As the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of US forces, which triggered the collapse of the Western-backed government in Kabul, India was forced to shut its embassy and hurriedly pull out its diplomats and citizens.
More than four years later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has rolled out a red carpet for an Afghan delegation led by the Taliban administration’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in the capital, New Delhi. The Afghan foreign minister’s weeklong trip – the first official visit by a Taliban leader – is being billed as groundbreaking. Muttaqi, who remains on the United Nations sanctions list, arrived in India after receiving a temporary travel exemption from the world body.
India’s reset with the Taliban, experts say, is part of a policy of pragmatism, as New Delhi aims to counter Pakistani influence in Afghanistan, whose relationship with Pakistan, India’s arch foe, has been strained over cross-border attacks.
Some analysts, however, say India’s hosting of the Taliban leaders gives legitimacy and a de facto recognition to the Taliban administration, which has been struggling to boost its diplomatic legitimacy.
So, why is India embracing the Taliban now? What happened at their meeting – and what is New Delhi expecting from the Taliban? What is in it for the Taliban? ndia started making diplomatic overtures to the Taliban a year after the group’s return to power, re-establishing diplomatic presence in the country, tasked with overseeing the distribution of humanitarian aid. In the past two years, India has allowed the Taliban to quietly take over the Afghan consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Indian officials and diplomats have also held several high-level engagements abroad. In January this year, Muttaqi also met India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. At the same time, Pakistan’s ties with the Taliban have plummeted. Islamabad has accused Afghanistan’s rulers of sheltering armed groups, including the Pakistan Taliban, or TTP, which have carried out dozens of deadly attacks on Pakistani soil in recent years. The Taliban deny those charges.
It is in that changed regional geopolitical landscape that India is welcoming Muttaqi, said analysts. “The costs of avoiding engagement with the Taliban [by ceding a regional ally to Pakistan] in the past compelled the Indian government to strengthen relations with Kabul this time,” said Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group in New Delhi.
“It’s a strategically vital relationship that can’t be ignored on ideological grounds,” Donthi said, referring to the lack of common ground between the conservative Taliban and the Hindu nationalist government in India. “Or left to India’s primary strategic rivals to exploit,” he added, speaking on the Chinese exchanges and investment with Kabul. “The visit demonstrates India’s willingness to rise above ideological concerns and optics and to engage pragmatically with the Taliban,” Donthi told Al Jazeera.
Gautam Mukhopadhaya, a retired Indian diplomat and former ambassador to Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that, unlike the Taliban of the 1990s, when Pakistan wielded complete control over it, regional dynamics have changed. “The new Taliban is slightly more worldwide [in its overview] and more savvy. And they have to see the larger interests of Afghanistan,” said Mukhopadhaya.
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