The Acting Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, will be traveling to New Delhi between October 9-16, after having received a waiver from the UNSC sanctions committee. His previous bid to secure the waiver back in September was not successful. During his visit, he is expected to meet the External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and will arrive in New Delhi after having participated in the Moscow Format Dialogue in Russia. The impending visit has raised - and might answer - important questions about how India's relationship with the Taliban-led regime has evolved in the past four years. While there is an acknowledgement of the inevitability of engaging with the Taliban because of strategic and security considerations, concerns about what form this engagement would take and whether India can secure its interests for real, persist.
India's Reaction In 2021
When the Taliban usurped power in August 2021 and anointed themselves at the helm in Afghanistan, India's response to the developments was simultaneously knee-jerk and gradual. As the fighting intensified, India did not take much time to shut down its consulates and close its embassy. It was also quick in revoking visas and arranging the evacuation of Indian citizens from the country. But there was still a degree of dilly-dallying on how it intended to engage with the regime. A few weeks after the group's return, the Indian ambassador in Qatar met the head of the political office of the Taliban in Doha in order to seek assurances about protecting India's security and interests in the country.
Subsequently, after a visit by the then Joint Secretary of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran division in the Ministry of External Affairs to Kabul in June 2022, New Delhi operationalised a technical mission in the country to facilitate and monitor the delivery of aid. This ad hoc, reluctant engagement has now metastasised into a tacit acceptance of the inevitability of grappling with the reality of the Taliban.
The Dubai Meeting
At the beginning of this year, the Indian Foreign Secretary met Muttaqi in Dubai - the first high-level engagement between the two sides. The meeting saw a discussion over a broad spectrum of issues between the two countries - from humanitarian and development assistance to the importance of the Chabahar port for the purposes of trade and delivery of aid. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Taliban defined India as a key 'economic and regional player' in their statement. After the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in April, a delegation led by India's Joint Secretary in the PAI division also met Muttaqi. This was followed by a telephonic conversation between the Indian External Affairs Minister and Muttaqi, where India expressed gratitude for the Taliban's condemnation of the attacks in Pahalgam.
The January meeting between Misri and Muttaqi came in the backdrop of Pakistan's air-strikes in Afghanistan the previous month and New Delhi's condemnation of the same, while the April meeting and the consequent call happened in the context of the Pahalgam terror attack and India's retaliatory strikes on Pakistan under Operation Sindoor. The Taliban had condemned the attack and spoken against how it had an adverse impact on regional peace and stability. The deterioration of ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan has consequently given India more space to engage with the Taliban.
What's Driving India's Strategy
While India's relationship with Afghanistan has always been perceived as being based on the long-drawn historical and civilisational ties between the two countries, New Delhi has been cognisant of the security risks that it faces on its north-western frontier. In the immediate aftermath of the Taliban's return, concerns about the group's tacit support and assistance to terror groups like the Al Qaeda and the presence of groups like the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and those particularly inimical to India's interests like the Al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent, the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Jaish-e-Mohamed had raised New Delhi's fears.
This, in addition to the growing regional engagement with the Taliban, also persuaded New Delhi to pursue its engagement. In July this year, Russia became the first country to grant de jure recognition to the Islamic Emirate, a first since the group's return to power. While other countries like China, Iran and the Central Asian Republics haven't granted de jure recognition, they have all stepped up their engagement - either through the exchange of ambassadors or by handing over the control of their embassies to Taliban appointees.
Breaking From Pak?
For the Taliban, engagement with India allows them to create a perception of legitimacy for their domestic constituents. Since their return to power, they have tried to pitch their approach towards foreign policy-related issues as one based on pragmatism - with its focus on a 'balanced and economic foreign policy'. The deterioration in ties with Pakistan also allows them to hedge their bets and also show how it is no longer dependent on Islamabad for its survival - carving out an identity separate from their over-dependence on Pakistan. And while this does give India more space to maneuver, it has to be mindful of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan trilateral as well.
Any position that India takes vis-a-vis Afghanistan is also significant from the perspective of the interests and concerns of the Afghan people. A significant fallout of New Delhi's decision to shut down its presence in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Taliban's return and also its decision to engage with the group has been on the people of Afghanistan. In the last few years, there has been a consistent push for New Delhi to resume the provision of visas, increase its aid and also refocus its attention on development assistance. The Taliban have also been persuading India to resume its infrastructure projects and welcome investments between the two countries. After the recent earthquake on August 31, India was one of the first countries to offer aid; it also facilitated this through the Chabahar port, offering food items, water purifiers, tents and essential medicines, thus bolstering its support to the Afghan people.
What To Expect
The current meeting is expected to see discussions on the appointment of a Taliban-supported ambassador to the embassy in New Delhi, something that the group has been seeking for a while. The Republic-era appointees have already left the embassy, back in November 2023, while the consulate in Mumbai also has an appointee who reports back to the Ministry in Kabul. Thus, the Acting Foreign Minister could push for further institutionalisation of the status quo. Muttaqi could also reiterate their demands for the issuance of more visas, investments and the resumption of infrastructure projects. For India, the priority is the protection of its security interests and extracting security guarantees from the group.
New Delhi's growing engagement with the Taliban comes at a time when the group's political reality in Afghanistan has become much more apparent, with more and more countries establishing some form of communication framework with them. The concerns about the proliferation of terror groups and the manifestation of other security risks in the country necessitate this engagement. For India, an expectation about balancing its increasing political engagement with the Taliban regime with its support to the Afghan people will still remain. As more and more high-level engagements become common, there will be an equal expectation of this translating into India increasing its support to the people of Afghanistan and also making a case for the group to dial down their draconian restrictions on women and minorities. How much leverage does India have in pushing for this and the trust it can impose on the Taliban's ability to support India's interests is still circumspect.
(Harsh V Pant is Vice President, ORF. Shivam Shekhawat is a Junior Fellow with ORF's Strategic Studies Programme)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
