Why India is reaching out to the Taliban now

India’s latest diplomatic overture to Afghanistan’s Taliban government signals a significant shift in how it sees the geopolitical reality in the region.

This comes more than three years after India suffered a major strategic and diplomatic blow when Kabul fell to the Taliban.

Two decades of investment in Afghan democracy – through military training, scholarships and landmark projects like building a new parliament – were quickly undone. The collapse also paved the way for greater influence from regional rivals, particularly Pakistan and China, eroding India’s strategic foothold and raising new security concerns.

However, last week signaled a shift. India’s top diplomat Vikram Misri met Taliban acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai – the highest level of engagement since the fall of Kabul. The Taliban have expressed interest in strengthening political and economic ties with India, calling it a “significant regional and economic power”.

The talks reportedly focused on expanding trade and exploiting Iran’s Chabahar port, which India is developing to bypass Pakistan’s ports of Karachi and Gwadar.

How important is this meeting? Delhi has now given the Taliban leadership the de facto legitimacy it has sought from the international community since it returned to power, Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Center, a US think-tank, told me.

“The fact that this treatment is coming from India – a nation that has never had friendly relations with the Taliban before, makes this even more significant and also a diplomatic triumph for the Taliban,” he says.