• India and the Taliban engagement is particularly driven by overlapping security interests to limit Pakistan’s influence and prevent militant threats.
• Hibatullah Akhundzada, the Taliban leader, seeks diplomatic normalization and economic relief through ties with Narendra Modi.
• The rapprochement of Indian-Afghan relations illustrates a broader reconfiguration of South Asian geopolitical alliances. 

Why are Modi and Hibatullah Akhundzada frenemies?

Answer: Their interaction is shaped by the converging need to counterbalance Pakistan, despite profound ideological divergence and the absence of mutual trust.

The first official visit by a Taliban leader to India happened in October 2025 when the Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqui visited New Delhi. During the multi-day visit, Muttaqi held formal discussions with the Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishakar, engaged with senior security officials, and made a symbolic visit to the Darul Uloom Deoband, a theological institution historically linked to currents of Islamic thought influential within the Taliban movement.

The Indian government used the occasion to announce the upgrading of its diplomatic mission in Kabul from a ‘technical team’ to an embassy. This recalibration has unfolded against a wider regional realignment driven by a deterioration of  the Taliban and Pakistan relations amid cross-boarder militancy and refugee expulsions. China’s engagement with Afghanistan has focused on mining concessions and connectivity initiatives through mining, transport and Belt and Road projects. While India’s pursuit to protect the strategic and political value of its more than 3 billion dollars in development investments made during the republic era. 

The evolution of India’s stance toward the Taliban can be traced through successive phases of political transition in Afghanistan, starting with the Taliban control of Kabul in 1996, India promptly shut down its embassy and severed diplomatic ties with the country. Following the 2001 US-led invasion that toppled the group, New Delhi became one of the first capitals to reestablish ties and recognize the new Afghan government. Yet, India remained opposed to Washington’s negotiations with the Taliban, cautious toward a group connected to previous attacks on India diplomatic missions, including the 2008 Kabul embassy bombing.

The Taliban’s return to power in August 2021 initially made India withdraw its diplomats, shutter consulates, and freeze official engagement. During the initial years of the Taliban takeover Pakistan assumed influence in the region creating a threat to India, once they have historically provided training to pakistani insurgent jihad groups that act in Kashmir. But, by 2022-2023 the relations between Islamabad and the Taliban deteriorated and in this period India, now governed by Modi, reopened its technical mission and began a gradual diplomatic re-engagement.

The cautious engagement between Modi and the Akhundzada reflects a relationship built on necessity rather than trust. For New Delhi, dialogue with the Taliban keeps Pakistan’s influence in check and preserves its foothold in Afghanistan. The pragmatic position contributes to regional stability and Indian development as stated by the Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Modi’s engagement with Akhundzada is inseparable from its rivalry with Pakistan and the regional balance of power. 

For decades, Islamabad has sought strategic depth in Afghanistan to prevent Indian influence along its western flank. After 2001, India’s heavy investment in Afghan reconstruction functioned as a counterweight to Pakistani dominance and as a means to project influence into Central Asia. The Taliban’s return in 2021 raised the prospect of a renewed Pakistan-Taliban alignment, with implications for Kashmir and regional connectivity. New Delhi’s cautious re-entry into Kabul is therefore driven less by accommodation with the Taliban than by the imperative to avoid strategic marginalization in a theatre long-defined by Indo-Pakistani competition.

What does Modi want?

Answer: Modi is careful that democratic and constitutional commitments are not challenged by a rising need to gain regional security and connectivity leverage.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach to Afghanistan reflects a convergence of strategic pragmatism and regional containment rather than ideological alignment. Under Modi, India’s Afghanistan policy has evolved from supporting democratic reconstruction, as the policy during the post-2001 period, to pursuing controlled engagement with the Taliban. This shift is shaped by three priorities: domestic political constraints, regional security calculations, and long-term geostrategic connectivity.

On the domestic front, Modi governs under a Hindu nationalist political coalition that has adopted a hard line on political Islam and minority rights. Open political endorsement of a theocratic Islamist regime would carry reputational and ideological costs for Modi, potentially provoking criticism from opposition parties and sections of India’s community concerned with human rights and constitutional secularism. This constrains New Delhi to a pragmatic posture of engagement.

The October 2025 diplomatic reconnection between New Delhi and the Taliban has generated growing concerns, by hindu nationalist groups and western actors, that India is drifting from calibrated pragmatism toward symbolic legitimation. Allowing the Taliban to enforce gender exclusion at official events in the Indian capital prohibiting female journalists from participating in an open event with the Foreign Minister Muttaqui. This has created a sharp tension with India’s constitutional commitments to equality and secularism.

