A diplomatic limbo

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ince 2022, India has progressively increased its engagement with the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, and has even stationed a “technical team” at its embassy in Kabul.

The last two years have also seen Indian officials visiting Kabul. Just this March, a delegation led by JP Singh, the joint secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs’ (MEA) division for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, met with Afghanistan’s Taliban-appointed foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.

In a media briefing following the March visit, MEA official spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said: “India has historical and civilizational ties with the Afghan people and these long-standing linkages will continue to guide our approach.”

While India, like the rest of the international community, still has not formally recognized Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government, it now engages the group to extend humanitarian aid, as well as for regional stability.

Raghav Sharma, director of the Centre for Afghanistan Studies at the OP Jindal School of International Affairs in Sonipat, Haryana, said India’s increasing engagement with the Taliban was a natural outcome of the changing dynamics in Afghanistan.

Unlike the 1990s, when regional powers, including India, chose not to work with the Taliban, the current ground realities necessitate a different approach. Today there is no significant opposition within Afghanistan, as political and military leaders who opposed the Taliban are no longer in the country.

Consequently, explains Sharma, India has had to recalibrate its policy to acknowledge the “Taliban as a reality it must engage with.”

Yet as India slowly adjusts and clarifies its big-picture policies regarding the Taliban, those concerning the Afghan diplomatic missions in India remain nebulous. Despite the prolonged absence of formal diplomatic relations, no official measures have been announced to support the thousands of Afghan students, refugees, and traders living in India, as well as Afghans who are in the country for medical treatment.

That has left many Afghans in India feeling trapped, with a significant number unable to leave the country for fear of never being allowed to return.

Indeed, for all the recent friendly overtures of New Delhi toward the Taliban, there is still the reality of the suspended visa regime. Soon after the fall of Kabul in August 2021, India had canceled all existing visas issued to Afghan nationals with immediate effect. Afghans who had been studying in India but were back in their home country due to the deadly second wave of COVID-19 in June 2021 ended up stuck in Afghanistan without any option to go back. Some 2,500 students who had been enrolled in Indian schools are believed to have been unable to return to India because of New Delhi’s reluctance to issue visas to them.

Meanwhile, the Afghan embassy in Delhi has had no ambassador since late last year, following the departure of Farid Mamundzay, a holdout from the Ghani government.

Shuttered and then reopened

Last November, the Afghan embassy in Delhi even announced its permanent closure, citing pressure from both the Indian government and the Taliban, which Mamundzay confirmed in a statement on his X account.

Yet while it has since reopened, Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions in India still seem to be in disarray. Calls to the embassy sometimes reveal its phones to be out of order; when they are working no one picks up.

On a recent visit there, Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC) found it to be operating with a skeletal staff, solely assisting residents with consular issues. An Afghan from Ghazni province who was at the embassy for some paperwork expressed his frustration at being unable to travel anywhere outside of India, let alone return home.

“All my family is here,” he said. “We’ve lived here since 2013. But I don’t have an Indian passport, and my Afghan passport is banned by the Indian government. I can’t leave the country, or I wouldn’t be allowed back in.”

It’s a situation that thousands more Afghans in India have found themselves in. According to a 2023 report by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), India is home to more than 15,000 Afghan refugees, including nearly 1,000 who sought refuge in India after the Taliban returned to power three years ago.

After Ambassador Mamundzay left his post, the embassy was reportedly co-managed by Consuls General Zakia Wardak and Sayed Mohammad Ibrahimkhil, who had been handling the Afghan consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad, respectively.

It was Wardak who went to Gujarat University in March following a mob attack on Muslim students, including some from Afghanistan.

Observers say that the incident demonstrated the importance of diplomatic missions. Rioters on March 16 had stormed the government-run university’s hostel campus in the middle of Ramadan prayers. Viral videos show people raising Hindu slogans as they attacked students and vandalized property. Recounts Afghan cybersecurity masteral student Waris Ahmad Sakha, 24: “They destroyed everything. Our rooms, our laptops. Everything.”

Wardak’s presence in Gujarat later, however, apparently helped prompt action from state authorities, with the MEA releasing a statement on its X account that “state government is taking strict action against the perpetrators.”

