India is insisting only on e-visas for Afghans who wish to travel abroad to flee the Taliban
The Government has decided to issue only e-visas to Afghan nationals wanting to evacuate to India. This is to prevent mercenaries and terrorists using the chaotic conditions at the Kabul airport to slip into India or any other country as evacuees. For good measure, the Union Home Ministry has also invalidated all visas issued to Afghan nations currently not in India. That resulted in a woman member of the Afghan Parliament being deported from New Delhi where she had landed from Istanbul. The Government move is necessary and comes after reports that an agency in Kabul was attacked and a bunch of Afghan passports with stamped Indian visas taken away. With all visas now invalid, Afghans will have to apply for e-visas for travelling to India. The Indian Government’s decision is a practical one, considering that global intelligence agencies, including from the US and the UK, have already alerted their Governments about plans by the Afghanistan-based terror groups to use the opportunity of a hurried evacuation from Kabul to slip in insurgents, fighters, terrorists and sleeper cell members to various countries for future use. The alarm was originally raised by the Pentagon in the United States that terrorists may have successfully infiltrated the thousands of evacuees from Kabul and some of them may have boarded aircraft for Europe, the US and other countries. Even President Joe Biden on Sunday warned that “terrorists may seek to exploit the situation”.
The western media is reporting that close to 100 evacuees could be on intelligence watchlists as persons of interest or persons suspected of links with terror groups like the IS. American and European evacuation flights have begun to stop at the military bases in the Middle East or specific European airports for extensive intelligence checks on the evacuees. The screenings proved successful a few days ago when an evacuee was detained at an airport on the suspicion that he is linked to the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The western media, based on Pentagon briefings, is claiming that nearly 100 evacuees could be on intelligence watchlists as suspected terrorists, with possible ties to the ISIS terrorist group. The British also found six people deemed a “direct threat” to the UK among the evacuees. All these countries now insist on Special Immigrant Visas available only online for those flying out of Kabul. In India’s case, the extra caution is more than warranted. In recent times, it has become difficult for trained fighters of mercenary groups or Islamist terror groups to cross over into India to carry out destabilising and violence acts. Security along the borders in Kashmir, Gujarat and Rajasthan has been tightened and modernised. The recent incidents of drone attacks in Jammu have led to a heightened state of alert. The reports of growing instability in Afghanistan in the last few months have alerted intelligence agencies to be prepared for terrorists entering India in the garb of Afghans fleeing the Taliban.