Usaid Siddiqui
For a country whose government is not recognised by any nation, Afghanistan’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi has had an unusually busy calendar in recent weeks.
He has hosted his counterpart from Pakistan, spoken on the phone with India’s foreign minister, and jetted to Iran and China. In Beijing, he also met the Pakistani foreign minister again. On Wednesday, he joined trilateral talks with delegations from Pakistan and China.
This, even though the ruling Taliban have historically had tense relations with most of these countries, and currently have taut ties with Pakistan, a one-time ally with whom trust is at an all-time low.
While neither the United Nations nor any of its member states formally recognise the Taliban, analysts say that this diplomatic overdrive suggests that the movement is far from a pariah on the global stage.
So why are multiple countries in Afghanistan’s neighbourhood queueing up to engage diplomatically with the Taliban, while avoiding formal recognition?
We unpack the Taliban’s latest high-level regional engagements and look at why India, Pakistan and Iran are all trying to befriend Afghanistan’s rulers, four years after they marched on Kabul and grabbed power.
Who did Muttaqi meet or speak to in recent weeks?
A timeline of Afghanistan’s recent diplomatic engagements:April 19: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar travels with a high-level delegation to Kabul to meet Muttaqi and other Afghan officials. The two sides discussed an ongoing spat over Pakistan’s repatriation of Afghan refugees, bilateral trade and economic cooperation, the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
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