Regional security is India’s major concern. The resurgence of militant groups including Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) along the Afghan–Pakistan border and Pakistan-based organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), with historical ties to Pakistan and networks operating across the Durand line. The Afghanistan-Pakistan border poses a potential threat to Indian interests. Maintaining a diplomatic presence in Kabul provides New Delhi with situational awareness, allowing it to monitor developments that could affect Kashmir or its broader counterterrorism posture. 

India’s engagement seeks to preserve its influence in a region where its investments once symbolized their soft power. Between 2001 and 2021, India contributed over $3 billion to Afghanistan’s aid for infrastructure, education, and institutional capacity-building projects, including the Afghan parliament complex, major road networks, power projects, and scholarship programmes. 

Afghanistan constitutes a key node for regional connectivity and commercial transit,  due to its strategic geographic location. A complete diplomatic disengagement would have risked undermining India’s existing investments and ceding strategic space to rival actors, notably China. The Modi government therefore continues to view Afghanistan as integral to India’s connectivity ambitions, particularly because the viability and long-term strategic value of the Chabahar Port, Iran’s only oceanic outlet, depend on rail and road corridors that links to India run through Afghanistan, making continued access essential for the viability of the corridor and its long-term strategic value.

Modi’s engagement is narrowly focused on three objectives: maintaining intelligence visibility over militant dynamics relevant to Kashmir, safeguarding prior economic and infrastructure investments, and preserving access to regional connectivity corridors linking India to Central Asia via Iran and Afghanistan. New Delhi has therefore pursued functional contacts without extending diplomatic recognition, allowing it to extract security-relevant information and retain strategic access while avoiding the domestic political and constitutional costs associated with legitimizing an Islamist regime.

What does Hibatullah Akhundzada want?

Answer: Akhundzada aims to obtain diplomatic legitimacy, economic relief, and greater strategic autonomy by diversifying external partnerships and reducing reliance on Pakistan.

The Taliban’s approach to India is shaped by a fear of isolation. The Taliban government remains internationally marginalized, unrecognized by major powers, and constrained by sanctions, economic collapse, and internal governance challenges. For leaders such as Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and officials like Muhammad Kakar, engaging India serves multiple interlocking objectives.

The first is diplomatic legitimacy. Even though India has not formally recognized the Taliban, the mere act of being hosted in New Delhi, receiving Indian delegations, or witnessing India upgrade its Kabul mission offers a symbolic step toward normalization. 

The second is economic survival. Afghanistan faces acute humanitarian needs, with the United Nations estimated that 23.7 million people, more than half of the population, will require humanitarian assistance in 2024. The sharp reduction in foreign aid following the Taliban’s return to power has severely weakened the healthcare system, contributing to widespread malnutrition, rising medicine prices, and shortages of essential medical supplies. At the same time, Taliban restrictions on women’s education have effectively halted the training of future female professionals, accelerating the deterioration of higher education pathways and ensuring long-term capacity gaps. 

In this context, India, which has long hosted Afghan students and funded educational institutions, remains one of the few countries capable of delivering large-scale wheat shipments, medical supplies, and potential scholarships. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, India has supplied large consignments of wheat to Afghanistan through multilateral channels, notably in cooperation with the UN World Food Programme.  In parallel, New Delhi has delivered medical aid, including essential medicines and vaccines, to Afghan health facilities through international partners. 

The third is strategic autonomy from Pakistan. Akhundzada’s relationship with Pakistan has shifted from patron–proxy dynamics to a more conflictual and transactional pattern, reflecting the movement’s attempt to consolidate sovereign autonomy after returning to power. While Pakistan’s security services were instrumental in sheltering and facilitating the Taliban leadership during the insurgency, the post-2021 environment has exposed diverging threat perceptions.

Islamabad prioritizes the containment of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a Pakistan-focused militant organization that has carried out sustained attacks against the Pakistani state, and border control, whereas the Taliban resist acting decisively against ideological allies and reject the Durand Line as an international boundary. The Taliban’s strained relationship with Islamabad has redefined regional dynamics. Pakistani expulsions of Afghan refugees, accusations of cross-border militancy, and border closures have pushed the Taliban to diversify their diplomatic relationships. 

