The acting Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Moulavi Amir Khan Muttaqi, is set to visit India next week. This will be the first public visit of a Taliban leader to India since it took power in August 2021. The UN Security Council recently approved a travel-ban exemption that will allow Muttaqi to travel.
The travel is historic, very important and a positive development as this could restore the historic ties between the two countries. This also shows pragmatism on both sides and testifies to the Taliban’s efforts to pursue their foreign policy independently, one that is geared to safeguard and promote the interests of Afghanistan and its people.
As the de-facto government of Afghanistan, the Taliban cannot afford to ignore India and vice versa. Afghanistan needs infrastructure support and India has a longstanding history of engagement in the country. Renewing their relations with India shall also bring some balance to Afghanistan's relations with the military-run neighbouring Pakistan.
For the past two years, the Pakistani military has tried many provocations to initiate some sort of an armed conflict with the Taliban. First, Pakistan tried provocations like humiliating the Afghan refugees by seizing them on flimsy grounds, and then uprooting their generations, and forcibly sending them back to Afghanistan. When this failed to overwhelm the Taliban, Daesh - a suspected longtime asset or a collaborator - was suddenly reenergised, as their attacks and propaganda spiked.
Furthermore, economic blockade amid growing armed confrontations along the border fencing and curtailing ingress for thousands of Afghan citizens who usually travel for health reasons to Pakistan was initiated. In its latest attempt to provoke a new civil war, the time-tested ISI ploy, Pakistan recently hosted a bunch of former and mostly discredited warlords.
So far, the Taliban has displayed remarkable wisdom and solely focused on bringing about peace and order, and some developments like rebuilding roads and buildings, and construction of a canal that could redesign the agricultural landscape of the country. On the negative side, the Taliban continue to apply their narrow and harsh interpretations of religion on certain cultural practices that are harshly targetting and invisiblising the women. These practices are sanctified in the name of some vague notions of faith.
This has caused a great deal of suffering to the women.
India could help Afghanistan mainly in education, health care, and industrial and agricultural development. In addition, perhaps with some financial support from China, the Indian NGOs can provide support in semi-urban and low-cost and sustainable housing that can be scaled across the territory (India has the expertise).
Also, India Muslim institutions like Darul Uloom Deoband could possibly support the madrasa infrastructure and bring about some reform. They could also play a role in widening the Taliban's understanding regarding education to women! Many Indian Muslim NGOs, particularly from the South, could perhaps help in setting up professional medical and paramedical colleges for men and women. At the same time, the Taliban must continue to inform their relationship with Pakistan with wisdom and pragmatism.
Most Pakistanis are positively disposed towards the Afghan people, and they understand how their army had accentuated the decades of Afghan sufferings for nothing but money and personal gain.
Many Pakistanis themselves are the victims of their military, and therefore, cannot do much except suffer unceremoniously while being violently disenfranchised.
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