Naturality is thawing Indo-Afghan freeze

Recent engagements with the Taliban signal a strategic recalibration, challenging old norms

Indian diplomats seldom engage with officials from unrecognised regimes unless there are compelling reasons. Recently, top Indian officials from the Ministry of External Affairs’ Pak-Afghanistan-Iran desk met the ‘foreign minister’ of Afghanistan’s unrecognised Taliban government, Amir Khan Muttaqui, in Kabul. Although no government in the world formally recognises the Taliban regime in Kabul, many, like China and Pakistan, paradoxically engage with it transactionally and go as far as sending and accepting the credentials of ambassadors.

What made Delhi’s rapprochement with Taliban slower than Islamabad or Beijing? Was it its perceived proximity to the earlier non-Taliban regimes of Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai and to the rival forces of the erstwhile Northern Alliance? In 2021, Pakistan swiftly engaged with the Taliban when its then spy-master, DG-ISI, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed (sacked later), dashed to Kabul for a surreal ‘tea’ meeting just after the city’s fall to the Taliban and three days before the formation of the Taliban government. Optics were telling of the leverage and accommodation that the Pakistani ‘establishment’ enjoyed with the Taliban then. The duplicitous role of Pakistan in the ‘War on Terror’ had riled many, but brazenly celebrating the victory of the Taliban over abandoning US troops was vindication of Islamabad’s worst-kept secret.

However, duplicity is a double-edged sword, and the Taliban soon realised Pakistan’s barely concealed aspiration for ‘Strategic Depth’ in Afghanistan. It wasn’t to be a cakewalk for the Pakistanis in the historic ‘graveyard of empires’, as the Taliban started asserting its own voice and will. Remaining beholden to Pakistan (or to any other foreign force) would have been an anathema to any Afghan regime (let alone the Taliban) that sought moral legitimacy in the eyes of its proud natives.

Secondly, the fact that the Taliban itself is not a monolithic entity but a conjoining of various militias, based on ethnicities, tribes, or regions, compounded woes in attempting to control Pakistan. The fact that Pakistan attempted to weigh in favour of certain forces like the Haqqani Network (at least initially) at the cost of other factions made many within the Taliban suspicious of Islamabad’s interference.

Thirdly, internal turmoil in Pakistan, including the ousting of then Prime Minister Imran Khan at the behest of the Pakistani military, signalled a completely new governance instinct that shunned religious extremist forces. Those in the Pakistani ‘Uniform’, like the infamous DG-ISI, Lt Gen Faiz Hameed, were forced into early retirement.

Subsequently, the facade of ‘brotherly relations’ between Pakistan and Afghanistan dissolved, and the Durand Line, which demarcated the unrecognised Pak-Af border, suddenly became ‘active’. For Islamabad, cross-border hostility and bloodshed shifted from the Line of Control (LoC) to the Durand Line.

In 2023, Islamabad-based institution CRSS reported an unprecedented 789 terror attacks and counter-terror operations in Pakistan, killing almost 1,000 civilians and Pakistani military personnel. Most of these attacks were from forces based in Afghan soil, i.e., Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Daish (Islamic State of Khorasan), etc., and the Afghan Taliban authorities tellingly refused to act against the same. It almost seemed that the Taliban government in Kabul was tactically using these forces against Islamabad as a counter-leverage.

Tensions mounted when Pakistan decided to react with forced repatriation of Afghan refugees (supposedly without proper paperwork), based in Pakistani soil. A no-holds-barred barrage of accusations, incidents, and words further deteriorated the situation. The Taliban was clearly out of the clutches of the Pakistani military and sought a new narrative that no longer warranted toeing the Pakistani line.

In contrast, India enjoyed widespread goodwill in the Afghan societal imagination, unlike its reputation as a meddlesome neighbour in Pakistan. However, the underlying co-religiosity, genealogical rationality, and topical support afforded to the Taliban in the initial days had ensured a circumstantial and logical preference towards Pakistan earlier. Not anymore. Even the subtle presence of important non-Taliban leaders like former Afghan President Hamid Karzai or the CEO Abdullah Abdullah (whose politics was always wary of Pakistan) acted positively for Delhi post-the settlement of the brouhaha surrounding the Taliban takeover. Additionally, a cash-strapped and economically desperate Pakistan is in no position to support Afghanistan financially or materially, and the Taliban realise the futility of pandering to Pakistan’s whims. The Taliban government desperately needs financial and even diplomatic support in ‘normalising’ its presence on the world stage, and here, Delhi makes more sense. The outreach to Delhi would also have the tacit support of almost all Afghan civilians (with all diversities), a sentiment historically denied to Pakistan.

Strategically, beyond the social acceptance and plausible largesse/investments from India, Delhi also offers the ‘pariahized’ Taliban the only realistic option to thaw equations with the West. All other options in terms of invoking other neighbours like China, Iran, or Central Asian ‘Khanates’ come with their own dissonances with the West; it is only India that can act as a bridge with the ‘Free World’.

India too would have its own strategic aspiration of breaking the regional stranglehold with friendly regimes in Afghanistan and Iran surrounding its traditional nemesis, Pakistan. The India-funded Chabahar port in Iran, which potentially uplinks directly with Afghanistan (and with other Central Asian countries), exemplifies the latent geostrategic win-wins in the equation. An understanding regime in Kabul also augurs well for India’s Kashmir affairs, which were once subject to foreign mercenaries from across borders. Historically, Afghanistan has been subjected to many ‘Great Games’ by foreign powers, and that sense subliminally rankles the Afghan pride; today, it is the belief of the Afghans that Pakistan is the intrusive foreign power that needs to be check-mated. Therefore, Indo-Afghan bonhomie, even under the Taliban, is only natural, and the ensuing proceedings testify to the same.