Amir Khan Muttaqi, Afghanistan’s acting foreign minister, has recently had an unusually busy schedule with an unrecognized government.
He has hosted his counterpart from Pakistan, spoken on the phone with India’s foreign minister, and jetted to Iran and China. He also had a second encounter with the Pakistani foreign minister in Beijing. He joined Pakistani and Chinese delegations for trilateral discussions on Wednesday.
This, even though the ruling Taliban have historically had tense relations with most of these countries, and currently have taut ties with Pakistan, a one-time ally with whom trust is at an all-time low.
Analysts claim that this diplomatic overdrive suggests that the movement is far from a pariah on the global stage even though neither the UN nor any of its member states formally acknowledge the Taliban.
Why, then, are several nations in the Afghan region preparing to negotiate diplomatically with the Taliban while avoiding formal recognition?
We unpack the Taliban’s latest high-level regional engagements and look at why India, Pakistan and Iran are all trying to befriend Afghanistan’s rulers, four years after they marched on Kabul and grabbed power.
In recent weeks, who did Muttaqi meet or speak with?
A timeline of recent diplomatic contacts between Afghanistan and the United States:
- April 19: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar travels with a high-level delegation to Kabul to meet Muttaqi and other Afghan officials. According to a statement from the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the two sides had a discussion over Pakistan’s continued diplomatic relations with Afghan refugees.
- On the eve of India’s attack on Pakistan, which led to four days of missile and drone attacks between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, Dar and Muttaqi spoke once more on May 6. The exchange of fire took place after India accused Pakistan of being involved in the April 22 Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 26 people dead.
- S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, and Muttaqi speak in a phone conversation on May 15 to thank the Taliban for their support of the Pahalgam attacks.
- May 17: Muttaqi travels to Tehran, where he meets with President Massoud Pazeshkian and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi for the Tehran Dialogue Forum.
- May 21: Muttaqi visits Beijing. In an effort to boost trade and security between Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China, trilateral discussions are ongoing.
Suhail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Qatar, described the organization as a “reality of today’s Afghanistan” because it “controls all of the country’s territory and borders.”
“The regional countries know this fact and, as such, they engage with the Islamic Emirate at various levels, which is a pragmatic and rational approach in my view”, he told Al Jazeera, referring to the name by which the Taliban refers to the current Afghan state.
He continued, arguing that formal recognition of the Taliban government “must not be further delayed.” “We believe that we can find solutions to problems through engagement,” he continued.
Our region should adhere to the statement, “Our region has its own goals and interests.”
Why is India warming up to the Taliban?
It’s a unlikely partnership. The Indian government refused to cooperate with the Afghan group during its initial rule, which was then only recognized by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
India, which had supported the earlier Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah, shut down its embassy in Kabul once the Taliban came to power: It viewed the Taliban as a proxy of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which had supported the mujahideen against Moscow.
Instead, New Delhi backed the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban opposition group.
India reopened its Kabul embassy in 2001 following the Taliban’s defeat, and the country invested more than $3 billion in projects in infrastructure, health, education, and water, according to its Ministry of External Affairs.
However, the Taliban and its allies, including the Haqqani group, have frequently launched deadly attacks on the country’s embassy and consulates.
New Delhi evacuated its embassy and once more refused to acknowledge the group after the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. However, unlike during the Taliban’s first stint in power, India built diplomatic contacts with the group – first behind closed doors, then, increasingly, publicly.
According to analysts, India understood that its regional rival, Pakistan, had given in to its own influence in Afghanistan by refusing to engage with the Taliban earlier.
India reopened its embassy in Kabul in June 2022, less than a year after the Taliban’s return to power, by putting together a team of “technical experts” to oversee it. In November 2024, the Taliban appointed an acting consul at the Afghan consulate in Mumbai.
Then, in January, Muttaqi and Vikram Misri, both Indian Foreign Ministers, flew to Dubai for a meeting, marking the highest level of direct contact between New Delhi and the Taliban thus far.
The New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation’s deputy director, Kabir Taneja, claims that India was never going to have a choice if it didn’t deal with “whatever political reality sets in Kabul.”
“No one is pleased per se that the reality is the Taliban”, Taneja told Al Jazeera. Since the Taliban took control, India’s “decades-long” efforts to foster goodwill with the Afghan people have not been completely undone.
The Darul Uloom Deoband seminary, which is the Taliban’s ideological center, is located in India, he added. “These are ties with the country and its actors that cannot be vanquished, and have to be dealt with realistically and practically”, he added.
