India to participate on meet focused on Afghanistan

India is among six nations participating in a conference on Afghanistan’s future in Moscow, two months after Russia hosted a similar conference with only China and Pakistan. After India and particularly Afghanistan objected to being cut out of the discussion, Moscow agreed to expand its ambit, announcing a six-nation conference of Russia, India, Iran, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan.

The issue of exclusion was raised by Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar during his talks with the Russian delegation at the Heart of Asia conference in Amritsar in early December last year. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval also visited Moscow for strategic and counter-terrorism talks on January 31, where he is understood to have raised the issue as well.

Experts say that the invitation may not however, smooth over serious differences between New Delhi and Moscow over the past few months on their moves in the region. To begin with, India is increasingly uncomfortable with Russia’s overtures to Pakistan on defence issues. Significantly, Russia did not join the U.S., U.K. and France in sponsoring a resolution against Jaish chief Masood Azhar at the U.N. sanctions committee last month, a resolution which China then put a hold on. Russia has been seen as favouring a softer line on the Taliban as a counter to the spread of Islamic State (IS) in Afghanistan; Russia and China have also been coordinating closely to demand the delisting of senior Taliban leaders designated as terrorists by the U.N. sanctions committee.

India will be represented by Director (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran) Gopal Baglay, while Pakistan will be represented by Mansoor Ali Khan, Director (Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey), at the one-day conclave which would be led by Russian President Putin’s special envoy on Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov; a forum that could see Russia take centre-stage on Afghan issues, decades after the Soviets pulled out from Kabul.