INDIA AND AFGHANISTAN: A STORY OF SHARED HERITAGE AND MODERN POLICY

For nearly three decades, India has engaged Kabul’s rulers without recognizing them— “recognition without recognition.” Policy grammer: Consular pragmatism, firm red lines (no terror; women’s and minority rights), careful domestic optics, and regional hedging via Iran to counter Pakistan and China.

- TDG NETWORK

Indian Airlines flight IC-814 A Taliban security official receives a list of demands from the hijackers of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 at an airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan, on December 27, 1999, ambulances) to the visiting Afghan minister in New Delhi, October 2025.

India and Afghanistan have millennia-old ties, from the ancient Gandhara civilization (centuries BC) that spanned parts of present Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Mughal era in India (whose founder Babur hailed from Kabul).

Buddhism and trade flowed across this frontier, weaving deep cultural links. In 1947, Afghanistan's King Zahir Shah famously opted to befriend India rather than Pakistan, even as Kabul clashed with Pakistan over the Durand Line. Through the 1950s and 60s, India-Afghan relations were warm: Kabul sought to access New Delhi’s market and aid, and Indians invested in Kabul's development.

The 1979 Soviet invasion and Afghan civil wars upended this landscape. India initially backed Soviet-aligned Kabul but withdrew after the regime fell. When the Taliban first captured Kabul in 1996, India cut off formal ties ~ closing its embassy and refusing to recognize the Taliban regime. Indian officials viewed the Taliban as proxies of Pakistan's intelligence and harbingers of Islamist militancy. Instead, New Delhi offered quiet support to the Northern Alliance (the anti-Taliban United Front, composed of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others). Indian media and intelligence sources noted that in the mid-1990s, India “supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban”.

RECOGNITION”: POLICY