Enemy's enemy
With tensions rising along the India-Pakistan border after the Pahalgam terror attack and in anticipation of a possible military-security response by New Delhi, GOI is making some smart tactical moves with Taliban in Afghanistan. New Delhi has reached out to Kabul to highlight Islamabad's links with the Pahalgam attack, prompting the Taliban regime to offer condemnation of the heinous killings and call for action against the perpetrators. This should have the Pakistani generals in Rawalpindi GHQ worried. After all, the Pakistani ISI-military establishment has long fretted an Indian strategic pincer assault from both its eastern and western wings. And with Islamabad having a tough time with Kabul after Taliban's return in 2021 – thanks to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan insurgency – a tactical convergence between India and Afghanistan will put Pakistan under tremendous pressure.
This is exactly the reason the Pakistani establishment over decades has tried to cultivate Afghanistan as strategic depth in the event of conflict with India. That in turn subverted Afghanistan's aspirations and stymied its development. Plus, there are some differences between the current Taliban regime and its previous avatar. The latter was isolationist whereas the former has been actively seeking foreign investments and, to a limited degree, even tourism.
In other words, Taliban 2.0 knows that it can't be a carbon copy of its earlier version. Nor can it have the same relationship with Pakistan as before. That said, some things continue to be problematic like the ban on secondary and higher education for Afghan girls and the bar on Afghan women from working. Also, Taliban is not a monolith. There are different factions and some continue to work with Pakistani agencies. Add to this the haunting memories for India of the IC 814 hijacking. Therefore, the challenge for New Delhi is to find the right people in Taliban to work with. Interestingly, US last month lifted its $10mn bounty on Sirajuddin Haqqani, Taliban's interim interior minister and once a huge thorn in the side of the US military. Hence, it's clear that even Washington is resetting its approach to key members of the Taliban regime. India and US should coordinate in this regard to promote stability and incentivise reforms in Afghanistan.
A step-by-step approach that prioritises mutual interests between New Delhi and Kabul is the need of the hour. Pakistan must be made to sweat by strategically outflanking it from the west. This should also give pause to ISI's recently revived anti-India shenanigans in Bangladesh.
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This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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