Tango with the Taliban can’t be India’s long-term Afghanistan strategy

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Editor's note: Such is the state of poverty and hunger in Afghanistan that parents are giving their hungry children tranquilizers and sleeping pills to help them sleep. In their desperate quest for survival, others have sold their daughters and their own organs, the BBC reported last month. The country is in the grip of a full-blown humanitarian crisis in the second winter since the Taliban took over following the sudden exit of US-led NATO forces. The Indian government’s claim, first made last year as it engaged with the Taliban, that it is providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people thus makes sense. The Indian government has so far sent 50 tonnes of medical aid and 40,000 tonnes of wheat to the country, handing the aid consignments over to the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, the Afghan Red Crescent Society and other specialized United Nations agencies including World Food Programme and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. India also dispatched 28 tonnes of emergency relief assistance after a 5.9-magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan in June. More significantly, an Indian Air Force …