India does not recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan — nevertheless, it is set to welcome the Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, for a week-long visit starting on Thursday.

The Taliban diplomat is due to meet India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and discuss counterterrorism, trade relations, and New Delhi's humanitarian and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.

Muttaqi's trip, which was only made possible by the UN granting a temporary exemption to the travel ban imposed on him, is seen as a chance for New Delhi to shift its stance on the Taliban government without giving them formal recognition.

Muttaqi is also expected to urge India to allow the regime to post an official envoy to the Afghan embassy in New Delhi and seek permission to expand the staff of Afghan consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad.

India's careful diplomatic game

For over four years, New Delhi has walked a strategic tightrope of maintaining humanitarian contacts with Kabul while keeping diplomatic ties limited.

In June 2022, some 10 months after the Taliban takeover of Kabul, India sent a "technical team" to the Afghan capital to coordinate the delivery of humanitarian assistance and to see how New Delhi could support the Afghan people. Ever since, the Taliban have been demanding approval for their own representative in Delhi.

In November last year, senior Indian Foreign Ministry official JP Singh held multiple meetings with Taliban representatives, including a notable meeting with acting Taliban Defense Minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob. The biggest signals of New Delhi's engagement, however, came when senior diplomat Vikram Misri  met Taliban Foreign Minister Muttaqi in Dubai in January. 

This gradual thaw in India–Taliban relations also seems to coincide with the souring of ties between Pakistan and the Islamic fundamentalist group.  Islamabad has been increasingly angry with the Taliban regime over cross-border terrorism, among  other issues, and has even launched airstrikes on Afghan territory.

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By engaging a major regional power like India, the Taliban seek to expand their diplomatic footprint beyond Pakistan and China, said Gautam Mukhopadhaya, a former Indian ambassador to Afghanistan.

"This outreach is partly aimed at challenging Islamabad's claim of indispensability in Afghan affairs, with Taliban 2.0 showing more independence from Pakistan, leveraging traditional people-to-people ties, especially among Pashtuns, and shared security concerns to position itself as a trusted partner," he told DW.

"This is also a step in projecting itself as an internationally relevant actor, especially amid attention from the US, China, and Russia," Mukhopadhaya added.

On the Indian side, it is worth noting that New Delhi joined Islamabad, Beijing, and Moscow to support the Taliban and reject US President Donald Trump's call for a US military presence at Afghanistan's Bagram air base. In a joint statement this week, New Delhi decried foreign military deployments as "unacceptable" for regional stability. The move is seen as a multi-layered diplomatic message to Washington.

Space for India to ramp up influence in Afghanistan

Muttaqi's visit, too, "points to a union of interests of India and Afghanistan," said Shanthie Mariet D'Souza, an expert on Afghanistan affairs.

The Taliban regime "needs to expand its horizon of interaction and legitimacy, while for New Delhi, it is an agenda of gradually scaling up its engagement with the de facto rulers of Afghanistan to regain its strategic space," D'Souza, who serves as the head of independent research forum Mantraya, told DW.

India now has a chance to re-establish a presence in Kabul by increasing developmental efforts, capacity building, technical assistance and providing visas for medical and education purposes.

"However, it would be presumptuous to assume that the Taliban are looking for an exclusive relationship with India, as they aim to maintain a 'balanced' foreign policy, a point that Muttaqi has made clear on numerous occasions," she added.

Taliban seek distance from Pakistan

Beyond bilateral optics, the visit has implications for India's relations with key powers — notably the US, Russia, Iran, and China — all of whom maintain varying degrees of dialogue with the Taliban.

Harsh Pant, head of the Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a New Delhi think tank, said the Taliban have been indicating that they do not want to antagonize India.

"In some ways, the cautious normalization we are seeing — gradual visits and engagement — reflects a certain sense of comfort now present in India about the Taliban governing Afghanistan, which was not there when they first came back to power," Pant told DW.

"So far, the Taliban have indicated they will be an independent actor in their own right; they do not want to make Afghanistan an extension of Pakistan. In fact, they have pushed back against Pakistan and its military's idea of using Afghanistan as strategic depth vis-a-vis India," said Pant pointing to the Taliban's keenness in engaging India.

China trying to mend ties between Kabul and Islamabad

Pant also believes that India will continue to engage with Afghanistan and the Taliban not only for humanitarian reasons, but also for strategic gain.

"This is to ensure the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship does not revert to what it was in the 1980s," Pant said, referring to Pakistan's backing of the Islamist Mujahideen groups during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Pakistan also recognized and aided the Taliban regime after their emergence in the 1990s.

"Also, China's role, as China has tried to bring Afghanistan and Pakistan together, can be neutralized," he added.

Pant, who teaches at King's College in London, said both the Taliban and India are determined to "create a more robust engagement mechanism."

"They have reached out to several countries, and given India's role, especially now that the Taliban's relationship with Pakistan is adversarial, India is an important partner."

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the meeting between Vikram Misri and Amir Khan Muttaqi.

Edited by: Darko Janjevic