India has announced that it will join a small group of countries in reopening its embassy in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, as part of a rapid and controversial upgrade in its dealings with the Islamist group’s regime.
India is hosting the Taliban’s de facto foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, for a landmark visit to New Delhi, and Muttaqi held meetings with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday.
Mr Jaishankar announced that India’s embassy, closed after the group seized power in Kabul in August 2021, would reopen. India had launched a downgraded “technical mission” in Kabul earlier in June 2022.
“India is fully committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Afghanistan,” Mr Jaishankar said in his opening remarks in New Delhi as he hosted the senior Taliban leader. “Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience.”
Mr Muttaqi is one of a number of Taliban leaders facing UN sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, and his visit to Delhi had to be specially approved by the UN Security Council. That process delayed his six-day visit to India, which was originally scheduled for August this year.
He was first sanctioned by the UN in 2001 over the abuses committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan during the hardline Islamist group’s previous rule in the 1990s.
The UN General Assembly has not recognised the legitimacy of the Taliban’s administration in Afghanistan, but around a dozen countries have embassies operating in Kabul, including China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. Only Russia has formally recognised the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan.
Western diplomats have said the main roadblock on the Taliban’s path to recognition is its misogynistic policies towards Afghan women, barring them from secondary schools, higher education and most workplaces, and severely limiting their freedoms in public.
Such policies were reflected even during events on Friday in India, with female journalists – high-profile Indian TV correspondents and a reporter for The Independent among them – barred from a press conference given by Mr Muttaqi.
In his opening remarks, Mr Muttaqi referred to ongoing counter-terrorism efforts and said the Taliban administration would not allow anyone to use Afghanistan's territory for targeting other nations.
"We hope that Afghanistan and India, on an official level and in different areas, increase their engagement," he said.
Analysts have suggested India’s engagement with the Taliban reflects a pragmatic approach to dealing with an important regional player, rather than an endorsement of the Islamist group’s policies, as well as a concern that New Delhi could be left behind by Pakistan and China in building new ties with Kabul.
Jayant Prasad, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan told The Independent that reopening the embassy would “allow India to operate better” on a number of fronts.
“This is a welcome step in the direction of India-Afghanistan ties for regional cooperation and was overdue. Given the traditional ties between India and Afghanistan, India has rightly decided to review it’s social and economic partnership,” he said.
Harsh Pant, foreign policy head at India's Observer Research Foundation think-tank, told Reuters: "Engagement does not mean endorsement. There are many things that India is uncomfortable about (under Taliban rule) - minority rights, gender rights, and the human rights landscape in Afghanistan.
“But there is a pragmatism inherent in India's engagement with the Taliban ... And this visit is, in some ways, continuing that tradition. It certainly can be considered the beginning of a new phase in India-Afghanistan relations under the Taliban government, which have been one-directional so far.”
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