On January 8, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met the Afghan Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai. Although the two sides had been engaging for more than 14 months, the recent meeting is so far the highest-level encounter between the two countries.
In March 2024, the Indian joint secretary, ministry of external affairs, also met Afghan Taliban officials in Kabul.
Soon after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, New Delhi abandoned its diplomatic and development activities in Afghanistan due to security concerns. However, India continued to engage the Afghan interim government on two fronts.
First, India used humanitarian assistance as a tool to open communication channels with the Afghan regime. Second, it engaged with Afghan officials in the United Arab Emirates for diplomatic outreach.
New Delhi gradually but carefully started its engagement with the Afghan Taliban in November 2023. These meetings witnessed significant progress in terms of bilateral engagement, with Indian officials agreeing to increase humanitarian assistance.
According to the United Nations World Food Programme, India has sent more than 47,000MT wheat. Moreover, Delhi has supplied 200 tonnes of medical aid.
Similarly, backchannel diplomacy between India and the Afghan Taliban resulted in the permanent closure of the Ghani administration’s embassy in New Delhi. Subsequently, the Taliban’s charge d’affaires in Abu Dhabi was invited by the Indian embassy in the UAE for the Republic Day celebrations in the Emirates’ capital.
There are several reasons for India’s outreach to the Afghan Taliban. First, the international community has been continuously engaging with the Taliban government. The US has been talking to the Taliban in Qatar.
China has been expanding its relationship with Kabul in the security, economics and political realms. Regional countries as well as the Arab world have been carefully engaging with the Afghan interim government. Therefore, India does not want to be seen as ‘strategically excluded’ from Afghanistan.
Secondly, soon after Kabul fell, the Indian media and opposition parties tried to portray the victory of the Afghan Taliban as a “victory of Pakistan”. The Indian Opposition criticised Narendra Modi’s Afghanistan policy.
Moreover, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has been criticised for its weak neighbourhood policy due back-to-back setbacks in the Maldives and Bangladesh. Re-engagement with the Afghan Taliban is partly an attempt of the Modi government to silence critics on his Afghanistan policy.
Third, there are significant economic considerations that have pushed New Delhi closer to the Taliban. Prior to the fall of Kabul, India was carrying out around $3 billion infrastructure and energy projects in Afghanistan.
Soon after the Taliban takeover, Indian engineers abandoned the projects and diplomatic staff as well other officials vacated diplomatic premises primarily due to security concerns. India might be interested in resuming those activities.
Moreover, lithium has become an in-demand commodity for the world. There are several studies that have projected the potential of Afghanistan’s minerals at more than $1 trillion.
The major mineral resources include chromium, copper, gold, iron ore, lead and zinc, lithium, marble, precious and semiprecious stones, among others. Already, the BJP-led NDA government has been pushing for production of electric vehicles in India.
Many Western firms have been setting up businesses in India for this reason. Lithium will be required for the batteries of electric vehicles.
Hence, Afghanistan can fulfil India’s demand for these critical minerals through Iran’s Chabahar port.
However, there are limitations to New Delhi’s engagement with the Afghan Taliban government. For instance, there is no possibility in near future that India might break with international and regional consensus regarding the Taliban’s policies, especially their policies related to girls’ education and women’s rights.
Officials as well as the Indian strategic community and civil society have consistently criticised and raised concerns about the Taliban’s decisions related to girls’ education, women in the workforce and exclusion of ethnic minorities in the government.
Hence, Modi’s government will not take any drastic steps, including de jure recognition of the Afghan Taliban. Therefore, despite its political and economic engagement with Kabul, New Delhi will continue to voice its concerns about the Afghan Taliban’s policies towards women, girls’ education and ethnic minorities.
Also, India will have a muted role in the domestic political affairs of Afghanistan. For instance, despite having cordial relationship with the Tajik and Uzbek leadership prior to the fall of Kabul, New Delhi has shown no enthusiasm to play a reconciliatory role between the Afghan Taliban and Afghan ethnic minorities.
At best, India can enhance its diplomatic staff in numbers as well as appoint a charge d’affaires in Kabul. Moreover, India will likely allow Taliban officials to operate Afghanistan’s embassy in New Delhi.
Similarly, Delhi-Kabul cooperation could lead to enhancing issuance of visas for Afghan students and patients. New Delhi can also restart development activities which were abandoned due to the fall of the Ghani administration.
India is also pushing the Taliban interim government to use Chabahar port as an alternative to Karachi port to reduce Kabul’s reliance on Islamabad. Strategically, it is logical for India to increase Afghanistan’s stakes in Chabahar, as higher stakes will compel the Afghan Taliban to provide security to Indian goods passing through Afghanistan to Central Asia.
It is New Delhi’s long-term desire to develop sustainable access to Central Asia for its trade activities. Similarly, India has echoed condemnation of Pakistani airstrikes in Afghanistan, a gesture which will further embolden the Afghan Taliban to resist Islamabad’s pressure to take action against the TTP.
It seems India – despite remaining cautious – has decided to abandon its previous approach of limited engagement with the Afghan Taliban. For the past three years, Indian emphasis has been on humanitarian assistance.
However, New Delhi seems quite eager to expand its bilateral cooperation with the Afghan Taliban based on its strategic, economic and political considerations.
The writer is director, India Study Centre, Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.
This article was first published on Dawn.com.
