was backing this action because he received the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in February 1948. By then, Pakistan had already appointed its military Governor, and segued this region from the Pakistan-occupied-Jammu-and-Kashmir (PoJK). Major Brown was also conferred the Sitara-e- Pakistan (Star of Pakistan posthumously) in 1994.
What and where is the Wakhan corridor
The strategically important Wakhan Corridor is a narrow strip of land in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, sharing its border with Gilgit Baltistan (under PoJK) and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (the erstwhile NWFP). Its 75-kilometre eastern border connects to China’s Xinjiang province, which was part of the historical Silk Road that connected China with Central Asia, Europe, and South Asia through Afghanistan. The corridor is about 350-kilometre long and 20 to 60-kilometre wide in different parts, covering approximately 10,300 square-kilometre area.
Its rugged terrain and limited access make movement challenging, with the main pass running through near-impassable mountains east of the Little Pamir. The area is sparsely populated, consisting of 110 villages that are home to around 18,000 people. The initial bonhomie between the Taliban and the Chinese has come under strain because Pakistan is not comfortable with the growing Chinese influence in the region. In recent weeks, China has slowed work on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Wakhan, for the sake of Pakistan, a country with which its ties are described as ‘higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans and sweeter than honey’.
The changing demography of Gilgit Baltistan
Unlike in J&K and Ladakh, Pakistan has, as a matter of policy, spared no effort in changing the demographic composition of Gilgit Baltistan, thereby leading to tremendous resentment in the local population. From a recent publication of the Centre for Joint Warfare Studies, New Delhi, we understand that already the outsider-insider ratio in Gilgit Baltistan is now 3.5:4, and by the end of this decade, the Punjabi and Muhajir populations—which are predominantly Sunni—are expected to be in a majority in the region.
Not only does this marginalise the indigenous population—both economic and political power— it also poses a challenge for India, as in the recent reorganisation of J&K into the UTs of J&K and Ladakh, 24 seats in the 114-member J&K Assembly have been reserved for the residents of PoJK and Gilgit Baltistan. Of course, if, as and when Ladakh gets a Legislative assembly, the seats for GB should ideally be transferred to Ladakh, for Gilgit was a sub-division of Ladakh.
While there can be two, or perhaps more opinions on whether we should stir the hornet’s nest in PoJK and Gilgit Baltistan, given the change in demographics population and accepting the LoC as the international border, we should certainly stay well informed about the strategic implications of nations with which we share a common frontier. Our negotiations have to be based on our strategic interests, rather than ideological moorings, for as Lord Palmerston said in the House of Lords in 1855: ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Sanjeev Chopra is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, PMML, New Delhi; a Trustee of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial; and Festival Director of Valley of Words, a literature and arts festival in Dehradun.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)