Taliban's control over Afghanistan, triggers debate on India’s airbase in Tajikistan
Source : India Today
About two years after the Indian Airlines plane hijack incident of 1999, India came up with what is loosely called the Ayni Project to open its first airbase outside the country. It is in Tajikistan, in the neighbourhood of Afghanistan. The Pakistani terrorists had hijacked the plane and taken it to safety under the previous Taliban regime.
In 2002, the Ayni Project began as a collaborative effort between the external affairs ministry and the security-intelligence establishment. Over the years, it developed into an Indian Air Force (IAF) base, known as Gissar Military Aerodrome (GMA).
It is located in a village called Ayni, not far from Tajikistan’s capital Dushanbe. India and Tajikistan jointly manage it.Recently, on August 22, Arindam Bagchi, the external affairs ministry spokesperson, referred to India’s Tajikistan-situated airbase for evacuating Indian and Nepalese nationals from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
With protests erupting in Afghanistan against the Taliban-Pakistan combine, social media is abuzz with suggestions that India should use its airbase in Tajikistan for humanitarian help if not to push back Pakistan.
Amitabh Mattoo, Padma Shri awardee Professor of International Relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, wrote on Twitter complaining that India chose “to abandon our allies” despite having the capacity to “access Mazar-i-Sharif within minutes”. He called it “a shame”.
Mattoo, however, mistakenly identified GMA at Ayni with Farkhor base, which lies close to Afghanistan’s border in South Tajikistan. India ran a hospital at the Farkhor base during the 1990s, but its operation was massively curtailed following the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
The Indian Air Force (IAF) still runs a small hospital at Qurgan Teppa in South Tajikistan for Tajik military personnel.
The Ayni airbase became operational around 2005-06 and came up with an estimated expenditure of about $100 million by India. However, after 2014, the deployment of fighter planes such as Sukhoi 30MKI was made on a temporary basis at the Ayni airbase.
The Ayni airbase offers India a strategic advantage near the Wakhan Corridor that connects Afghanistan to China and the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (Gilgit-Baltistan) region.
India, however, has maintained a low-profile about its airbase in Tajikistan. The reference on social media to India’s military-strategic depth has come in the wake of protests erupting in Afghanistan against the Taliban-Pakistan combine.
Protesters, led by women in many cases, have hit the streets of Kabul, Ghor and other major cities of Afghanistan following a public visit by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) chief Faiz Hameed to Kabul.
Hameed held a meeting with the Taliban leadership apparently to mediate peace between warring factions.
Meanwhile, reports from Afghanistan suggested that the Pakistan Air Force launched drone attacks on the Resistance Force in Panjshir. This also seems to have fuelled protests in Afghanistan.Live TV
No comments: