The visit of Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to India, the first visit by a top Taliban leader since they returned to power in 2021, comes at a time when India is seeking to regain its strategic space.

After exiting lock, stock and barrel following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on August 15, 2021, New Delhi moved back to Kabul in June 2022 with a technical mission, with a declared objective of assisting delivery of humanitarian assistance to Afghans. While it also appeared to be a strategic gamble in finding a foothold again in Afghanistan, India’s policy thereafter seems to be following the same trajectory and repeating the follies that was a feature of the two decades of international intervention.

Even three years after that decision, India remains slow and tentative about how t

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