In life, they say keep your friends close, and enemies closer. However, in politics what do you do with former friends of the enemies? The layered world of diplomacy requires that you keep them the closest and keep an eye out.
India’s latest diplomatic outreach to Afghanistan's Taliban has ruffled many feathers in the region and set off divisive opinions. While good relations with neighbours is an admirable move, in India’s case, is it an advisable one?
In the beginning of January, India’s foreign secretary Vikram Misri met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai.
Notably, this has been the highest level of engagement between the two since Kabul’s fall. The Taliban government expressed hope and interest in further strengthening ties with India and called it, “a significant regional and economic power.”
What’s in it for India?
Among other things, the key discussion included agreeing to promote the use of the Iranian port of Chabahar for trade. Leveraging Iran’s Chabahar port will allow India to bypass Pakistan’s Karachi and Gwadar ports.
There’s another loss that India partially aims to offset by taking things further with the Taliban. When Kabul fell to the Taliban, two decades of investment made by India in Afghanistan's democracy via military training, infrastructural projects and human resource development were nullified.
The collapse not only eroded India’s foothold but also made inroads into India’s regional rivals China and Pakistan, thereby raising new security concerns and threats. But for India, any new diplomatic engagement with the Taliban is a chance at flipping the coin back on its head.
In 2023, India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament that India had invested more than $3 billion in over 500 projects across Afghanistan, including buildings, roads, its Parliament, power lines, dams, and hospitals and awarded thousands of scholarships to students.
This is apart from the military training programs. Any outreach by India is an attempt at retrieving some of this investment made as a humanitarian donor.
Taliban’s equation with Pakistan
Interestingly, the development comes close on the heels of Kabul’s increasingly deteriorating equation with Pakistan.
A complete departure from just a few years ago when the Taliban shared far deeper ties with Pakistan. Pakistan not just hailed their military victory in August 2021 but enabled and assisted Islamist military organisation for nearly 20 years when it fought the battle against a US-led coalition of 40 countries.
Reportedly, during that period, the Taliban leaders found sanctuary inside Pakistan while many of the Taliban fighters graduated from Pakistani Islamic religious schools. Countering Pakistan seems to be the common factor driving both nations to each other, but should India trust an ally which has turned on its former patron?
This is why the major consequence of strengthening ties with the Taliban is the Taliban itself. An inherently violent actor with close ties to international terror groups, including Pakistan, can undermine India’s interests at times.
Can the Taliban’s history be ignored?
In August 2021, as soon as the US-led foreign troops departed, Taliban insurgents seized power and brought the country back under their rule. However, seizing control of the country and forming a government did not translate into any sort of international acceptance or even acknowledgement.
Any engagement with New Delhi gives the Taliban the international legitimacy it desperately seeks. Notably, no country has formally recognised the Taliban as a bonafide government of Afghanistan, even though up to 40 countries maintain some form of diplomatic engagement with it.
This engagement though is purely driven by security and strategic concerns rather than acceptance of the legitimacy of the Taliban regime.
The United Nations has been relentless and consistent in condemning the Taliban's restrictions on women’s rights, urging the international community, “not to normalise the de facto authorities or their human rights violating regime.”
Last year, the UK statement at the UN Security Council immediately called for The Taliban to “reverse its abhorrent policies against Afghan women and girls.”
But that hasn’t stopped several countries from building diplomatic relations. Among China, Russia and Pakistan, the only three countries that built diplomatic ties with the Taliban, China became the first country to recognise Afghanistan’s envoy to Beijing officially.
Last year in September, the Taliban announced that its administration was in control of 39 Afghan embassies and consulates globally, that is only three years after it took control of Afghanistan.
“Thirty-nine embassies and diplomatic affairs obey the central authority, namely the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” declared the Taliban’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi at a press conference in Kabul.
Amidst the ever-shifting geopolitics, can India be blamed for trying to leverage the Taliban’s rising influence? But the very questionable nature of everything about the Taliban will always hover over India.
Follow us
