Muttaqi’s India visit via Moscow highlights shifting regional alliances

Taliban Foreign Minister's India visit coincides with rising tensions over US demands on Bagram and a Moscow-led consensus opposing foreign military presence in Afghanistan

If India did not delay Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s visit to India forever, as it were, it would have passed off as yet another engagement in the diary of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, even if it was talked about a bit more than the others.

Jaishankar met at least two dozen of his exact counterparts and a few others in foreign governments of similar rank in the last fortnight at multiple locations without any of the buzz and hubbub surrounding Muttaqi’s ongoing visit to India. Some of the Foreign Ministers Jaishankar recently met were far more important and critical for India than Muttaqi. A few were controversial, perhaps not as much as the visitor from Kabul, because Muttaqi straddles many diplomatic grey zones.

Coincidences can have unintended consequences in diplomacy, for better or worse. Muttaqi’s visit to India was not planned to coincide with United States President Donald Trump’s September 18 pronouncement about Bagram military facility that “we want that base back”. Trump warned that “bad things” would happen to Afghanistan if the Taliban did not hand back Bagram.

Muttaqi’s travel to India, which has been in preparation for at least two months, was also not planned to coincide with the ‘Moscow Format’ gathering on Afghanistan, hosted by Russia on October 7. A joint statement after the meeting, approved by 10 participating countries, including India, Pakistan, China, and Iran, appeared to put these countries at odds with Trump on the Bagram issue. ‘They called unacceptable the attempts by countries to deploy their military infrastructure in Afghanistan and neighbouring states’, the joint statement read without naming the US.

One more irritant with Trump is not what India would have wanted at this time of prickly bilateral ties, but Jaishankar could not have asked Muttaqi to postpone his visit at this stage, yet again. As it is, the visit had to overcome hurdles such as obtaining a waiver for Muttaqi’s travel in the face of UN sanctions against him.

While India interminably delayed the first visit by a Taliban Minister after the militia took power in Kabul more than four years ago, it is instructive to look at what India’s competitors for influence in Afghanistan have done.

Nearly two years ago, China’s President Xi Jinping ostentatiously received the credentials of Afghanistan’s ambassador to China, a Taliban representative, Asadullah Bilal Karimi, in no less a venue than Beijing’s famed Great Hall of the People. China is playing cat and mouse with the world over Afghanistan. Despite accepting Karimi’s credentials and letting him occupy Kabul’s old embassy in Beijing, China evades questions about whether it has recognised the Taliban regime. Meanwhile, China’s economic stakes in Afghanistan are flourishing. That is China’s bottom line for Afghanistan.

Another country that is doing the same, but not committing to the international community on formal recognition, is the United Arab Emirates. In August last year, the UAE accepted the credentials of Taliban-nominated ambassador, Badruddin Haqqani. The UAE has leveraged the presence of a Haqqani member of Afghanistan’s powerful warlord network in Abu Dhabi. Taliban’s Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani has had meetings with the UAE’s top leadership in Abu Dhabi, although Haqqani is a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US. Kabul airport is run by a UAE State-owned company. Several other bilateral economic deals have been struck through the Haqqani connection and the UAE’s ever-expanding friendships with Talibanis in important positions.

Much more than the UAE, Qatar and Turkey — all of which have been seeking to get at the economic pie which Taliban can offer — India’s interests in Afghanistan are both business and security. There is no evidence or for that matter any assurance from the Taliban that it has severed its links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed groups which continue to bleed in India through low-intensity terrorist assaults. The UN pointed to these links in a report released shortly after the Taliban regained power in Kabul.

Soon after Taliban took power, India should have elevated its ties with Afghanistan to the same level as its current dealings with Pakistan, short of formal recognition. If India has no problem in maintaining a diplomatic mission in Islamabad and conducting the minimum — but important — exchanges with Pakistan, the same standards should apply to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The latter is doing far less against India in every way than the former. By delaying dealings with Kabul, India has lost four years, during which its competitors stepped into the space vacated by New Delhi.

Russia is the only country to have formally announced its recognition of the Taliban regime. It is more than symbolic that Muttaqi’s path to India this week was via Moscow. His visit is an opportunity to see how much more India can do in Afghanistan and prepare the ground to advance this during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India later this year. 

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)