AA Edit | Will Delhi Ties With Kabul Soar To Pre-Taliban Levels?

The intriguing, high-stakes subcontinental game of diplomatic chess just got more players. In a game involving friends, foes, frenemies and prickly neighbours, India made a significant move in normalising relations with the Talban-led government in Afghanistan, its upgrading of its technical mission in Kabul to a full-fledged embassy being the major gambit.

The quick turn of events that came with the current visit of the Afghan foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi may have come as a shock to those who oppose the misogynistic Kabul regime that excludes women from education and jobs. But there was a seemingly positive move in that direction, too, as the foreign minister invited women journalists to his press conference Sunday in a conciliatory gesture.

Mollifying gender-equality sentiment is a good opening move that the Taliban, which has gained notoriety for its repressive measures against women, has made in recognising realities outside its mountainous home that has been wracked by war for decades since the first Soviet occupation army set foot in the 1980s followed by the Americans who pulled out quite messily to a sudden Joe Biden diktat in August 2021.

Afghanistan is also currently engaged in a conflict against Pakistan along the Durand Line. It has just killed 58 Pakistan soldiers and captured some Pakistan Army posts in retaliatory strikes for frequent violations of its territory and airspace by the neighbouring nation. It has accused Pakistan, with no denial coming from it so far, of a bombing run on Kabul and an attack on a market in the east, avowedly in response to attacks by the Pakistani Taliban.

What makes the game more interesting is that the improvement in ties promised by India, which is reaching out with generous financial aid, ambulances, medical equipment, vaccines and reconstruction support for structures, comes at a time when the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan has hit a new low.

The nations also nurse this common grouse of attacks emanating from Pakistan, whether by proxy through terrorists funded and trained by the ISI in the case of India or by the Pakistan air force and ground forces as in Afghanistan. Of course, Pakistan lives by the illusion that India supports the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban that is assumed to be sponsored by Afghanistan in a restive border region saturated with armed militancy.

While no immediate relief from events of the military versus militancy kind may be forthcoming for Afghanistan, India is bent upon pursuing diplomacy, placing expansion of trade and help with education and visas that are in big demand for an Afghan population looking for ways to seek asylum in the West and in India. It must also help that India has long supported the Afghan national cricket team with a training base and a home ground in the country.

China may have been the first country to formally accept the credentials of a Taliban-appointed ambassador with President Xi Jinping granting him audience in January. Most of the Asian and West Asian region have, however, accepted the de facto position of the Taliban as the rulers of Afghanistan. India’s recognition that comes with the upgrading of its Kabul embassy is another step forward for a regime run by the group of extremists. It can be said that all of India’s aid will come with few strings attached, the importance of which Afghanistan would do well to recognise as ties are set to take off.