Taliban Looks To India To Replace Pakistan As Key Medicine Supplier

İrfan Neziroğlu, Türkiye’s ambassador to Pakistan, said on Friday that the delegation would include the director of the Turkish intelligence organisation and several senior officials. Türkiye’s energy minister, Alparslan Bayraktar, will also accompany the team.

The planned visit was first mentioned by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in Baku.

Highlighting Ankara’s security concerns, Neziroğlu said Türkiye wanted to ensure that no individual or group used Afghan territory to enter Pakistan and carry out terrorist attacks. He said the two neighbouring countries should be able to live “as brothers” and that Türkiye was committed to helping achieve that goal.

Türkiye and Qatar have jointly mediated recent talks between Pakistan and the Taliban, but three rounds of negotiations in Doha and Istanbul have ended without progress. Iran and Russia have also begun attempting to play a mediating role, with Iran planning a regional meeting focused on easing Taliban–Pakistan tensions.

Diplomatic and trade relations between Islamabad and the Taliban authorities remain strained. The Taliban are seeking to expand diplomatic and economic ties with other countries to offset the fallout. The Taliban’s commerce minister is currently in India and has recently visited Iran.

Taliban officials have also been looking for alternative trade routes. Before travelling to India, the Taliban commerce minister held discussions in Iran about increasing the use of ports such as Chabahar and Bandar Abbas as substitutes for Karachi and other Pakistani ports.

Pakistan has said that the normalisation of relations will only be possible if the Taliban demonstrate cooperation and take concrete action against militant groups — particularly Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Bilateral trade between Afghanistan and India is estimated to exceed one billion dollars.

According to Indian media, the agreement was reached during a meeting in New Delhi between Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban’s commerce minister, and Jitin Prasada, India’s Minister of State for Commerce and Industry. During the talks, Azizi identified mining, agriculture, health, pharmaceuticals, information technology, energy and textiles as key sectors offering new opportunities for collaboration. He urged Indian industrialists to closely examine Afghanistan’s economic potential.

Azizi is in New Delhi for a five-day visit with a Taliban trade delegation.

The agreement also includes reactivating a joint working group on trade, investment and economic cooperation. The newly appointed trade attachés will be tasked with facilitating and supporting commercial engagement.

While in India, Azizi announced a set of Taliban incentives for investors, including a one-percent tariff on raw materials and machinery, free land allocation, reliable electricity and a five-year tax exemption for new industries, particularly those established by returning Afghan migrants.

Earlier on Friday, Afghan officials said air-cargo flights between Afghanistan and India had been reactivated and would resume soon. The announcement was confirmed by Anand Prakash, deputy secretary at India’s Ministry of External Affairs, in the presence of the Taliban commerce minister.

He added that they are seeking to establish “sleeper cells” in Central Asia.

He made the remarks at the 11th International Conference of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, held on 20–21 November in Tashkent.

Representatives from the United Nations, the OSCE, INTERPOL, the CIS Anti-Terrorism Centre and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation took part in the conference. Participants discussed preventing citizens from joining radical networks and addressed rising cyber-security threats.

Sharshiyev said leaders of global terrorist organisations had not abandoned plans to deploy militants to Central Asian states using forged documents via third countries. He warned that these networks aim to carry out attacks, establish sleeper cells, collect funds and conduct recruitment campaigns to expand their ranks.

Yevgeny Sysoyev, head of the CIS Anti-Terrorism Centre, told the conference that international terrorist groups based in the Middle East are increasing the movement of fighters into Afghanistan to extend their regional influence.

He said “aggressive recruitment efforts” were under way among Central Asian migrants and noted a rise in online propaganda in Tajik, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and, for the first time, Kazakh.

According to the Uzbek outlet Gazeta.uz, conference participants said the establishment of a Global Centre in Tashkent to address growing security challenges facing SCO member states would be a practical response to emerging threats.

Speaking at a meeting in New Delhi on Friday, Azizi said the Taliban would support members of both communities if they chose to come back.

Addressing a trade forum with Indian officials, Azizi said the Taliban had included support for Sikh and Hindu citizens in their programmes and would continue to do so upon their return. He urged those working in sectors such as healthcare and trade to resume their contributions inside Afghanistan.

Azizi also encouraged India’s private sector to invest in Afghanistan and expand its role in import–export activities.

Sikh and Hindu communities in Afghanistan fled in large numbers after the Taliban returned to power in 2021, citing rising threats and fear of property seizures. Community representatives have told Taliban officials that much of their property in Kabul has been taken over.

A 2024 US State Department report found that Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan feared persecution and mistreatment under Taliban rule.

Earlier, Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met senior Sikh and Hindu community members in New Delhi and said the Taliban would guarantee the safety of religious minorities and rebuild their places of worship. Several Sikh gurdwaras in Kabul have been attacked in recent years. Following the deadly 2022 attack on a Sikh temple, the Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee in Delhi urged the Indian government to evacuate remaining Sikh families from Afghanistan.

Anand Prakash, joint secretary for Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, said cargo flights on the Kabul–Delhi and Kabul–Amritsar routes would restart shortly. He said the air freight corridors on both sectors had been activated and that flights would follow “very soon.”

Prakash said the decision is expected to boost the flow of goods and strengthen commercial relations between the two countries. He noted that all formalities on India’s side have been completed and that New Delhi is now waiting for the required documentation from the Afghan side. Cargo flights will resume once the process is finalised, he said.

The announcement came during the visit of Nooruddin Azizi, the Taliban’s minister of industry and commerce, to New Delhi. India’s Ministry of External Affairs welcomed the visit, saying it formed part of India’s continued support for the development and welfare of the Afghan people.

The move comes at a time when Afghanistan’s trade with Pakistan has been disrupted by recent border clashes. In recent months, the Taliban have shifted a significant share of Afghanistan’s imports and exports from Pakistan to Iran and Central Asian countries.