NEW DELHI, May 26: The near-takeover of Afghanistan by the Pakistan-aided Taliban militia last weekend has sent a body blow to whatever the Ministry of External Affairs was doing in the name of its Afghan policy.

New Delhi's covert, but nevertheless non-military, support for opposition to the Taliban led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum and former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani has amounted to, at least in the short term, backing the wrong horse in the race for the riches of Kabul.

Dostum caved in without a fight after some more of his generals, attracted by the colour of money the Taliban were offering, defected to the militia. He has fled to Ankara, Turkey. Rabbani is already believed to be in Iran.

Official reaction to the Afghan crisis came late in the evening: ``Government of India has closely followed recent developments in Afghanistan which have led to the extension of Taliban's authority to the northern areas of the country....This new situation is entirely within the domestic sphere of Afghanistan. Government would like to reaffirm that it is for the Afghan people to decide on their future, free from outside influence and interference...''

By refusing to outright recognise the Taliban, New Delhi appeared to be preparing the ground for doing so in the near future. One analyst pointed out that in UN parlance ``extension of authority'' is code for ``recognition and acceptance'' of authority.

South Block, meanwhile, seemed in a suspended state of disbelief: ``What could India have done in the last few years, what can it possibly do today?'' At a lesser level, the feeling wasn't much different from the time when hardliners in Moscow attempted a putsch against Gorbachev in 1991 and everyone knew that the days of the Soviet Union were numbered.

In contrast, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan landed on his feet running, when he arrived back home from a visit to Washington on Sunday: He promptly recognised the Taliban as the new rulers of Afghanistan and crowed about his nation's support to a group that has never been inhibited about imposing the strictest Islamic code on women.

New Delhi's other overwhelming reaction to the Afghan crisis is that India's neighbourhood has suddenly become much more unsafe: intelligence agencies are believed to have found evidence of Pakistan's ISI-trained Taliban fighters fighting side-by-side with the Harkat-ul-Ansar terrorists in the Kashmir valley.

Right now in South Block, hope alternates with despair: sources point out that the comfort level between the Taliban and Nawaz Sharif is not particularly high, and that a few months ago a Talib spokesman had warned Islamabad about not messing around with it, otherwise they might open channels with India.

On the other hand, the sources admit that Nawaz Sharif's uneasiness with his northern neighbour is precisely because he has little control over the ISI's direct line with the Taliban.

Analysts say that the Pentagon's own linkages with the ISI, never discreet, meant that Washington provided significant moral, and perhaps, financial support to the Taliban over the last three years when it launched its `jehad' from southern Kandahar.

The analysts add that, since, the Taliban's stunning successes have in all probability been bankrolled with Saudi money: Herat fell without a fight and the Shia governor Ismael Khan slunk away across the border to Iran; Kabul fell last September after a few battles, none of them breathtaking. And now in the last week, Dostum's generals, one by one, have fallen like ninepins without a single blow being traded.

New Delhi admits too that the US pressure on India to build bridges with the Taliban has been persistent. Former assistant secretary of state Robin Raphel openly lobbied for the militia both in Islamabad and here, especially because the US wanted the oil major Unocal to succeed in the laying of its pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Karachi, Pakistan.

As long as Dostum's alliance held in northern Afghanistan that wasn't possible. Today, the pipeline's politics are seen as a vindication of US foreign policy.

The ministry, nevertheless, thinks it can see a silver lining in the election of Mohammed Khatami, a ``moderate'' to the Iranian presidency, also over the weekend. A letter of congratulations is being prepared to be sent to the new head, who is believed to be close to the former president Rafsanjani and therefore, is expected to carry on his policies.

Sources said that Khatami's election is likely to spell greater moderation in domestic politics as well as overtures to the West. That the time may be ripe for Iranian society to end its isolation in the region.

If that happens, US oil companies may press their own establishment to lift sanctions against Iran and allow them to tap the huge reserves that exist there.

It was because of Iran's isolation that the Central Asian-Afghanistan pipelines were thought about in the first place. If the Iranian alternative proves more viable, the dependence on the Afghan-Pakistan line could become greatly reduced: in that lies New Delhi's only hope to still play a role in the region.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.