The image of then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh — after having just chaperoned three jailed terrorists to freedom — walking hand-in-hand with the Afghan Taliban regime's foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, on the runway at Kandahar Airport in late 1999 still haunts. Mutawakil was later imprisoned by the U.S. military at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
Now Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has greeted Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef in Goa, best known for its beaches. Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan until the U.S.-led military intervention in Afghanistan, spent four years in America's notorious detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Spanish-born U.S. philosopher George Santayana's warning is particularly true for India: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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