Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen. Photo: X/@suhailshaheen1
In its first reaction to the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in India, the Taliban’s head of political office in Doha, Suhail Shaheen, said that any such law should be for all “irrespective of religion”, even as he denied that there was any persecution of minorities in Afghanistan.
On March 11, the Indian government notified the rules for the implementation of the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act. Announcing the rules, Indian home minister Amit Shah said that it will “enable minorities persecuted on religious grounds in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to acquire citizenship in our nation”.
The stated objective of the CAA, which was passed by parliament in December 2019, is to accelerate the process of granting citizenship to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Christians purportedly fleeing persecution from India’s Muslim-majority neighbours – namely, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. However, the cut-off date for refugees to arrive in India to qualify under the CAA is December 31, 2014.
In a statement to The Wire, Taliban spokesperson and head of the political office in Doha Suhail Shaheen said, “This should apply to all whether they are Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs.”
When asked for clarification on whether he was referring to India’s CAA, Shaheen affirmed, “Yes, it should be for all who are persecuted in their countries.”
At the same time, Shaheen, who is also the Taliban’s designated Permanent Representative to the United Nations, claimed that there was no persecution of Sikhs and Hindus in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
“I would like to say that minorities like Sikh and Hindus are not persecuted in Afghanistan; they have freedom of performing their rituals and have the same right in the sight of the law as I have,” he said.
Shaheen additionally expressed his hope for equal treatment of Indian Muslims, stating, “I hope also minority in India i.e. Muslims, are not persecuted as Hindus and Sikhs are not persecuted in Afghanistan.”
The CAA is being implemented at a time when India has improved ties with the Taliban government in Kabul, despite not according it full diplomatic recognition in line with the international community.
India has now a team of diplomats in the Afghan capital, with Ministry of External Affairs officials regularly meeting with Taliban government officials. It recently also sent a technical team to look at the condition of the India-Afghanistan friendship dam at Herat.
The Afghan embassy in New Delhi is also now manned by Afghan diplomats who are in contact with the central foreign ministry in Kabul.
Meanwhile, the Taliban’s relations with Pakistan has cooled over the issue of Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), which has been accused of being behind a series of terror attacks by Islamabad.
When the CAA was approved by parliament in December 2019, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was still at the helm. The Ministry of External Affairs had to clarify that the allegations of persecution was not being made against the post-2001 Afghanistan government, but specifically against the Taliban.
“On Afghanistan, you see we have and especially in the context of a statement which came out from their side especially when we spoke about the minorities, we said that we didn’t say that religious persecution is taking place under the present, the current government of Afghanistan,” said MEA spokesperson at the weekly briefing of December 19, 2019.
He further explained that “during the previous Mujahideen and Taliban regimes, religious minorities were deliberately victimised on the basis of religion in 2001 and we are all aware of that”.
Claiming that Taliban issued a call for minorities to “convert to Islam or leave the country”, the MEA spokesperson also reiterated the clean chit to the Islamic Republic. “We are also aware that the current government has substantially addressed the concerns of the minorities as per their constitutional provisions and laws.”
The link between the Taliban and the persecution of minorities was also reiterated by Indian government ministers at the time of the return of the insurgent group to Kabul.
A week after the Taliban returned to power, an Indian Air Force plane airlifting Indians from Kabul also brought back 24 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus. At that time, minister of urban affairs and petroleum Hardeep Puri had tweeted that “recent developments in our volatile neighbourhood & the way Sikhs & Hindus are going through a harrowing time are precisely why it was necessary to enact the Citizenship Amendment Act”.
In total, over 300 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus arrived in India after the Taliban takeover. However, none of them would qualify for Indian citizenship under the amended law, and most of them departed for foreign shores. Unlike in India where they don’t have financial means to survive, refugees who are rehabilitated in western countries often get funds till they get jobs.
The two former Afghan Sikh lawmakers who fled Kabul have also left India – Narendra Singh Khalsa is in Canada, while Anarkali Kaur Honaryar took refuge in France.
The new Taliban government had held a series of a meeting with Hindu and Sikh leaders over several months after they came to power to assure them of security.
The meetings also took place after the insurgent Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) took responsibility for attacks on a gurudwara in Kabul in 2022. Incidentally, the MEA expedited the pending visas for over 100 Afghan Sikhs after the 2022 gurudwara attack.
A month later, Taliban asserted that Afghan Sikhs and Hindus should return to their homeland as the security situation had been resolved.
According to Guljeet Singh, a social worker who is involved with the Afghan Sikh community in Delhi, there were only two families left after the Taliban takeover, who were also preparing to leave the country. He also claimed that that there are thousands of pending applications for citizenship from Afghan Sikhs and Hindus over the decades.
Meanwhile, around 50 men have returned to earn their living from their shops and properties in Kabul and Jalalabad. “They can’t give up their assets. But they are staying together in a community centre or gurudwara for safety,” he told The Wire.
When asked whether the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus felt danger from the Taliban, he said that the group was not targeting them. “But the society is so militarised, everybody has a gun. So, they always feel insecure,” he told The Wire.
The latest report of the UN Secretary General on Afghanistan, as well as the briefing by the UN Special Representative for Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva spotlighted the restrictions on women and children, but also made a passing reference to “marginalisation of minorities”, but didn’t elaborate further. The majority of the sectarian attacks since 2021 have been against Shia groups like the Hazaras by ISKP.