Why is India courting the Taliban now?
According to analysts, the meeting between Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on Wednesday this week in Dubai confirmed India’s plans to increase its influence over the Afghan leadership.
Over the past year, India has gradually stepped up its ties to the Taliban, but this most recent meeting marked the first such high-level interaction.
In addition to regional developments, trade, and humanitarian cooperation, an agreement to resume development projects, and support the health sector and refugees in Afghanistan, are all mentioned in a statement from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
However, what was left out of that statement was what was obvious from the meeting’s schedule and timing, which suggested a shift in the region’s geopolitical realities.
For one, the meeting comes just days after India issued a condemnation of Pakistan’s air attacks , on Afghanistan which have reportedly killed at least 46 people in the last month.
It follows the Taliban’s appointment of an acting consular in Mumbai in November of last year.
The appointment was made in conjunction with India’s joint secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs’ visit to Kabul on the same day, though the Indian government did not have any comments.
The Taliban’s deployment to Mumbai of Ikramuddin Kamil, a former Afghan student in India-turned Taliban diplomat, places India on a growing list of countries, including Russia, China, Turkiye, Iran and Uzbekistan, which have allowed the Taliban to take over operations in Afghan embassies. Earlier, in 2022, India also sent a small technical team to partially reopen its embassy in Kabul.
A strategic shift?
According to observers, these recent events indicate that New Delhi and Kabul are closer to each other.
But the move may not be the strategic shift it appears, said Kabir Taneja, deputy director and fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank. He claimed that it is a natural progression from India’s cautious and drawn-out response to the Taliban’s reality in Kabul since 2021. “Much like other neighbours, for India as well the Taliban is a reality, and ignoring Afghanistan and the Afghan people is not an option”.
Raghav Sharma, associate professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs in New Delhi, agreed. He said, “I think this is a continuation of the earlier policy where we are sort of engaging with the Taliban, but we don’t really want to acknowledge the depth of our engagement,” noting that such discussions have rarely taken place.
“When it comes to diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, we have remained on the periphery”, he added, referring to a study by the Washington Institute, a US think tank that analysed international engagement with the Taliban. According to the study, Qatar, China, and Turkiye are the nations setting the stage for developing ties with the Taliban, with Pakistan, which has the highest level of influence, at number five.
“India is not even there on the list”, Sharma said.
“For the longest time, India has been saying that Afghanistan is a country of strategic importance, and we have had historical ties, but then you’ve got to walk the talk”, Sharma added. “After the fall of the republic government, we put Afghanistan in a cold storage, only addressing it when we needed, on an ad hoc basis”.
Indian reluctance lingers
One positive move which may come out of all this, Taneja said, is the prospect of visas for Afghans. “The main takeaway from Misri-Muttaqi engagement is that India may be close to restarting a tranche of visas for Afghans, specifically in trade, health tourism and education”, he said.
In the wake of the Taliban’s junta in 2021, India was criticized for suspending Afghan visas, including medical and student ones. Since then, it has only issued a small number of Afghan visas. “It is high time New Delhi came around , to do this”, Taneja said. “It will bring relief to many Afghan citizens who had used India as their , preferred , choice for attaining higher education, medical attention, and so on”.
Due to security concerns, Sharma said he had doubts about the possibility of receiving more visas. In the end, he said, “The Taliban are an ideological movement, and their resurgence has resulted in a rise in radicalization, which will be challenging.”
India needs to remain involved in the region, too. It thinks that by keeping the Taliban’s channel open, they can at least help them with some issues that concern India. What leverages do we have in place to deal with the Taliban, and will they be able to deliver? he added.
According to Sharma, the Taliban needed the meeting more than India. The organization is eager to show that it has a wider range of options given that it is engaged in military clashes with Pakistan, a former ally of the Taliban.
“They]the Taliban] want to show]autonomy] to Pakistan particularly. He said, referring to the Taliban’s portrayal in the international arena, which analysts claim has been influenced by the Pakistani military establishment, and that it also helps them play against the larger propaganda that they have no strategic autonomy, no agency, and that they are merely stooges of Pakistan.
Cautious steps or just a lack of strategy?
India might not want to cooperate with the Taliban further for other reasons. Closer ties could put “the world’s largest democracy” in an ethical quagmire, say analysts.
India has long tried to market and claim to be the world’s largest democracy, but it has not even condemned Afghanistan’s girls’ education ban. On these subjects, there hasn’t been a single word spoken. What message do we send to the populace when we return home? Sharma asked.
India has continued to be active in Afghanistan and was one of the first nations to send a diplomatic mission there following the Taliban’s defeat in 2001. However, despite significant interests in the region, India has lacked a coherent policy on the country.
India has always carried out any maneuvers in accordance with other powers, where there has always been a rapprochement of interests. That’s largely been Iran and Russia in the past, and then the Americans”, Sharma said. Following the collapse of the US-backed republic government, India found itself in a new situation.
As many countries around the world quickly moved to adjust to the new reality, India put Afghanistan into “cold storage”, Sharma repeated. He claimed that the US and the Taliban have collaborated on a counterterrorism strategy to combat ISKP. The ISKP (Islamic State of Khorasan Province) is a regional branch of ISIL (ISIS) and has been known to operate within Afghanistan.
At the same time, “countries like Iran that enabled and facilitated the Taliban, even Pakistan, have kept channels of communication open to the opposition”, Sharma added. Ismael Khan and other opposition figures are a part of Iran. The Tajik government, which initially criticized the Taliban, is no longer there, but it still hosts the opposition.
“Putting all of our eggs in the basket of Taliban”
Stakeholders in the area are now weighing the potential impact of the incoming Trump administration on the Taliban.
“Afghanistan has dropped from the political consciousness in Washington, DC”, Taneja said. While the country remains relevant on the security front, it “will not supersede more immediate issues such as Gaza, Iran, and Ukraine”.
What happens next is hard to say, he added. Trump’s tactics resemble weather forecasting on a daily basis. Any Taliban opposition that is attempting to impose itself may find a more approachable ear under Trump than it did under Biden.
Ultimately, despite being the strongest power in the region, India has failed to engage with diverse players in Afghanistan, isolating its interests in the long run. “Initially, we made a mistake of putting all our eggs in the]Hamid] Karzai]former Afghan president] basket and then the]Ashraf] Ghani basket. We also showed our support for Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh.
According to Taneja, fixing this may take time because India may not have a solid understanding of Afghan society.
It’s also about understanding how various sociopolitical setups operate, according to the author. I don’t think India has that understanding which is ironic because we are close to them geographically]and] culturally. Yet we’ve invested very little in terms of trying to understand the society”, he said.
“I believe we are repeating that same mistake, and putting all our eggs in the Taliban basket”, Taneja said, warning that Afghanistan’s political climate has always been very volatile.
Source: Aljazeera
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