India and Taliban: The strategic sense in doing business with the government in Afghanistan

New Delhi has quietly flown in experts for the inspection and maintenance of the India-funded-and-built Salma Dam in northwest Afghanistan’s Herat province, offering a timely peep into Prime Minister Narendra Modi government’s increasingly deepening ties and close engagement with the once-loathed Taliban regime since the partial reopening of our Kabul embassy in mid-2022.

That thaw in badly strained relations 20 months ago, after the closure of our embassy in August 2021 following the Taliban takeover, has clearly led to a significant improvement in ties between the two governments which has important ramifications for the whole region, where besides India, countries like China, United States, Russia, Turkey and Pakistan too have huge stakes.

Indian Projects In Afghanistan

Remarkably enough, India airlifted the experts just days before the “first” anniversary of the Doha Accord today. The agreement which sent US-NATO troops packing from Afghanistan and cleared the decks for the return of the Taliban, was signed on February 29, 2020. That was a leap year; and hence its ‘first’ anniversary has come up after four years!

Responding to an SOS from the Taliban government – which neither India nor any other nation in the world has recognised as the legitimate government of Afghanistan – New Delhi last week despatched four top technicians from the state-run firm, Water and Power Consultancy Services (WAPCOS), for an emergency safety audit of the Salma Dam, also known as the India-Afghanistan Friendship Dam.

The dam is WAPCOS’s baby anyway. WAPCOS took 14 years to build it from 2002 at a cost of $265 million for generating 42 MW of power and irrigating 75,000 hectares of land, and was inaugurated by Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in 2016. Importantly, being an Indian project, it was in the sights of Taliban guns and there were genuine fears about its future before and after the Taliban recaptured power in 2021. But they left it alone because of its overwhelming usefulness.

The hydroelectric project on the Harirud River is one of India’s three biggest gifts to Afghanistan, along with the Parliament Building in Kabul and the 218 km long Zaranj-Delaram Highway. These flagship projects accounted for the lion’s share of nearly US $3 billion India has spent on aid and reconstruction of the war-ravaged country in two decades from 2001, when US forces brought the Taliban down, to 2021 when they surged back to power after the Doha Accord.

India, no doubt, has an emotional connection with the Salma Dam because of the sheer grit and determination, not to speak of the heavy funding, it required. But this writer has gathered that it was Afghanistan’s deputy Foreign Minister, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai – the 61-year-old Taliban leader once trained at the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun – who took up the case of Salma Dam and persuaded New Delhi to send a WAPCOS team. The experts were flown to Kabul after clearance was received from the very top – Modi, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

National And Strategic Interest

India’s deepening engagement with the Taliban has coincided with the latter’s spiralling conflicts with Pakistan which once mentored them, giving us elbow room and manoeuvrability in Afghanistan. In India’s national interests – strategic interests to be precise – we have shut our eyes to the Taliban’s misdeeds and excesses. After reopening the Kabul embassy, India is deploying its presence to track terrorism threats emanating from Afghanistan, from groups like the Islamic State-Khorasan, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which have targeted us for decades. Applying the brakes on China’s increasing influence in the war-ravaged nation is another key goal.

In early February, Vikram Misri, Deputy National Security Advisor, openly declared that India is an “important stakeholder” in Afghanistan and spoke about our “legitimate economic and security interests” there. He underlined our interests while addressing the 6th Regional Dialogue of Secretaries of Security Councils/National Security Advisers on Afghanistan in the Kyrgyzstan capital, Bishkek.

Before rushing experts to the Salma Dam, in November 2023 the Indian government facilitated the takeover of the Afghan embassy in New Delhi along with consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad by the Taliban’s representatives evicting Afghan diplomats aligned with the previous government of President Ashraf Ghani. Interestingly, New Delhi supported the US-backed Ashraf Ghani puppet regime to the hilt until its fall in August 2021. Senior Taliban officials publicly thanked New Delhi for helping its representatives take control of all Afghan diplomatic missions in India.

India’s role is in stark contrast to Canada’s which has just foiled the Taliban’s bid to take over the diplomatic mission in Ottawa by displacing diplomats loyal to the old regime And last month, the Indian embassy in the United Arab Emirates, officially invited the acting Afghan Ambassador and Taliban envoy in Abu Dhabi, Badruddin Haqqani, for the Republic Day reception in a luxury hotel.

The invitation addressed to “His Excellency Badruddin Haqqani” struck a discordant note as the recipient is a former core member of the Haqqani network which New Delhi accuses of launching several attacks on Indian missions in Afghanistan, specially the 2008 Kabul Embassy car bombing in which 58 people were killed, including two senior Indian diplomats and two Indian security forces personnel.

When news of the invitation leaked out, the government promptly called it “routine”. But everyone in the diplomatic-security establishment is not convinced. For instance, Amar Sinha, India’s ambassador in Afghanistan until 2016, is all for jetting WAPCOS experts to Salma Dam, but doesn’t approve of inviting Haqqani. He told this writer that normally in national day receptions, representatives of governments that are not recognised are not invited, and the Haqqanis have a particular negative history with India and Indian interests. He said that there was a time when they were considered a veritable arm of Pakistani ISI, adding that assessments and considerations have now clearly changed.

As of now, there is no question of India recognising the Taliban government. But rushing experts to Salma Dam and several preceding developments which were unthinkable earlier, are making it amply clear that the Modi government has decided to do business with the Taliban both covertly and overtly. New Delhi is not going to preach; it will be pragmatic and allow only national interests and not values to drive relations with Kabul which is badly disenchanted with Islamabad.

SNM Abdi is an independent journalist specialising in India’s foreign policy and domestic politics. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.