Between New Delhi & Kabul, a fine balance

Pragmatism and convergence on Pakistan have replaced ideology and legacy concerns as the main drivers of India-Afghanistan relations

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On December 24, 1999, an Indian Airlines flight (IC 814) operating between Kathmandu in Nepal and New Delhi was hijacked, and after moving through a few cities, eventually taken to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the ideological home of the Taliban.

The hostage crisis ended on December 31. During this period, India’s current National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, was one of the main negotiators. A then middle-level Taliban official, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was director general of administrative affairs. Twenty six years later, both these personalities are at the centre of an unconventional geopolitical reality, a quasi-normalisation between the Taliban-led interim government in Kabul and the Indian government as interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived on his maiden visit to New Delhi.

The chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 was a watershed moment. While an upending global order today makes the events of that time less relevant and prevalent, the US fighting a 20-year war against terrorism only to end up replacing the old Taliban with a new one, via the 2020 agreement between the two sides signed in Qatar under President Donald Trump's first term.

A US withdrawal was always imminent, leaving behind both a threat and an opportunity for regional powers to securitise their interests with an insurgency now back to running a State. Within this construct, every neighbour took an individualistic strategic approach as convergences on how to deal with the Taliban became minimal.