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India Takes On The Taliban At The UN

Prakash M Swamy at the United Nations

Jaswant Singh, a former soldier, last week unleashed a scathing attack in the United Nations on Taliban-led Afghanistan, asserting the nexus between Kabul and Islamabad had become a threat to international peace and security.

India's external affairs minister, who was in New York in connection with the UN General Assembly, told 25 of his counterparts across the globe of the Kargil misadventure, New Delhi's restrained response and Islamabad's open support to human rights violations by the Taliban and terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Jaswant Singh told rediff.com that he could not reduce Indo-US co-operation and the exchange of views to the work of any one individual. But he said the United States has "just" begun to listen to India's concerns over global terrorism emanating from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

bin Laden and Afghanistan's Taliban figured prominently in almost all of India's talks with Washington and in presentation at the United Nations.

"India virtually led a campaign against the Taliban at the UN and its human rights violations with the fullest understanding of the US and the UK which did some behind the scene work," an Arab diplomat said at the UN.

Asked to comment on the US and UK's tacit support of the attack against Taliban, an Indian diplomat accompanying Jaswant Singh said, "We don't follow the diplomatic policy of, if you scratch my back I will scratch yours. We go by issues and not by personalities."

The Taliban was certainly a major issue for India because most Kargil infiltrators had the group's financial and moral support. But India ran down the suggestions at the United Nations of humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan.

New Delhi pointed out that, in a way, the problems Afghanistan faced were due to earlier "humanitarian interventions". Even Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was supposedly based on a humanitarian issue, it was pointed out. The solution to the Afghan crisis should be brought about by the people of Afghanistan alone and should not be imposed from outside, India said.

Almost the entire Non Aligned Movement nations and G-77 countries supported New Delhi's view on the matter of intervention. Even the permanent nations, the P-5, are uncomfortable the option.

"It was not brought by the West as viewed by many including India but the UN Secretariat itself, " an envoy from a P-5 nation said.

The need to provide humanitarian assistance but avoid humanitarian intervention was effectively addressed by New Delhi in all its bilateral talk. It said that there is no basis for such a provision in the UN charter. India had all along been saying that that UN had to respect to a set of guiding principles on humanitarian intervention in the resolution 46 /182 adopted a decade ago.

The UN has reiterated these guiding principles in several of its resolutions thereafter. These guiding principles that govern humanitarian assistance should be foolproof to ensure that humanitarian assistance is part of the solution and not a part of the problem, India asserted.

If humanitarian assistance is given with political motives in mind then it becomes easier to manipulate the assisted nation. In such a case, India feared that humanitarian workers could be targeted in a conflict. But if the assistance was neutral and impartial and followed the guiding principles, the act could be perceived as part of a solution, it said.

India says the guiding principles of humanitarian assistance accepted by the international community should be respected at all costs.

"We had the strong support from the NAM and G-77. They stood solidly behind us in the humanitarian intervention issue at India's prodding. We played a key role in harnessing opinions and discussions that are still raging in the UN," an Indian diplomat said.

The NAM, at its ministerial-level meeting, declared, "We reject the so-called right of humanitarian intervention which has no legal basis in the UN Charter or in the general principles of international law." Again, the G-77 in its ministerial declaration has a paragraph that stated: "The ministers rejected the so called right of humanitarian intervention."

However, Singh said, India had always played a key role in matters relating to humanitarian assistance and it is aware of the consequences. India is one of the very few developing countries that has never appealed for humanitarian assistance either to the comity of nations or to the UN agencies as it had always tried to tackle its problems be it natural disaster or famine internally. Humanitarian assistance is always given on the basis of appeal by the affected country.

However, in the true spirit of South-South co-operation, Delhi has always extended assistance to other developing countries that were affected either by natural disasters or calamities. Last year Delhi gave $ 10 million to developing countries affected by hurricane and floods.

"We believe assistance and intervention should not be mixed as vulnerability will then be exploited," an Indian diplomat said. But there were other concerns than armed terrorism.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, in his talks with Singh, discussed the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan as part of Taliban's efforts to make money.

"More than 80 per cent of opium sold on the streets of London come from Kabul," Cook was quoted as saying. Most nations concurred with India that the UN figures that revealed that opium production by Taliban has gone up to 4,700 tonnes a year.

Most of this opium finds its way into the streets of London and New York. Hence P-5 nations, like the US, the UK and France, were keen to nip this menace.

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