India, Oct. 14 -- On December 24, 1999, an Indian Airlines flight (IC 814) operating between Kathmandu in Nepal and New Delhi was hijacked, and after moving through a few cities, eventually taken to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the ideological home of the Taliban. The hostage crisis ended on December 31. During this period, India's current National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, was one of the main negotiators. A then middle-level Taliban official, Amir Khan Muttaqi, was director general of administrative affairs. Twenty six years later, both these personalities are at the centre of an unconventional geopolitical reality, a quasi-normalisation between the Taliban-led interim government in Kabul and the Indian government as interim foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived on his maiden visit to New Delhi. The chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 was a watershed moment. While an upending global order today makes the events of that time less relevant and prevalent, the US fighting a 20-year war against terrorism only to end up replacing the old Taliban with a new one, via the 2020 agreement between the two sides signed in Qatar under President Donald Trump's first term. A US withdrawal was always imminent, leaving behind both a threat and an opportunity for regional powers to securitise their interests with an insurgency now back to running a State. Within this construct, every neighbour took an individualistic strategic approach as convergences on how to deal with the Taliban became minimal. Central Asia, in large, decided to engage economically almost immediately. Iran became a core political and economic partner as well. India played the long game culminating in hosting Muttaqi this month, committing to upgrading the "technical mission" in Kabul to full embassy status, and re-committing to a slew of developmental projects aimed at the betterment of the Afghan people. Many of these neighbours of Kabul had actively promoted anti-Taliban movements in the 1990s. For the Taliban, the visit is a political victory. India is the largest economic power in the region, and with Afghanistan's economy riddled with sanctions and lack of funds, getting any aid and investment into areas such as food and health security is critical to maintain the group's domestic checks and balances. Despite the veneer of power, Afghanistan under the Taliban remains flimsy. Over the past four years, the interim government led by the likes of Mullah Baradar, Sirajuddin Haqqani (the interim interior minister), Mullah Yaqoob (Mullah Omar's son and interim defence minister) along with Muttaqi amongst others, have attempted to promote an ideologically pragmatic approach. This, increasingly, was seen as a challenge to emir-ul-momineen Hibatullah Akhundzada's ideological centrality from Kandahar. In 2025, this gap has shrunk. Kandahar, arguably, has much greater control over Kabul. Before Muttaqi's arrival, reports had suggested that Akhundzada had given special directives over the trajectory of the India-Afghanistan bilateral. However, for New Delhi, while hosting Muttaqi is a realistic and unavoidable strategy, the dance is delicate. Today, for both India and the Taliban, an unsaid convergence is on Pakistan. India had started taking baby steps with its Taliban engagement in 2021 itself with foreign secretary Vikram Misri meeting Muttaqi in Dubai in January. Operation Sindoor along with the Taliban's own deteriorating security and familial feuds with Pakistan's military and intelligence have since turbo-charged the outreach. The Taliban had condemned the Pahalgam terror attacks and rejected the Pakistan-pushed propaganda of Indian missiles targeting Afghan soil. This led to the first phone call between minister of external affairs S Jaishankar and Muttaqi in May. Since then, India upped its risk and ultimately gave the Taliban what they wanted, institutional access to New Delhi. This rattling of status-quos reverberated in Pakistani power corridors, with reports suggesting air strikes conducted against the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Kabul, a militant group and its affiliates Rawalpindi tries to peddle as India-backed due to its own incapabilities of cleaning their own home of extremism. During Muttaqi's press conference at the Afghan embassy in Delhi, he reiterated that the patience of Afghans should not be tested as witnessed by the erstwhile Soviet Union and later, the US. This message from the Taliban, aimed at Pakistan, from New Delhi, carries strategic benefits for the short term at least. India's own push in its talks with Muttaqi was mostly about development, something the Afghan people associate the country most with. This course correction was needed after New Delhi stopped issuing visas in 2021. In essence, the message remains that New Delhi will continue to help with projects aimed at betterment of the people. Within this as well, the announcement of helping to build housing for displaced Afghans, being pushed back across the border by Pakistan in their thousands, adds another layer of building capacities via positive narratives. Finally, Muttaqi may have also received some indirect feedback on social issues. His visit to the Deoband seminary in Uttar Pradesh, the intellectual home of the Deobandi movement which underlines the Taliban's ideology, is expected to push for a more inclusive Afghanistan. The seminary elders, while celebrating the Taliban's ouster of the US, had pushed for the same, including schooling for girls but remaining in favour of gender segregation in educational institutions. All in all, the visit has opened a delicate new chapter between India and the new powers in Afghanistan....