India engages with Taliban’s government despite non-recognition

New Delhi: A representative of New Delhi on Monday attended a meeting convened by the Foreign Minister of Taliban’s so-called government in Afghanistan, Amir Khan Muttaqi, although India, like most of the other nations, did not recognise the administration that the Sunni Islamist militant outfit set up in Kabul after taking over the war-torn nation in August 2021.

Muttaqi convened and chaired a meeting of the representatives of India, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan in Kabul. The meeting focussed on promoting regional cooperation initiatives, particularly aimed at expanding “constructive engagement” between the Taliban government in Afghanistan and regional neighbours.

An official of the Government of India represented New Delhi in the meeting.

New Delhi had shut down the Embassy of India in Kabul when the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996. The gun-toting militants had not found any Indian when they had raided and ransacked the Embassy of India in Kabul after executing the former Afghan President Mohammad Najibullah and hanging his body from a traffic light pole. But after the Sunni Islamist militia had returned to power in Kabul on August 15, 2021, taking advantage of the withdrawal of the US-led International Security Assistance Force, New Delhi had evacuated its envoy and diplomats from Afghanistan within 48 hours but had not formally shut down its embassy in Kabul and thus avoided severing diplomatic relations between the two nations.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had instead sought to build upon its back-channel contacts over the previous years with a section of the leadership of the Taliban. Stanekzai, who then headed the Taliban’s political office in Doha, had met Deepak Mittal, New Delhi’s envoy in the capital of Qatar, on August 31, 2021.

Less than a year after its first public engagement with the militia, New Delhi in June 2022 sent a delegation led by a senior diplomat for a meeting with Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of the Taliban’s government in the capital of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, India had also started sending foodgrains and other essentials for the starving people of Afghanistan. A “technical team” had been deployed in New Delhi’s diplomatic mission in Kabul soon to “closely monitor and coordinate the efforts of various stakeholders for the effective delivery of India’s humanitarian assistance to the people” of Afghanistan.

India, like the US and most of the other nations, has not yet recognised the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan set up by the Taliban in September 2021. But its outreach to the Taliban is apparently aimed at stopping Pakistan and its “all-weather iron-brother” China from turning the Sunni Islamist group’s return to power in Afghanistan into a strategic advantage against India.