ISLAMABAD  -  The Afghan embassy in India has suddenly announced to close its operations due to lack of support by the host government in New Delhi. The Embassy in a statement said it is clos­ing in New Delhi from Sunday due to a lack of diplomatic support in India and the absence of a recognized govern­ment in Kabul.

The statement said it will continue to provide emergency consular services to Afghan na­tionals. It further said that there has been a significant reduction in both person­nel and resources available to us, making it increasingly difficult to continue its op­erations. 

The Afghan embassy has informed Indian ministry of external affairs through a letter in which number of reasons have been given for closing down the Afghan embassy in Indian Capital. 

Sources said that since the Taliban took over power in Kabul on 15th August 2021, India abruptly stopped co­operating with the new gov­ernment and also closed its embassy in Kabul. 

Since 2021 the Indian vi­sas for more than 3000 Af­ghan students have been delayed. Moreover, Afghan citizens who were planning to go to India for medical treatment have also been facing longer delays in get­ting the Indian visas.

Similarly, after the change of regime in Kabul, Af­ghan diplomats who were appointed during Ashraf Ghani’s administration were called back, however, they didn’t go back and con­tinued working there show­ing an allegiance to the pre­vious Ghani government. 

However, the fresh Indian visas for Afghan diplomats appointed by the IEA gov­ernment were not given by the Indian government due to non-recognition of Tali­ban regime. 

The Afghan ministry of foreign affairs had remind­ed Indian ministry of exter­nal affairs number of times about the speedy issuance of visas to new Afghan dip­lomats, however, there was non-cooperation from New Delhi to Kabul. It may be re­called that India enjoyed best diplomatic relations with Afghanistan during President Ashraf Ghani and Hamid Karzai regimes.

India has not recognized the Taliban government, which seized power in Af­ghanistan in August 2021. It evacuated its own staff from Kabul ahead of the US withdrawal from Afghani­stan two years ago and no longer has a diplomatic presence there.