India on Friday announced air cargo connectivity with Afghanistan and the exchange of trade attachés between the two countries during the visit of the Taliban government’s industry minister, Nooruddin Azizi.
At the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Azizi called for closer economic cooperation and iterated the Taliban administration’s appeal to Afghan Hindu and Sikh refugees in India to return home.
External affairs joint secretary (Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran) Anand Prakash said: "I am pleased to announce that the air freight corridor on the Kabul-Delhi sector and Kabul-Amritsar routes have been activated and cargo flights on these sectors will commence very soon."
Prakash said that during Azizi’s meetings on Thursday with the Indian external affairs minister and the minister of state for commerce and industry, “both sides agreed to give a trade attaché in each other’s embassy to oversee and support bilateral trade cooperation”.
Pakistan’s airspace has been closed to Indian aircraft after Operation Sindoor. However, Ariana Afghan Airlines runs passenger flights to Delhi as Pakistan’s airspace is not shut to Afghan aircraft.
India does not officially recognise the Taliban government that deposed the previous republican government in 2021 after a two-decade-long civil war. India, however, has reopened its embassy in Kabul, and Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Mutaqqi visited India last month, the first ministerial trip since his government took office.
Azizi, during his interaction on Friday, said: “The air freight for exports (from Kabul to Delhi) has been reduced to $1 (per kilo) and imports (from Delhi to Kabul) to 80 (US) cents (per kilo).... Tariffs will also be reduced. I have come here to make these functional —one, the air corridor, and secondly, we also want the Chabahar road (the highway from Chabahar in Iran to Zaranj in Afghanistan) to be fully operational and remove impediments.”
The minister thanked India for its help in helping his nation survive amid US sanctions, and welcomed back minorities who had fled Afghanistan to India.
Azizi said: “Our $9.3 billion was frozen by the US. But in that tough time we noted that the Indian government provided full support in terms of wheat, transporting from India directly to Afghanistan....
“I would like to invite the community of our Sikhs and Hindus. As you may be aware, we also have an Afghan Sikh community, an Afghan Hindu community in Afghanistan. And they have already received a lot of love from the Afghan people. And we have provided full support to them, whatever we had.
“However, we request all the Indian community, in terms of industrialists, traders, that they should visit. If not, at least those Sikh and Hindu communities who have come from Afghanistan, please give them back to us.... We invite them to come to Afghanistan and build one more time together with the Afghan private sector and Afghan people, build Afghanistan once again.”
He said that four crore people live in Afghanistan and almost everyone had lost sons and brothers and husbands in the war in the last 50 years for no reason. “On one side Pakistan blocks our road, on the other Americans block our money.... So we want India to keep this road open, and we want the private sector to heavily invest in this so it becomes competitive and cheaper than other routes.”
A source in the Indian ministry of external affairs said Afghanistan had requested a dry port — a cargo handling and customs post — in Chabahar and the start of work on a railway network under a 2014 tripartite agreement between the three countries.
Carpet seller Homayoon Noor, from Afghanistan’s northern Faryab province, got a visa to India after four years and multiple attempts.
He told The Telegraph: “I have traded with India for the last 21 years and it is like a second home to me. I hope that the improvement of diplomatic ties means quicker visas. Also, the tax on carpets from Afghanistan is 38 per cent. As we are part of the South Asia Free Trade Area, I hope that these taxes will go with direct trade links.”
Charanjit Singh, who heads the Indo-Afghan Chamber of Commerce, asked Azizi to facilitate payment for goods in rupees rather than dollars. He said: “Currently, our dollar payments are sometimes stopped by the US and there is a lot of delay in payments.”