‘The difference is how the international players are dealing with the Taliban now’
The evacuation of the Embassy, including Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon, from Kabul is the fourth time India has needed to pull out all its diplomats from Afghanistan, but what has changed considerably is how world players have dealt with the Taliban, say diplomats who recall the strong stand taken by the United Nations and various governments in the 1990s.
In 1993, India decided to close the mission in Kabul after a rocket attack on the Chancery building killed an Indian security guard. Significantly, the Indian security official was killed when rockets were fired on Kabul by Hizb-e-Islami forces commanded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now one of the coordinating council members negotiating with the new Taliban regime.
The mission staff, led by Ambassador Arif Qamarain, who had only been appointed two months before that, were driven in three buses to the Uzbek border town of Termez and flown out…