Sharma also sees the official actions as hints of a growing relationship between the Taliban and India. He notes: “The fact that Zakia [Wardak] got involved and went to Gujarat University to give official statements shows there was some degree of involvement from the foreign ministry in Kabul.”

Wardak is now also out of the picture, though. She resigned last May after reportedly being caught smuggling gold from Dubai; she said she had been the target of “personal attacks and defamation.”

Like Mamundzay, she had also been an appointee of the Ghani government, as was Ibrahimkhil, but had apparently begun cooperating with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers at some point. In fact, Mamundzay’s statement on X following his departure had this assertion: “The only individuals present in India are diplomats affiliated with the Taliban, visibly attending their regular online meetings.”

Some talk, but no movement

Even before Mamundzay left, several analysts and experts had already been saying that the Taliban was trying to appoint its own people in Afghanistan’s Indian missions. Such an attempt was reportedly thwarted in May 2023, when the embassy officials locked the gates from inside and refused Qadir Shah, a Taliban appointee carrying a letter from Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry, to take position of the Charge d’Affaires.

These days, there are reports that the Taliban has an ambassador appointee just waiting in the wings. But so far these have remained just talk. ADC has tried to confirm some details with Ibrahimkhil, the most senior Afghan diplomat left in India, but it received an email saying, “Mr. Ibrahimkhil is busy involved in activities pertaining to New Delhi Embassy, Mumbai consulate and Hyderabad consulate works, hence it is not possible to provide you an interview with him.”

Should New Delhi decide to officially turn over the Afghan diplomatic missions in India to the Taliban, it would not be the first government to do so. Some countries have already done this, among them Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the United Arab Emirates.

But no country has officially recognized Afghanistan’s Taliban government – yet.

“There is buzz that we might officially accept one of their diplomats in the mission in Delhi,” said Sharma. “However, the recognition is far away and is unlikely to happen anytime soon, because India is going to be more cautious as to how the international consensus works.”

“One major hiccup to that is how the Taliban has dealt with the women’s rights issue. That is the one thing that has held back recognition generally, and India is not going to break the consensus on that. What it is clear about is that these are the people who are in charge and there is no alternative at the moment, and it’s got to deal with who is in power,” Sharma added.

Yet while trade and investment, as well as transit access to Central Asia, have been brought up as the possible reasons for India’s warming relations with the Taliban, Sharma says that geopolitics and regional security are probably more top of mind right now for New Delhi.

“It is not just Pakistan but also China,” he says. “India is very aware of the fact that following the withdrawal of the United States (from Afghanistan), there are two or three countries who have come to play a bigger role, and one of them is China. Given our frosty relations with China and the close nexus that Pakistan and China have historically enjoyed, I think India is not very comfortable with the idea of being completely outflanked by … two countries (that) from India’s perspective are a security challenge.”

But all these have yet to help Afghan diplomatic missions in India function better, and more efficiently – as well as ease restrictions on Afghan nationals.

“The whole visa issue has been a fiasco, very poorly managed,” Sharma says. “Ordinary Afghans feel they are paying the price for India suddenly changing track. When you talk to people in the Indian government, they cite security concerns about Afghan passports being misused by those coming to India for studies or medical reasons. While some of these concerns are valid, it’s unreasonable for the government to have expelled the 2,500 to 3,000 students who were midway through their studies, leaving them in limbo. This has severely impacted the future of these students and makes for terrible optics, especially given India’s efforts to foster people-to-people connections with Afghans.”

In truth, not every Afghan in India intends to remain in the country as it navigates a delicate balance between its own ideologies and strategic interests in dealing with the hardline government of a nearby nation.

Following the incident at his university, Sakha refrains from blaming all Indians, and says that individuals or groups don’t represent the whole nation. But he says that he plans to return to Afghanistan to work in cybersecurity.

“Obviously I am returning to my country,” says Sakha, who has been in India since 2019. “I didn’t come to India for resettlement. I completed my studies here, and now it’s time for me to go back home. Since the government sponsored my education, it’s only fair that I return.”

“If someone else chooses not to return, it’s their decision, not mine,” he says. “Afghanistan holds a special place in my heart.” ◉