Iran’s Taliban outreach poses a significant challenge to India’s Afghan policy

On 6 and 7 March, Iranian authorities handed over 457 Afghan prisoners to Afghanistan, amid deep concerns over the human rights record of the Taliban. A week earlier, on 27 February, the Taliban had dispatched a seven-member team of “experienced diplomats, led by a newly appointed chargé d’affaires” to the Iranian capital to formally assume charge of Afghanistan’s diplomatic mission there. This followed Tehran’s decision to hand over the Afghan embassy to the Taliban, becoming the latest country to accept Taliban-appointed diplomats without recognising their 18-month-old government in Kabul. On the same day, the spectre of bonhomie further played out as the Taliban released an Iranian border guard within hours of his arrest after he unintentionally entered the Afghan territory. Clearly, the national priorities of regional countries have started overriding the possibility of a regional consensus-based approach towards the Taliban. With the sole exception of Tajikistan, every regional country with which Afghanistan shares its border has come forward to engage the Taliban. Short of formal recognition, the number of functional embassies in Kabul is steadily growing. Tehran’s policies appear to have been shaped not just by its bitter rivalry with the US, but also by its strong ties with Beijing. Iran-Taliban have shared a long history of love and hate relationship. In 1998, the Taliban, then in the seat of power in Kabul, killed 10 Iranian diplomats and a journalist after seizing the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif. The bilateral relationship soured to such an extent that the Iranians extended help to the US in the early days of Operation Enduring Freedom. Any scenario of Shi’ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Taliban sorting out their differences appeared highly improbable. Things, however, underwent a change, with the Bush administration’s policy towards Iran. In his State of the Union address on 29 January 2003, Bush described North Korea, Iran, and Iraq as “an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world”. In the following years, Iran played a dual role of politically empowering the Hazara Shia community in Afghanistan and at the same time, covertly aiding the Taliban insurgency vis-à-vis the Americans. Post-Taliban takeover, Iran welcomed the ‘military failure’ of its arch-foe, the US. It never shut its embassy in Kabul or its consulate in Herat, while winding down activities in the consulates in Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kandahar. However, at the same time, it continued reiterating its support for the formation of an inclusive government with the representation of all ethnic groups of Afghanistan. In August 2022, on the 24th anniversary of the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif, Iranian Foreign Ministry termed the incident an ‘unforgettable crime’ and demanded that the Taliban clarify various aspects of the incident. And yet, in a matter of few months, its brand-new Afghan policy of engaging the Taliban was in place. In December 2022, it replaced its ambassador to Kabul, Bahador Aminian, after Aminian’s strong criticism of the Taliban, in official communications, was accessed by the hacktivist group Black Reward. Aminian allegedly termed the Taliban a disaster for Afghanistan, the region and the world, but said that Iran has no choice but to use this opportunity “to civilise them”. Iran’s embassy in Kabul denied the statement and described it as a conspiracy to create a crisis in the region. The new ambassador is Hassan Kazemi Qomi, formerly Iran’s presidential envoy to Afghanistan. Prior to his appointment as ambassador, he had previously proposed not only a joint security and information exchange committee between Iran and Afghanistan to counter terrorist threats but had also urged the neighbours of Afghanistan to train the country’s security forces, exchanging information, and providing equipment. Qomi continues to oversee a sea change in Iran’s policy towards the Islamic Emirate. On 23 January, he held consultations with the Taliban Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Kabul on the expansion of relations and Iran’s water share from the Hirmand river. Earlier, on 12 January 2023, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian had dialled Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to condemn the terror attack outside the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry on the previous day. According to a press release by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Abdollahian drew parallels between the terror attack in Kabul and the one in Shahcheragh holy Shrine in Shiraz on 26 October 2022, describing them to be of ‘single origin’. He reiterated the need for both countries to ‘have a united strategy’ to counter terror. Of late, Iran’s Afghan policy has mirrored that of China. On 16 February, during Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Beijing, both sides issued a joint statement urging the Taliban to stop discriminating against women and minorities. The statement also referred to the close economic and political ties between Iran and China, and their ‘rejection of Western standards of human rights and democracy’. Like China, which sees economic opportunity for itself in the strife-ridden Afghanistan, unnamed Iranian companies, along with some from Russia and Pakistan, are now part of a consortium, which in the words of the Taliban acting commerce minister Nooruddin Azizi on 22 February, “will look to invest in the power, mining and infrastructure sectors of Afghanistan”. Iran is among a host of regional countries, which pursues a ‘realist’ policy of national priorities to not only ‘engage the Taliban’, but also effectively help it consolidate its rule. At the same time, however, there is very little success in building a regional consensus or a united approach on dealing with the Taliban. All this points at a spectre of increased instability, in which regional powers hedge, common Afghans suffer and extremists derive benefit and expand their area of activity through new partnerships. This evolving scenario poses a significant challenge to India’s Afghan policy. It has started using the Chabahar port to deliver wheat consignments to the Afghans, ditching the land route through Pakistan. While New Delhi’s commitment to the Afghan people remains unwavering, it is under pressure from the Taliban to allow it to take over the Afghan embassy in New Delhi. Not acceding to the Taliban’s request may impede the growth of its influence in Kabul, while following Iran’s example would push the spectre of establishment of an inclusive government in Afghanistan further away. New Delhi faces a tough choice. It needs to maintain a delicate balancing act taking cognisance of the changing regional and national dynamics in Afghanistan. The author is founder and president, Mantraya and Visiting Faculty, Naval War College, Goa and Non-resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. She has conducted field research in Afghanistan for more than a decade. She tweets @shanmariet. Views expressed are personal. 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