Pakistani Perceptions on India’s Outreach to Taliban

 

It has been nearly more than a month since India’s top diplomatic  team met the Afghan Taliban leadership in Dubai in an extraordinary move to reach out to them and this has already been discussed in detail in these columns.  Further to it, more reactions in Pakistan on this meeting has started trickling in.  Some reactions in the mainstream Pakistani media, further to run up to  the backchannel diplomacy between India and the Afghan Taliban, elucidate that the diplomatic move has resulted in the permanent closure of the Ghani administration’s Embassy in New Delhi.

Subsequently, the Taliban’s Charge d’Affaires (CdA) in Abu Dhabi was invited by the Indian Embassy in the UAE for the Republic Day celebrations in the Emirates’ capital. Also, as per the Pakistani press,  there are major economic considerations that have pushed India closer to the Taliban stating existence of several reasons for India’s outreach to the Afghan Taliban. This shows the growing closeness between India and Taliban.  First, the international community has been continuously engaging with the Taliban government and perhaps India did not want to be left behind.

Other than US meeting the Taliban in Qatar,  China has also been expanding its relationship with Kabul in the security, economic and political realms. Also, the regional countries as well as the Arab world have been cautiously  engaging with the Afghan interim government. Therefore, India does not want to be seen as ‘strategically excluded’ from Afghanistan. Secondly, soon after Kabul fell, the Indian media and opposition parties tried to portray the victory of the Afghan Taliban as a ‘victory of Pakistan’. These are of course Pakistani perceptions.

Pakistan claims the Indian government, has been criticized for its “weak neighborhood” policy due “back-to-back setbacks” in the Maldives and Bangladesh. Re-engagement with the Afghan Taliban is partly an attempt of the India government to silence critics on his Afghanistan policy.  And the third, there are significant economic considerations that have pushed New Delhi closer to the Taliban. Prior to the fall of Kabul, India was carrying out around $3 billion infrastructure and energy projects in Afghanistan. Again, these are purely Pakistan apprehensions and not based on pure facts.

Moreover, Lithium has become an in-demand commodity for the world. There are several studies that have projected the potential of Afghanistan’s minerals at more than $1 trillion. This is a new angle that Pakistan press is projecting. The major mineral resources include Chromium, Copper, Gold, Iron,  Lead, Zinc, Lithium, Marble, precious and semiprecious stones, among others required for the Electronic Vehicles (EVs) in India. Many Western firms have been setting up businesses in India for this reason. Lithium will be required for EVs’ batteries. Hence, Afghanistan possibly can fulfil India’s demand for these critical minerals through Iran’s Chabahar port. These are Pakistan’s impressions on the India Taliban ties.

Meanwhile, in a separate but not altogether an isolated development, Iran and Afghanistan called for increased cooperation during a trip to Kabul by Tehran's Foreign Minister (January 26), the highest-level Iranian official to visit the Afghan capital since the Taliban takeover in 2021. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his Afghan counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, and Taliban government Prime Minister Hassan Akhund during a one-day visit to discuss relations between them. They, however, spar over issues including migration and water resources. The two sides discussed economic cooperation, the situation of Afghan migrants in Iran, border issues and water rights. It may be stated that many countries had closed their embassies in Kabul or downgraded diplomatic relations after the Taliban takeover nearly four years ago. However, Iran has maintained active diplomatic ties with Afghanistan's new rulers, though it is yet to officially recognize the Taliban government.

Several Iranian delegations have visited Afghanistan over the years, including a parliamentary delegation in August 2023 to discuss water rights. This said, Tensions between the countries have intensified in recent years over water resources and the construction of dams on the Helmand and Harirud rivers. It is also pertinent to state that Afghan migrants in Iran for their "dignified" return to Afghanistan. Afghans returning from Iran have been accusing Iranian authorities of harassment, wrongful deportation and physical abuse. However, the Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian says Tehran is repatriating illegal nationals to their country "in a respectful manner". Iran shares more than 900 kilometers of border with Afghanistan, and the Islamic republic hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world — mostly Afghans fleeing decades of war. Significantly, the flow of Afghan immigrants has increased since the Taliban took power.

In yet another not altogether secluded  move, India is expected to spurn the Russian offer to join the “Afghan Quad”, a coalition that also includes Pakistan and China – in a decision that reflects its reluctance to engage with adversaries on Kabul’s future.  The four-nation bloc – Iran is the fourth member – was formed with the declared objective of stabilizing Afghanistan, a plan aligned with its members’ shared regional interests. Yet for India, joining a coalition that includes its long-standing adversary, Pakistan, would  be conflicting with it’s `strategic’ calculations. At least, this is the apprehension of Afghanistan watchers who are not necessarily Indians.

In this context, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had expressed hope earlier this month that India would join the group, calling it “the right thing to do in Afghanistan”.  However, Pakistan’s involvement seen to be “an automatic red flag” for India, according to Kabir Taneja, Deputy Director and fellow at the Observer Research Foundation’s (ORF) Strategic Studies Programme in New Delhi. Shruti Pandalai, a Delhi-based strategic affairs expert specializing in India’s foreign and security politics, said Afghanistan’s stability was a shared regional interest for Russia and India. While worsening relations between Islamabad and Kabul might prompt India to respond more positively to Moscow’s diplomatic overtures, Pandalai said that the presence of China and Pakistan in the bloc would do “little for New Delhi’s strategic interests”.

 
Shantanu Mukharji is a retired
IPS officer and former National Security Advisor in Mauritius.