Jammu and Kashmir: Valley braces for Taliban insurgency spillover

Kashmir was on the lips of India’s consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif as it was winding up its mission in the largest city in northern Afghanistan last week

India pulled out of Mazar on August 11. Three days later, it fell to the Taliban.: File picture

Muzaffar Raina   |   TT  | 17.08.21: The Taliban takeover of Kabul has triggered fears of an Afghan spillover in the Valley, with a propaganda blitz on Jammu and Kashmir by India’s diplomatic mission in Mazar-i-Sharif seen as evidence of how the country is preparing to prevent a possible upheaval.

Kashmir was on the lips of India’s consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif as it was winding up its mission in the largest city in northern Afghanistan last week. India pulled out of Mazar on August 11. Three days later, it fell to the Taliban.

India in Mazar, the Twitter account of the Indian consulate general in the city, began showcasing the so-called development work undertaken by the administration in Jammu and Kashmir, unusually re-tweeting the statements of Twitter handles of the J&K administration.

The consulate posted content mostly on Kashmir from August 1 to 10, highlighting the tweets of lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha to the district information centres of Udhampur, Anantnag, Kathua, Budgam and Kupwara.

In one tweet, Sinha expresses gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his “vision of building quality infrastructure in J&K for the coming generations”.

“The UT has recently witnessed a phase of unprecedented progress in road connectivity projects among others,” he said, suggesting that Jammu and Kashmir was on the path to development after the scrapping of its special status in 2019.

Noor Ahmad Baba, former head of the political science department of Kashmir University, said the Indian consulate is apparently trying to “mollify” Taliban by playing the Kashmir development card so that they do not get involved here.

(1/2) A special flight is leaving from Mazar-e-Sharif to New Delhi. Any Indian nationals in and around Mazar-e-Sharif are requested to leave for India in the special flight scheduled to depart late today evening.

— India in Mazar (@IndianConsMazar) August 10, 2021

RSS veteran Ram Madhav, who was the BJP’s in-charge for Jammu and Kashmir for years, publicly expressed his fears of a spillover and asked the country to brace for any challenge.

“Taliban has over 30K (30,000) mercenaries trained in Pak by ISI. In power in Kabul, Taliban leadership wl (will) now deploy them ‘elsewhere’ wid d (with the) help of mentor Pak. India shud (should) brace up for serious security challenges. Taliban may eventually consume Pak n China 2 (too), but immediate threat is 4 (for) India,” Madhav tweeted.

Kashmir experts are calling for caution but claim the past experience is unpleasant.

“Taliban were in power from 1996 to 2001. It was when you had all foreign terrorists entering India. Kargil war, Parliament attack, Assembly attack and major suicide attacks happened then. The past experience has not been very good,” former J&K police chief S.P. Vaid said.

“It was during that period training camps for militants (for Kashmir) were established in Afghanistan.”

Vaid, however, said some people claim that “Taliban 2” is different from “Taliban 1” and time only will tell whether the takeover will have any impact here.

Baba said many people in Kashmir are waiting for the Taliban to cross over and fight here.

“There will be encouragement. If Pakistan is willing to invest, it can have more focus on Kashmir (after neutralising its Afghan front). That part will have consequences. There can be more involvement of non-state actors who were previously involved in Afghanistan,” he said.