The Pulse | Diplomacy | South Asia

Amid the Afghanistan-Pakistan Conflict, India-Taliban Diplomatic Ties Are Strengthening

India’s diplomatic outreach to the Taliban has increased tremendously over the last year.

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar shakes hands with Taliban Foreign Minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi ahead of their meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, Oct. 10, 2025.

The old saying goes that an enemy of an enemy is a friend. This proverb seems to match the growing closeness between Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and India, which, for strategic reasons, remained anti-Taliban during the group’s rule in Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 and supported the Afghan Republic governments between 2001 and 2021. 

Meanwhile, Pakistan was considered the biggest ally and supporter of the Taliban from 1996 until the group’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021. But thereafter, the former allies have been unable to see eye to eye. The core issue is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which, according to Pakistan, is using Afghan soil as a safe haven from which it engages in terror activities against Pakistan. The Taliban deny this allegation and say that the TTP is an internal matter for Pakistan.

While Pakistan and Afghanistan have been striking each other, particularly since October 2025, India – Pakistan’s arch-rival – is deepening its relations with Taliban-run Afghanistan. Since early 2025, New Delhi’s policy vis-a-vis the Taliban has undergone an arguable strategic realignment.

India’s diplomatic outreach to the Taliban has increased tremendously over the last year, following the United Arab Emirates’ facilitation of a meeting in Dubai between Indian External Affairs Secretary Vikram Misri and Taliban Foreign Ministry Amir Khan Muttaqi on January 8, 2025. That meeting marked a major diplomatic milestone, as the relationship between New Delhi and Taliban-controlled Kabul began to take a positive turn.

Prior to the January 2025 meeting, Indian Ministry of External Affairs Joint Secretary J. P. Singh was the senior-most Indian official to have publicly met with Taliban officials, meeting with Muttaqi and Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob in November 2024. 

Engagement has picked up since, to include telephone diplomacy. The first high-level ministerial call took place last year on May 15 between Indian Minister of External Affairs S. Jaishankar and Muttaqi a few days after the four-day war between India and Pakistan. But engagement has gone beyond phone calls. During the last nine months, four Taliban ministers have visited India. 

This timeline of growing relations between the Taliban and India coincides with the ongoing conflict between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In October 2025, Muttaqi traveled to India for a six-day visit. It marked the first visit by a senior Taliban minister to India. For Muttaqi’s visit to New Delhi, a U.N. committee temporarily lifted a travel ban on Muttaqi. After his visit, India handed over the Afghan embassy in New Delhi to the Taliban and sent a chargé d’affaires to its former mission in Kabul. Then the Taliban’s senior foreign ministry official, Mufti Noor Ahmad Noor, arrived in New Delhi in January 2026 to assume responsibility as the chargé d’affaires of the Afghan embassy. India’s move came a few months after Pakistan upgraded its diplomatic ties with the Taliban.

After Muttaqi, the Taliban Minister of Industry and Commerce Noorudin Azizi, along with a trade delegation, visited India from November 19-25. According to the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, during his visit, Azizi also met Jaishankar. The two sides discussed connectivity, people-to-people exchanges, and bilateral relations. He also held delegation-level talks with Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Jitin Prasada. Along with discussing market access, capacity building, connectivity, and trade facilitation, the re-initiation of the air freight corridors on the Kabul-Amritsur and the Kabul-Delhi sectors was also announced. These air freight corridors were officially launched in 2017 but were disrupted in 2020. In December 2025, New Delhi........

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