Four years after the Taliban took charge of Afghanistan in a violent movement, Amir Khan Muttaqi, the ‘Foreign Minister’ of the Taliban administration, will travel to India next week, officials of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said on Thursday (October 2, 2025). The visit is expected to be focused on developmental assistance to Afghanistan, which has been struggling with scarcity of essential medicines and agricultural products ever since the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15, 2021, the officials further said.
India to do whatever is necessary to build ties with Afghanistan: officials
The visit has been under consideration for some time, and Mr. Muttaqi could not travel earlier as India has been sensitive to the fact that he, like several other Taliban leaders, continues to be placed under international sanctions because of the violent struggle that the Taliban carried out against the U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan starting in the winter of 2001, the sources said.
A major hurdle in normalising diplomatic relations with the Taliban has been the outfit’s inflexible position on shutting access to education and employment for the women of Afghanistan, and other human rights issues, including the treatment of prisoners. Indian officials indicated that the “temporary exemption” that was issued by the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee on September 30 finally firmed up the plans for Mr. Muttaqi’s India visit.
