India steps up engagement with Taliban

FILE – A cyclist pedals past the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi, Sept. 30, 2023. At a meeting last week, India agreed to consider engaging in development projects in Afghanistan and provide more support to the health sector and refugee rehabilitation.
VOICE OF AMERICA | Published January 16, 2025

Before the Taliban takeover in 2021, India was the largest regional provider of development aid to Kabul and had invested about $3 billion in projects that included schools, roads, dams and hospitals. Many of those projects had stalled after the Taliban takeover. Some could restart, analysts say.

“The Indian goal is to protect the good things India has done over the decades, and renew its developmental activities,” said Chintamani Mahapatra, founder of the Kalinga Institute of Indo Pacific Studies in New Delhi. “Afghanistan is a very important country for us, so India is interested in engaging the Taliban rather than isolating it, no matter who is in the seat of power. And to achieve stability, there needs to be a modicum of economic development.”

Both sides also agreed to promote the use of Iran’s Chabahar port for supporting trade and commercial activities – the port, which India is helping develop, is seen as crucial for both sides. India wants to strengthen connectivity via Afghanistan and Iran to Central Asia which it cannot access directly by land due to Pakistan’s refusal of transit rights. For landlocked Afghanistan, which has to rely heavily on Pakistani land routes and seaports to conduct trade, the Chabahar port provides an alternate route.

The Taliban also has urged New Delhi to issue visas to Afghan businessmen, patients and students — a process that virtually halted after its takeover because of the closure of Indian consulates, security concerns and because India, like most countries, does not officially recognize the Taliban. But New Delhi will take a calibrated approach toward potential visitors from Afghanistan, according to analyst Sareen.

“India is not ready to open the floodgates for Afghans coming into India. New Delhi will remain cautious, but it will continue to deepen the engagement. Because while India has reservations on some aspects of the Taliban’s policies towards women and its ideology, realism is guiding Indian policy. After all, it cannot pretend that Afghanistan does not exist anymore. We are virtually their next door neighbors,” Sareen said.

India’s decision to build ties with the Taliban at a time when countries like Russia and China are strengthening relations with Kabul, is likely to find support in countries like the United States.

“As the U.S. contemplates how to approach the Taliban when it comes to sensitive but pressing issues, from Americans still being held captive in Afghanistan to concerns about Islamic State terrorism, it will likely find it useful that a key US partner has decided to opt for the path of engagement,” Kugelman said.

 

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SOURCE: www.voanews.com

RELATED: Pakistan watches with caution as old ally Taliban gets closer to India

While some analysts say Pakistan need not worry, others warn that Indian influence in Afghanistan could further strain Islamabad’s ties with Kabul amid existing tensions.

Pakistan launched two air raids inside Afghan territory in 2024, claiming to target hideouts of Pakistan Taliban, which it says is given shelter by the Afghan government [File: Mohammad Zubair/AP Photo]
AL JAZEERA | Published January 16, 2025

Islamabad, Pakistan – When the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021, then-Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan famously said the Afghan group had “broken the shackles of slavery” as they returned to power for the first time since 2001.

Taliban’s ascension was seen as a boost to the regional influence of Pakistan, long regarded as the patron of the Afghan group in pursuit of “strategic depth” for Islamabad.

This doctrine reflected Pakistan’s military interest in maintaining a strategic hold over Afghanistan through the Taliban and using it as leverage against India, its traditional adversary.

Three years later, that calculation appears to have flopped, instead leaving Pakistan’s officials fuming at ties with Kabul even as the Taliban edges closer to an unlikely partner: India.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai last week, marking the highest-profile public engagement between New Delhi and the Taliban. That meeting followed a series of steps taken by both sides that suggest a dramatic break from a quarter century of animus and distrust rooted in Pakistan’s support of the Taliban.

If this shift leads to an expansion of Indian influence in Afghanistan, that could strain Islamabad-Kabul ties, warned Iftikhar Firdous, co-founder of The Khorasan Diary, a portal tracking regional security issues. “Ultimately, the Afghan people, reliant on Pakistan’s borders, will bear the brunt of this tug-of-war,” he told Al Jazeera.

Old friend, new partner

From the 1980s when it backed the mujahideen against the Soviet Union through the first two decades of the 21st century, Pakistan was a primary backer of the Taliban, many of whose leaders found shelter on Pakistani soil.

India, by contrast, viewed the group as a Pakistani proxy, shuttering its embassy in Kabul after the Taliban first came to power in Afghanistan in 1996. It blamed the Taliban and its current allies in the government, including the Haqqanis, for repeatedly attacking Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan — the embassy in 2008 and 2009, and the Indian consulates in Jalalabad in 2013, Herat in 2014 and Mazar-i-Sharif in 2015.

Yet, a decade later, those equations no longer stand.

December 2024 saw Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanging strikes on each other’s territories, as Pakistan faced its deadliest year of violence, particularly against its law enforcement, since 2016. Pakistan said it was targeting Afghan bases of the Pakistan Taliban armed group, known by the acronym TTP, which Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of harbouring.

Meanwhile, India appeared to have recalibrated its approach, engaging diplomatically with Taliban officials.

The first significant meeting took place in Kabul in November 2024, when JP Singh, joint secretary of India’s Ministry of External Affairs overseeing the Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran desk, met acting Afghan Defence Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob.

 

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SOURCE: www.aljazeera.com

 

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