What is the calculus of Pakistan?
Pakistan, one of the Taliban’s most prominent supporters, saw its relationship with the organization decline recently.
Since the Taliban’s takeover in 2021, Pakistan has seen a surge in violent attacks, which Islamabad attributes to armed groups, such as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Pakistan denies that the Taliban government has any right to keep them in Afghanistan and that the TTP has access to Afghan territory.
The Pakistan Taliban, which first emerged in 2007 as part of the US-led “war on terror,” has for a while long violently upheld Islamabad’s authority. Though distinct from the Afghan Taliban, the two are seen as ideologically aligned.
Rabia Akhtar, director of the University of Lahore’s Center for Security, Strategy, and Policy Research, claims that Dar’s visit to Kabul and subsequent communication with Muttaqi represent a “tactical, ad hoc thaw” rather than a significant change in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.
Islamabad became more and more concerned about the possibility that New Delhi might use its territory against Pakistan during the recent India-Pakistan crisis, she suggested.  , “This has increased Islamabad’s urgency to secure its western border”, Akhtar told Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s earlier this year decision to expel Afghan refugees, many of whom have lived there their entire lives, and frequent border closures that cause disruption to trade are also sources of tension in the relationship.
According to Akhtar, the refugees question may be a significant factor in how international relations develop in the future.
“While Pakistan has pushed for repatriation of undocumented Afghans, Kabul views such deportations as punitive”, she said. That’s a good sign if the dialogue shows that both sides are aware that conflict is unsustainable, especially in the face of shifting regional patterns and economic pressures.
A “blame game,” according to Shaheen of the Taliban, is not in anyone’s interests, and Kabul wants good relations with Islamabad to be “reciprocated.”
“We have taken practical steps as far as it concerns us”, he said, noting that Afghanistan had started building checkpoints “along the line adjacent to Pakistan in order to prevent any one from crossing”.
Their security forces are in charge of their internal security, not us, they say.
At the trilateral talks in Beijing on Wednesday, China claimed that Islamabad and Kabul had agreed in principle to improve diplomatic ties and that they would send their respective ambassadors as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, Akhtar does not expect the “core mistrust” between the two neighbours, particularly over alleged TTP sanctuaries, to “go away any time soon”.
Instead of focusing on structural reconciliation, Akhtar argued, “We should look at this shift as part of Pakistan’s broader crisis management system after the India-Pak crisis.”
What do Iran’s ties to the Taliban demand?
Like India, Tehran refused to recognise the Taliban when it was first in power, while backing the Northern Alliance, especially after the 1998 killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif by Taliban fighters.
On its eastern border, Iran amassed tens of thousands of soldiers, almost waging a war with the Taliban.
Iran was said to be quietly engaging with the Taliban and offering only limited assistance in an effort to counteract American influence and defend its own strategic interests in the wake of the US’s extensive military presence in the region following 9/11.
Since the Taliban took back reins of the country nearly four years ago, Iran again showed willingness to build ties with rulers in Kabul on a number of security, humanitarian and trade-related matters, analysts say.
According to Shaheen, the Taliban’s representative in Doha, both Iran and India previously believed the organization to be “under the influence of Pakistan.”
They now realize that this is not the case. In view of this ground reality, they have adopted a new realistic and pragmatic approach, which is good for everyone”, he said.
The meeting between Muttaqi and Pezeshkian, according to Ibraheem Bahiss, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, doesn’t “signify an imminent official recognition.” Given its “key interests” in Afghanistan, he claimed, “pragmatic considerations” have prompted Iran to engage with the Taliban.
“Security-wise, Tehran wants allies in containing the ISIS]ISIL] local chapter. He told Al Jazeera that Tehran has also been trying to improve trade relations with Afghanistan, which is currently one of its major trading partners.
At least 94 people were killed in the twin suicide bombings in Kerman in January 2024, making it one of Iran’s deadliest attacks in decades. The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), an Afghanistan-based offshoot of ISIL, claimed responsibility.
ISKP has carried out numerous high-profile attacks throughout Afghanistan in response to the Taliban’s rule in recent years.
In addition to the “transboundary water flowing from the Helmand River,” Bahiss added that Tehran also needed a “willing partner” to deal with Iran’s estimated 780, 000 Afghan refugees.
In May 2023, tensions between the two neighbours flared, leading to border clashes in which two Iranian border guards and one Taliban fighter were killed.
Source: Aljazeera
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