India to offer jobs to 80 Afghan military cadets

India would offer jobs to as many as 80 cadets of the Afghan defence forces, who recently graduated from various military academies in this country but could not return to their homeland.

But jobs would be offered to these Afghan military cadets -- who got stranded here following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August last year -- only after a year's training, according to the Afghan Embassy, manned by a few diplomats of the erstwhile government.

In a statement, the Afghan Embassy in Delhi said that the 80 young Afghan cadets had been offered a 12-month training course in "effective English communication for business and office purpose" under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation programme.

"Given the challenges and uncertainty facing these freshly graduated young cadets due to the prevailing situation back home, the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in India welcomes and applauds this generous move by the Indian government," it added.

The Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation is the flagship training programme of the Indian Foreign Ministry.

India was among several countries that evacuated their diplomatic staff from Kabul when the Taliban took over the Afghan capital on August 15, with the US troops ending their 20-year military presence in that country.

However, exactly two weeks later, India began direct communication with the Taliban. The country's envoy in Qatar, Deepak Mittal, held talks with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban's Political Office, in the Indian Embassy in Doha.

At that meeting, Ambassador Mittal had raised India's concern that Afghanistan's soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism in any manner, "to which Abbas Stanekzai assured him that these issues would be positively addressed", as per the Foreign Ministry.

India is worried about the security situation in Afghanistan, given it has already infused over three billion USD worth development aid into that country and the horrific memories of the Taliban's role in the hijacking of an Indian airliner in 1999.

At the time too, the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, led by then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.