Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi’s visit to India this week is “calculated realpolitik”, says Raghav Sharma, Professor and Director, Centre for Afghanistan Studies at the School of International Affairs, O.P Jindal Global University.
“I think India does realize that there are limitations to how much it can maneuver and that the political realities in the country have changed,” he told StratNews Global on The Gist show.
“India needs to engage the Taliban in order to secure its interests. Securing state interests, cannot be viewed always from the trope of morality or ethics.”
Sharma, who has worked in the humanitarian sector in Afghanistan and taught under the ‘Good Governance Afghanistan Program’ at Germany’s Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, stressed that India had been reaching out to the Taliban ever since they reclaimed Kabul and declared victory on 15 August, 2021.
New Delhi had been talking to the Taliban at a high level since the beginning of this year when Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met Muttaqi in Dubai, which was the first such top-level engagement between both sides.
This was followed up by the first ever phone-call between Muttaqi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar in May, days after Operation Sindoor.
Sticking Points
While many commentators are calling the upcoming visit as a grant of recognition to the Taliban regime, Sharma said “sticking points” between both countries still remain.
So far, only Russia has formally recognized the interim Taliban government in Kabul. In July 2025, Russia removed the Taliban from its list of banned terrorist organisations, which it had been on for over 20 years. The Taliban flag was raised for the first time at the Embassy of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) in Moscow.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a step necessarily, that is going to lead to recognition anytime soon, but certainly it’s a calibrated, ramping up of the relationship. This has been in the works for quite some time. Eventually it may lead to a recognition but I think that’s still a long way off because there are many other sticking points as far as recognition of the Taliban is concerned,” said Sharma.
He added, “Certainly it’s (the visit) going to bolster ties and bolster the level of engagement between India and the Afghan Taliban.”
During the Taliban’s previous rule, India neither engaged the Taliban nor accorded official recognition. However, during the IC-814 hijack, former foreign minister Jaswant Singh had sought Taliban’s cooperation to secure the release of Indian hostages as the Indian Airlines flight landed in Kandahar.
According to Sharma, who is author of ‘Nation, Ethnicity and the Conflict in Afghanistan: Political Islam and the Rise of Ethno–Politics (1992-1996)’, the visit also needs to be analysed from the purview of the Taliban’s rising tensions with Pakistan.
“The Taliban’s return to power hasn’t quite panned out in the way that the (Pakistani) Generals in Pindi (Rawalpindi) would have wanted it to. They wanted to choreograph it in a completely different manner. It hasn’t panned out in that way,” he pointed out.
“For the Taliban the visit is significant because it also helps them play to their domestic constituency and try and shore up legitimacy which their opponents have often tried to undermine by saying that the Taliban are actually puppets of Rawalpindi, and that they lack complete agency and in its Rawalpindi which brought them back into power.”
Sharma believes the visit might result in a few deliverables in terms of resumption of visas for Afghan nationals willing to travel to India, restarting two-way trade and appointment of envoys in each other’s country, who due to lack of a formal recognition, will act as “representatives”.
He says New Delhi should take advantage of the visit and resume the stalled projects in Afghanistan, which will enable India to regain its footprints in that country.
