A QUIET WITHDRAWAL: ALL ABOUT THE AYNI AIR BASE

Until recently, not many of us were aware of a quiet withdrawal-a withdrawal from an air base in Tajikistan that India had been strategically holding for the past two decades. Known locally as the Gissar Military Aerodrome, it was the Ayni Air Base, which was India’s only full-fledged overseas military arrangement, located at a geopolitically strategic position in Central Asia. By all means, however not muchly glorified, it marks an end to one important chapter in India’s post-Cold War history. 

The air base provided India with a rare vantage point in the geopolitics of Central Asia and its neighbourhood. It is less than 1,000 kilometres from Pakistan’s northern border and is within the surveillance reach of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor-a narrow strip of land that shares its boundaries with both Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and China’s western border. 

India’s involvement and importance:

The air base has its history in the Cold War era when it served as a major military facility for the Soviets. India also briefly stationed military personnel there while supporting the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan against the Taliban. Ayni was the base from which the Communist Government in Afghanistan and Soviet Russia together fought the decade-long war against the Afghan Mujahideen during the late 1970s and 1980s. However, following USSR’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the infrastructure of the air base deteriorated significantly and so did its importance.

India renewed its interest in the air base after recommendations from the Kargil Review Committee. The 1999 war exposed gaps in India’s intelligence, leading to the realisation that the country needed a guard outside its contours such that an early warning could reach the mainland should a similar uncertainty turn up again in the future and that Ayni provided India with that observation post. Following the 9/11 attacks, when the US government launched its war against the Taliban, in the year 2002, the then Atal Behari Vajpayee government signed a deal with the Tajik government that allowed India to jointly operate from the air base for a 20-year timeline, thus giving India its first full-fledged overseas military facility. This strengthened New Delhi’s confidence and also signalled India’s willingness to assertively participate in the geopolitics of Central Asia-a region traditionally dominated by China and Russia.

Over the past two decades, India invested between USD 70 million and USD 100 million to modernize the airbase-extending its runway to 3,200 meters, constructing new hangars, air traffic control towers, radar facilities, and perimeter fortifications. The upgraded infrastructure allowed accommodation of Su-30MKI multi-role fighters and Mi-17 helicopters. At one time, an estimated 200 Indian Air Force (IAF) and Army personnel could also be accommodated for overseeing maintenance and logistics. The airbase could have served as a staging ground for the Indian Air Force to strike deep inside Pakistan should a situation so arise, and as a monitoring post for Chinese activity along the routes connected to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). For India, Ayni held dual strategic advantage: both as a military platform projecting airpower beyond South Asia, and as a listening post to monitor the volatile Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. Indeed, India used this base to assist evacuation of stranded nationals when the Taliban took control of Kabul in 2021.

Ayni also aligned well with India’s “Connect Central Asia” policy. Tajikistan is the closest Central Asian country to India and its presence in the landlocked country was a symbol of India’s strategic influence in the region. Russia has traditionally believed Central Asia to be its backyard and has significant military establishments in Tajikistan. China shares its western border with Tajikistan and the country is also an important node for its Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing fears that repercussions from any instability in Afghanistan could be felt in its Xinjiang province. Recent satellite imagery suggests that China is developing a military establishment in Tajikistan (however no official statement agrees to such a development). In such a geopolitically critical landscape, India’s presence was of significance. 

Why did India withdraw?

The agreement with the Tajik gove

rnment was originally for a period of 20 long years, however if so wished it could have been renewed. The Tajikistan government expressed intentions of non renewal of the agreement in the year 2021 and asked the Indian government to withdraw its personnel, effectively bringing an end to the two decade old arrangement. Scholars of foreign policy, however, believe that it was Russia and China who did not want India’s presence in the Central Asian country and was supposed to have pressurised the Tajikistan government. For Russia, Tajikistan hosts its largest overseas base and serves as a frontline for the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). For China, it is a crucial node in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and would therefore not want any non-regional player to be a part of the game. This thus marks a significant inflection point in the Central Asian geopolitics where both Russia and China are intensifying their grip over regional military and political spheres of influence. India’s presence for Russia should however have had no objection but given the current dynamics with the Ukraine war, Russia’s dependence on Beijing is somewhere felt to be increasing. With all equations considered well, this certainly is a contraction of India’s strategic reach in the region.

While US and China have several overseas military bases across the world, Ayni was India’s only fully functional overseas military base and loosing it will have serious repercussions in its intelligence and surveillance over the region. The other facilities India maintain operate with consent or close coordination with the host country. Only times India had independently operated was from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka during the 1971 India-Pakistan war and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) mission, respectively. The recent arrangement with Mauritius is also a joint access and not ownership. 

This development insinuates many narratives in several dimensions. India’s intent to engage with the Central Asian nations has already been communicated. However, post US tariffs and the projected closeness between Russia, China and India which recently was optimistically labelled as the “Tianjin Troika”, New Delhi’s strategic posture now requires careful recalibration and reassessment.