India provides a partner that does not impose military pressure and offers political diversification, as long as their objectives are met. At a time when Pakistan’s leverage is increasingly contested  by the Taliban’s refusal to fully align with Islamabad’s security priorities and by the availability of alternative regional partners. The Taliban may not share India’s political model or values, but it does not seek ideological alignment; its objective is transactional legitimacy, economic access, and regional maneuverability rather than alignment. Pakistan’s coercive tools over Afghanistan derive less from formal military intervention than from asymmetric interdependence.

Control over transit routes, border regimes, and refugee populations allows Islamabad to impose selective but high-impact costs through border closures, deportations, and trade restrictions. These measures exploit Afghanistan’s landlocked geography and aid dependence, transforming logistical chokepoints into political instruments. This led the Taliban to diversify external relations, including with India, China, and Russia, in order to reduce dependence on a single patron and to enhance their bargaining power in the regional system. For Akhundzada, outreach to India offers a measure of legitimacy and an opportunity to build partnerships once the countries are working on building bilateral trade and inviting Indian companies to invest in mining.

What is Narendra Modi doing?

Answer: Modi combines limited diplomatic presence, humanitarian assistance, and security dialogue to gain Kabul’s support without extending formal recognition.

Modi’s Afghanistan policy in practice reflects a strategy of calibrated engagement. India has reopened its embassy not as a gesture of recognition but as an operational necessity. It engages Taliban officials while avoiding formal diplomatic endorsement. One of the most notable shifts is India’s decision to welcome Taliban representatives in New Delhi after years of refusing multilateral meetings involving Taliban delegates, including the October 2025 visit of Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi, during which India announced the upgrading of its Kabul mission to embassy level.. This marks a significant departure from past policy, but one carefully framed as pragmatic necessity rather than political approval.

During the Taliban take over in 2021, India had reduced the accessibility of educational pathways for Afghan students, with visa rejections, limited categories of approval, and the closure of Afghan-funded schools in New Delhi. These moves generated frustration among Afghan communities that previously saw India as a gateway to opportunity, although they were stated as a ‘national security’ movement at the time. But with the recent proximity between both countries visa issuance is resumed for Afghans and Indian politicians are calling for the return of educational programs and new e-scholarships are being created. 

While India reduced its educational engagement after 2021, its humanitarian role remains significant. For the Taliban, Indian aid offers material relief without the political conditionalities attached to Western assistance, while also signaling continued access to South Asian trade corridors. Strategically, India’s humanitarian engagement aims to prevent further deterioration of Afghanistan’s social and economic conditions, which could otherwise exacerbate instability and create fertile ground for militant recruitment and regional insecurity. By positioning itself as a reliable provider of life-saving aid and public health support, India also signals its willingness to maintain good relations with the county.

India prefers a posture of operational involvement without public political endorsement, minimizing reputational exposure while securing its strategic foothold. In parallel, New Delhi has expanded intelligence contacts with Taliban security officials to obtain counter-terrorism assurances that Afghan territory will not be used by militant groups with historical links to Pakistan-based networks involved in Kashmir-related violence. While Taliban leaders have publicly pledged not to permit attacks against third countries.

Who is “winning” — and what about you?

Answer: No side is achieving a decisive advantage as both secure tactical gains while remaining constrained by structural mistrust, international isolation, and enduring regional rivalries.

Both Modi and Akhundzada derive strategic benefits from the resumption of India–Afghanistan engagement. They navigate a region shaped by instability, shifting alliances, and strategic recalibration. India has regained strategic access and informational leverage in Kabul, but without the political influence it once exercised during the republic era, and under constant reputational costs for engaging an internationally isolated regime. The Taliban, in turn, have diversified their diplomatic alliances, but remain constrained by economic fragility, internal governance deficits, and the lack of recognition by major powers.

If Pakistan’s internal crisis were to deepen into state failure or prolonged instability, the strategic logic of India–Taliban engagement would have to shift from tactical dialogue to structured security coordination. A weakened Pakistan would reduce its capacity to act as a regional gatekeeper and could push both New Delhi and Kabul to explore intelligence sharing and counter-militancy coordination, as parallel efforts to contain spillover from jihadist fragmentation and border disorder.At the same time, Modi and Akhundzada might not fully converge on China.

For New Delhi, Beijing is a strategic competitor whose expanding economic and security footprint in South and Central Asia is viewed through the lens of great-power rivalry and encirclement. For Kabul, China represents a pragmatic economic partner and a potential source of investment, infrastructure, international legitimacy and another partner to counterbalance Pakistan.