End game was not something that anybody saw coming, S Jaishankar on Taliban takeover of Afghanistan

`It wasn`t exactly the scenario anybody was prepared,` Jaishankar expressed during his first public comments on the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on Monday (September 6, 2021) said that the "end game" in Afghanistan was "not something that anybody saw coming". During his first public comments since the Taliban took over Afghanistan's capital Kabul on August 15, Jaishankar also called on the international community to work in the collective interest. 

The EAM said, "All of us understood for some years now that the United States and its allies' presence would wind down in Afghanistan. Listing how it was under process from the Obama Presidency but the fact was for all the debate and deliberations on it, it would be a fair statement to assert that the end game was not something that anybody saw coming. It wasn't exactly the scenario anybody was prepared."

Jaishankar was speaking in response to a question at the JG Crawford Oration at the Australian National University.

This is to be noted that India's focus since the fall of Kabul has been on evacuation, coordinating with several countries like the US, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Oman. The country has so far evacuated more than 500 people, out of which more than 200 are Afghans, mostly minority Sikhs and Hindus. 

Jaishankar highlighted New Delhi's role and said, "We have taken some important steps, I should emphasis, in the UNSC, this was the month when we have been the president and there has been the resolution passed which demands that Afghanistan's territory should not be used for terrorism, which expects Taliban to live up to the promises about inclusive government, treatment of minority, women and children."

India is the non-permanent member of the council, and in August was the President, presiding over key meetings. Under its presidency, three meetings took place on the Afghanistan situation with the last one on August 30 seeing a resolution being passed on the crisis. As many as 13 countries backed it with two namely Russia and China abstaining.

Cautioning against the natural temptation of diplomacy to score a point above the others and try and get ahead in the game, EAM said, "This is the time international community should actually come together and work in what is truly collective interest because I think UN resolution, is a very very balanced and sensible sort of suggestion of the pathway which Afghanistan follows."

While heartbreaking visuals of Afghans fleeing the war-raged country via the Hamid Karzai international airport emerged, the international community was seen absent from trying to defuse the crisis. Amid the Taliban take over, the world was seen divided between the west led by the US and the other side being Russia and China which was very apparent at the UNSC meetings.

On the US standing in the aftermath of the Afghan crisis, the EAM said that the US is the US, it has deep strengths and elaborated that it has 'extraordinary capacity' to re-invent and re-energize itself.