Analysts say that the meeting held in Dubai between Indian Foreign Minister Vikram Misri and Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, on Wednesday this week, confirmed India’s intentions to increase its influence with the Afghan leadership.

India has gradually strengthened its relations with the Taliban over the past year, but this latest meeting represents the first high-level engagement of its kind.

India has invested more than $3 billion in aid and reconstruction work in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, and a statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs outlined the usual talking points: regional developments, trade and humanitarian cooperation as well as an agreement to resume development projects. Supporting the health sector and refugees in Afghanistan.

However, it was what was left unsaid in that statement – ​​which was clear from the timing and agenda of that meeting – that signaled a shift in the geopolitical realities in the region.

For one thing, the meeting comes just days after India issued a condemnation of Pakistan’s decision Air attacks in Afghanistan, which reportedly killed at least 46 people last month.

This also comes in the wake of the Taliban appointing an acting consul at the Afghan consulate in Mumbai, in November last year.

While the Indian government did not comment on the appointment, the timing coincided with a visit by the Joint Secretary of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to Kabul in the same month.

The Taliban deployment in Mumbai of Ikramuddin Kamil, a former Afghan student in India turned Taliban diplomat, puts India on a growing list of countries, including Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and Uzbekistan, that have allowed the Taliban to take over operations in Afghanistan. Afghan embassies. Earlier, in 2022, India had also sent a small technical team to partially reopen its embassy in Kabul.

Strategic shift?

Observers say that these recent events indicate deepening relations between New Delhi and Kabul.

But Kabir Taneja, deputy director and fellow of the Observer Research Foundation, an Indian think tank, said the move may not be the strategic shift it seems. “It is just a natural evolution of India’s cautious and prolonged approach to the Taliban reality in Kabul since 2021,” he said. “Just as with our other neighbours, for India, the Taliban is a reality, and ignoring Afghanistan and the Afghan people is not an option.”

Raghav Sharma, an associate professor at the Jindal School of International Affairs in New Delhi, agrees. “I think this is a continuation of the previous policy where we were engaging with the Taliban, but we don’t really want to acknowledge the depth of our involvement,” he said, noting that such a policy rarely emerges from such dialogues.

“When it comes to diplomatic engagement with the Taliban, we have remained on the sidelines,” he added, referring to a study conducted by the Washington Institute, an American think tank that analyzed international engagement with the Taliban. The study found that countries including Qatar, China and Turkey are leading the way in developing relations with the Taliban, and Pakistan comes in fifth place in terms of influence.

“India is not even on the list,” Sharma said.

“For a long time, India has been saying that Afghanistan is a country of strategic importance, we have historical ties, but then you have to walk the talk,” Sharma added. “After the fall of the republican government, we put Afghanistan in cold storage, dealing with it only when we needed it, and on an ad hoc basis.”

Indian hesitation remains

Taneja said one positive step that might come out of all this is the potential issuance of visas to Afghans. “The main takeaway from the communication between Al-Masry and Motaki is that India may be close to resuming a range of visas for Afghans, especially in trade, health tourism and education,” he said.

India has been criticized for suspending Afghan visas, including medical and student visas, following the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. It has issued very few visas to Afghans since then. “It is time for New Delhi to come and do this,” Taneja said. “It will bring relief to many Afghan citizens who used India as their preferred option for higher education, medical care etc.”

Sharma said he was less hopeful of issuing more visas due to security concerns. He added: “Ultimately, the Taliban is an ideological movement, and their rise to power has led to increased extremism, which will be a challenge.”

India must remain engaged in the region as well. “It believes that by keeping the channel open to the Taliban, they will be able to engage them at least on some issues of concern to India. Will the Taliban be able to achieve this? Another question, what leverage do we have vis-à-vis the Taliban?” he added.

Sharma said that the Taliban needed this meeting more than India. As the group engages in military clashes with Pakistan, a former ally of the Taliban, it is keen to demonstrate that it has a wider range of options available.

“they [the Taliban] want to appear [autonomy] To Pakistan in particular. “But it also helps them counter the larger propaganda that they have no strategic autonomy, no power and are merely agents of Pakistan.” Pakistani military establishment.

Cautious steps or just a lack of strategy?

There are other reasons why India may be reluctant to move forward with the Taliban. Analysts say closer ties could put “the world’s largest democracy” in a moral quagmire.

“India has long tried to market itself and position itself as the world’s largest democracy, but has failed to even condemn the ban on girls’ education in Afghanistan. There has been absolute silence on these issues. So what signal are we sending to the population back home?” asked Sharma.

India has maintained a strong presence in Afghanistan and was one of the first countries to send a diplomatic mission after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. But despite significant interests in the region, India has lacked a coherent policy in dealing with the country.

“Any maneuvers India wanted to undertake, it always did so in concert with other powers with whom we found a convergence of interests. This was largely Iran and Russia in the past, and then the Americans,” Sharma said. In the wake of the collapse of the US-backed Republican government India found itself in a new situation.

With many countries around the world moving quickly to adapt to the new reality, Sharma reiterated that India has put Afghanistan in “cold storage”. He added that even the United States “is working with the Taliban in the fight against terrorism to deal with the Khorasan Province organization.” the ISKP (Islamic Khorasan Province) is a regional branch of ISIS and is known to operate inside Afghanistan.

At the same time, “countries like Iran that enabled and facilitated the Taliban, including Pakistan, kept communication channels open for the opposition,” Sharma added. “Iran hosts opposition figures such as Ismail Khan. The Tajik government, which was initially strongly critical of the Taliban, is no longer so, but continues to host the opposition.

“Putting all our eggs in the Taliban basket”

Now, stakeholders in the region are assessing what the incoming Trump administration in the United States might mean for the Taliban.

“Afghanistan has fallen out of the political consciousness in Washington, D.C.,” Taneja said. Although the country remains important on the security front, it “will not replace more pressing issues such as Gaza, Iran and Ukraine.”

He added that it is difficult to determine what will happen next. “Trump’s strategies are like forecasting the weather on a daily basis. However, any Taliban opposition trying to gain strength may find more listening ears under Trump than under Biden.

Ultimately, despite being the most powerful power in the region, India has failed to engage with the various players in Afghanistan, which has led to the isolation of its interests in the long term. “Initially, we made the mistake of putting all our eggs in [Hamid] Karzai [former Afghan president] The basket then [Ashraf] Ghani basket. We did this in Bangladesh as well and gave all our support to Sheikh Hasina.

Fixing this may take time because India may also lack a critical understanding of Afghan society, Taneja said.

“It’s not just about strengthening ties at the political level, it’s also about understanding how certain social and political environments work. I don’t think India has that understanding which is ironic because we are close to it geographically.” [and] Culturally. However, we have invested very little in trying to understand society.

“I think we are repeating the same mistake, putting all our eggs in the Taliban basket,” Taneja said, warning that the political climate in Afghanistan has always been very volatile.

“The land is changing very quickly,” he added.