First Indian team in Afghanistan since Taliban’s return

With a senior Indian diplomat meeting the Foreign Minister of the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan in Kabul on Thursday, India has shed its inhibitions about public engagements with the militia, which returned to power in August 2021.

J P Singh, a joint secretary at the headquarters of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in New Delhi, met Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Afghan foreign minister. Singh is leading a delegation of the Government of India and will meet other leaders of the Taliban during the tour to Kabul.

This is the first time New Delhi has sent a delegation to Kabul after the Taliban returned to power.

“The meeting focused on diplomatic relations, bilateral trade & (and) humanitarian aid,” Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan, stated in Kabul.

Arindam Bagchi, the MEA spokesperson, however, told journalists in New Delhi that the government had sent the delegation to oversee “delivery operations” of India’s “humanitarian assistance”.

Balkhi said India had agreed to help Afghanistan increase its exports and strengthen its economy. He also said the meeting between Singh and Muttaqi had also seen both sides agreeing to expand interactions between the two countries.

Bagchi in New Delhi, however, declined to confirm if India was planning to permanently post its diplomats and other officials at its embassy in Kabul.

New Delhi had evacuated its envoy to Afghanistan, Rudrendra Tandon, and 175 other officials posted in the Embassy of India in Kabul on August 17, 2021 – two days after the government led by President Ashraf Ghani collapsed in the wake of a swift military campaign by the Taliban.

India had also evacuated its officials posted in its consulates in other cities in Afghanistan in the weeks before the country was taken over by the Taliban.

“However, local staff (appointed by the Embassy of India in Kabul and consulates in other cities in Afghanistan, have continued to function and ensure proper maintenance and upkeep of our premises there and have also been assisting in the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” said Bagchi.

Singh’s meeting with Muttaqi in Kabul on Thursday was New Delhi’s second publicly acknowledged engagement with the leaders of the Taliban. New Delhi’s envoy to Doha, Deepak Mittal, had earlier held a meeting with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban’s political office in the capital of Qatar, on August 31, 2021.

New Delhi, however, has been having back-channel contacts with the Taliban over the past few years as it had anticipated that the Sunni Islamist militia could eventually return to the governance structure in Kabul after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus giving its mentor Pakistan a strategic edge against India.