India to join talks with Taliban in Russia

India had sent its ambassador to Qatar to attend the ceremony that marked the signing of the US-Taliban deal in Doha in February 2020

A senior diplomat of India will join representatives from China, Pakistan and other nations to attend a meeting Russia is organizing with the leaders of the Taliban regime of Afghanistan in Moscow on October 20.

New Delhi has accepted an invitation from the Russian Government to attend the meeting in Moscow. This will be the first such occasion when a serving diplomat of the Government of India will attend a plurilateral meeting with attendance of the leaders of the Taliban, which returned to power in Afghanistan a couple of months back through a swift blitz across the country, taking advantage of the withdrawal of troops by the United States and its NATO allies.

“We have received an invitation for the Moscow format meeting on Afghanistan on October 20th. We will be participating in it,” Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said.

India had sent two retired diplomats to attend a conference hosted by Russian Government in Moscow in 2018. A delegation of Taliban too had attended the conference in the capital of Russia. India had also sent its ambassador to Qatar to attend the ceremony that marked the signing of the US-Taliban deal in Doha in February 2020.

Also Read | Change in authority in Kabul was neither through negotiations, nor inclusive: India at UNSC

New Delhi also had some back-channel engagements with the Taliban over the past few months before the militant organisation returned to power in Kabul. Finally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on August 31 for the first time publicly acknowledged its engagement with the Taliban as New Delhi’s envoy to Doha had a meeting with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the militant organisation’s political office in the capital of Qatar.

Notwithstanding calls from New Delhi and the majority of the international community, the Taliban – guided by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan – on September 8 announced an interim government in Kabul, with hardly any representation of the ethnic communities other than the majority Pashtuns. The new dispensation also had no representation of women and the religious minorities of Afghanistan.

Modi had on September 17 called out the Taliban’s government in Afghanistan for its lack of inclusivity and urged the world community to tread cautiously on legitimising or recognising it.

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