India to join 'Afghan Quad'? Russia says New Delhi's increased role in Afghanistan will be 'right step'

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has called for India’s inclusion in the ‘Afghan Quad’.

The grouping, formally called the ‘Quadripartite Group on Afghanistan’, comprises Russia, China, Pakistan, and Iran. The group is focussed at jointly addressing the security, economic, and political questions related to Afghanistan and its Taliban regime.

Speaking in response to a question at a press conferences, Lavrov on Tuesday said that India’s inclusion would not just be beneficial for addressing the challenges in Afghanistan but for providing another platform for India to deal with Pakistan and China. He said that India’s membership of Afghan Quad would be a “right step”.

While China has emerged as the greatest security threat to India in recent years, Pakistan has been a traditional adversary with whom India has fought full-fledged wars. The India-Pakistan relations are essentially frozen over Pakistan’s support to the secessionist movement in Kashmir and its support anti-India terrorism.

Lavrov said, “I would like to note that all these organisational measures are important, but it is more important to strengthen trust within the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], within the format that is currently working on Afghanistan. We are confident that the inclusion of India would be the right step. The SCO and the formats on Afghan affairs, for example, the Moscow format on Afghanistan, are an additional platform where Pakistan, India, and China can have the opportunity to communicate more, try to understand each other better, ask questions that worry them, receive and analyze answers. We are ready to help this in every possible way. This is in the interests of your countries, our region, and the SCO.”

Lavrov went on to say that terrorism affects the entire region, including Pakistan, and needs a collective response from all countries in the region. He suggested that SCO members can mount the required response to terrorism.

Lavrov said, “There is mutual interest in practical cooperation in combating terrorism. Pakistan suffers from this too. The fight against terrorism requires joining efforts with your Afghan neighbors, with India, with all SCO members, because Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan are used by “bad people” to plan and implement their criminal plans.”

Lavrov pitched the SCO as the “single center to combat new threats” from terrorism and also address the question of terror financing.

“The SCO has an anti-terrorist structure. It works well. There is an exchange of information. Considering that the financing of terrorism is seriously “tied” to drug trafficking (a form of organized crime), we have been promoting the initiative for several years to create a single center to combat new threats, including terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, and human trafficking. This year we will begin to implement this decision,” said Lavrov.

The Afghan Quad comprising Russia, China, Iran, and Pakistan last held a meeting in September 2024 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) session.

While India has not recognised the Taliban regime, India has been engaging frequently with the regime. Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri met Taliban’s Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai. The meeting was the highest level of engagement between the two sides.

In their joint statement in Sept. 2024, the Afghan Quad member-states tacitly acknowledged Taliban and indirectly took a swipe at the West. They said that “should serve as a platform for international cooperation rather than geopolitical competition” and “acknowledged the efforts of Afghanistan’s de facto authorities to combat ISIL-Khorasan”.

Even as the international community has bene outraged at the Taliban’s treatment of girls and women, whom the militant group has driven out of public spaces and nearly all employment opportunities, the Afghan Quad made little mention of them. Instead, the group focussed primarily on security concerns.

“They called on de facto authorities to take visible and verifiable actions in fulfilling the international obligations and commitments made by Afghanistan to fight terrorism, dismantle, and eliminate all terrorist groups equally and non-discriminatory and prevent the use of Afghan territory against its neighbors, the region, and beyond,” said the joint statement.

Relegating the human rights concerns to one brief sentences, the joint statement said that the member-states “stressed that women and girls’ access to education, and economic opportunities, including access to work, participation in public life, freedom of movement, justice and basic services, will contribute to peace, stability and prosperity in the country”.