It’s a seismic shift. Foreign minister of Afghanistan Mawlawi Muttaqi’s visit to India points to a diplomatic thaw that’s shaking up South Asia’s fragile fault lines. More on the how and why of it in just a bit but first a quick word about the man at the centre of it all. Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi is the Taliban’s acting foreign minister. Mawlawi is a title; it means an Islamic scholar of repute. Born in 1970 in Afghanistan’s dusty Helmand province, Muttaqi cut his teeth as a young Jihadi fighting the Soviets in the 1980s. He fled to Pakistan as a refugee; steeped himself in religious studies.
In October 1996, following the Taliban’s conquest of Kabul, he became the Acting Minister of Information and Culture and the official spokesperson for the group. He went on to hold the portfolio of Education Minister in 2000. Today, he’s the face of a regime that’s desperate for legitimacy. He is one of several Taliban leaders who is under U.N. sanctions. There’s a travel ban against him and his known assets are frozen.
So, how did this visit come about? And why is it being called unprecedented? On 30th September, the U.N. Security Council’s Taliban Sanctions Committee, chaired by Pakistan no less, granted Muttaqi a rare exemption. It enabled him to visit India from 9th to 16th October. No Taliban leader had set foot in India since the group recaptured Kabul on 15th August 2021. So, Muttaqi is the first top Taliban minister to visit New Delhi for talks that could, potentially, rewrite the neighbourhood’s rulebook.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Mawlawi Muttaqi in person for the first time on 10th October. Towards the end of their talks, India announced its decision to further deepen its engagement in development cooperation projects, particularly in the sectors of healthcare, public infrastructure and capacity-building. India also announced the delivery of food supplies to those affected by the recent earthquake. For his part, Minister Jaishankar handed over five ambulances to the visiting Afghan minister. This was part of a larger gift of 20 ambulances and other medical equipment that India has decided to send to Kabul as a gesture of goodwill. For his part, Mawlawi Muttaqi invited Indian companies to invest in the mining sector.
Minister Jaishankar had one other announcement to make. “India is fully committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Afghanistan. Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience. To enhance that, I am pleased to announce today the upgrading of India’s Technical Mission in Kabul to the status of Embassy of India,” he told his guest.
So does the decision to re-open the embassy mean that India recognises the Taliban Government or is on course to recognising it? Yes, says Dilip Sinha, a former Indian ambassador. As of today, India is among the more-than-a-dozen countries that have either decided to re-open, or have already re-opened, their embassy in Kabul. The list includes China, Pakistan, the U.A.E., Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran, among others. But only Russia has formally recognised the Taliban Government so far a step it took in July this year, by accepting the credentials of a Taliban-appointed ambassador and updating the Afghan Embassy’s flag in Moscow.
As Kabul warms to New Delhi, Islamabad’s alliance with the Taliban is cracking like parched earth. And what a turnaround it has been! In September 2021, the then I.S.I. chief Faiz Hameed made a triumphant visit to Kabul after the Taliban seized Afghanistan. After all, Pakistan’s spy agency and its ideological fellow traveller, the Taliban, go back a long way. In fact, the Haqqani Network, a close Pakistani ally and a part of the Taliban, was the first to enter Kabul on 15 August 2021 the day Kabul fell. Hameed was seen sipping tea in the foyer of a five-star hotel in the Afghan capital. He also interacted, briefly, with a Western journalist. “‘Don’t worry, everything will be okay,” he told the journalist. But everything was not O.K. Cut to February 2023: Hameed’s successor, Nadeem Anjum, returned to Kabul, this time with Defence Minister Khawaja Asif in tow.
The mood was far from celebratory because, apparently, the Taliban was no longer doing Pakistan’s bidding! And that’s something the Generals in Rawalpindi, who use Afghanistan for strategic depth and treat the Taliban as their proxy, simply could not digest. What hurt them was that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (T.T.P.), which fought alongside the Taliban against the U.S.-backed NATO forces in Afghanistan, was now turning on Pakistan. Clearly, chickens had come home to roost for a Pakistan that has become the epicentre of terrorism.
What hurt the Pakistani Generals even more was that the Taliban was not persuading or prevailing upon the T.T.P. to stop its attacks inside Pakistan, especially after the T.T.P. called off a ceasefire on 28 November 2022. Adding to their woes, all this was happening at a time when Pakistan’s economy is fragile and the country remains dependent on foreign aid. Adding insult to injury for Pakistan, Taliban’s Defence Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob was publicly leading efforts to build relations with India, including urging the Indian Government to train Taliban forces.
A miffed Pakistani Government retaliated by deporting more than 3 million Afghan migrants and refugees. (The issue found mention in Minister Jaishankar’s remarks to Mawlawi Muttaqi. Jaishankar said: “The plight of forcibly repatriated Afghan refugees is a matter of deep concern. Their dignity and livelihood is important. India agrees to help construct residences for them and continue providing material aid to rebuild their lives.”
Another outstanding issue, which lies at the heart of the Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions, is the Durand Line the de facto border that British colonial rulers drew in 1893. No Afghan Government has recognised or accepted the 2,640-kilometre-long Durand Line as the border. In fact, the Taliban calls it a “colonial wound” dividing the Pashtuns who live on either side of the Durand Line.
The relationship between Taliban and Pakistan has worsened so dramatically that on 9th October, Pakistan bombed Kabul. The timing of the aerial attack coincided with Muttaqi’s maiden visit to India. An Indian analyst Brahma Chellaney says that Pakistan’s bombing of targets in Afghanistan exposes Islamabad’s desperation to reassert control over a regime slipping from its grip.
Mawlawi Muttaqi had a word of advice for Pakistan: “Let other countries also act against such terror groups like Afghanistan did for peace.” He said that the Taliban has wiped out terrorist groups such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in the last four years and that the Afghanistan against which the Taliban fought has transformed.
Clearly, the rapprochement between India and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has touched a raw nerve in Pakistan.
