Taliban: In a first, Taliban looks to get own envoy for India outreach | India News

NEW DELHI: The Taliban has for the first time appointed a chargé d’affaires to head the Afghanistan embassy here, a top Taliban leader has confirmed. According to the Taliban, this diplomatic representative, Qadir Sha

h

, was not being sent from Kabul as he’s been working with the embassy.
Confirming the development, the chief of Taliban’s political office in Doha and ambassador-designate to the United Nations, Suhail Shaheen, told ToI this was a rational move. “It will build trust and pave the way for better relations with India,’’ said Shaheen.
The Indian government, which hasn’t recognised the dispensation in Kabul even though it reopened its embassy in Kabul in June last year, sees the development as an internal issue of the Taliban. It’s not clear yet if the decision has been officially communicated to the Indian government.
The Afghanistan embassy here is still run by ambassador Farid Mamundzay who was appointed by the Ashraf Ghani government that collapsed in the face of a Taliban onslaught in August 2021. While the status of the embassy has been unclear since then, it has continued to perform consular work coordinating with the Indian government.
The decision to appoint a charge d’affaires also comes in the middle of reports in Afghanistan media about allegations of corruption against the embassy.
On Sunday, Mamundzay said in a Facebook post that the embassy remained the only “address’’ that dealt with the problems of the Afghan citizens “as much as possible” and slammed the Afghanistan media for spreading rumours. While assuring the Afghans that the embassy is still working with full transparency to address their concerns, Mamundzay said all diplomats and other officials were performing their duties with sincerity and commitment to the “dignity and pride of the nation”.
India, like the rest of the international community, has not recognised the Taliban government in Kabul but it also hasn’t allowed the mutual antipathy of the past to come in the way of cooperation with the `Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’. India has regularly dispatched relief assistance to Afghanistan in the past 18 months, including wheat as a part of its audacious outreach in 2021 to send 50,000 million tonnes of the grain to the Taliban-ruled country – via the Pakistan land route – in the middle of a severe drought.
India, however, remains concerned about the activities of Pakistan-based terror groups in some parts of Afghanistan and has repeatedly underlined from multilateral forums the need to address this issue. While listing the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people among its foremost priorities in the country, India, like the rest of the international community, has been seeking an inclusive and representative government in Kabul.