Post-Pahalgam: The Pakistan-Turkey Tango & India's Unnoticed Strategic Play To Outflank Both

News18

28-04-2025

New Delhi's latest tactical gambit will help outflank Pakistan — and by extension, even blunt the emerging Pakistan–Turkey defence axis
A few days back, India sent a diplomat to meet with the Taliban's acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, in Kabul. The development has largely gone unnoticed. But that doesn't mean it isn't consequential. It is a surprise turn in a path towards normalising relations.
You may ask, isn't India rewarding Islamist radicalism by engaging the Taliban? Why, after the Taliban bled us through the 90s culminating in the IC-814 hijacking, is India now cautiously opening channels with Afghanistan's Islamic rulers?
The answer is post-Pahalgam necessity. And necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. And there's something truly diplomatically inventive about India's pivot towards the Taliban.
Though this author has always counselled against engaging the Taliban, it is true that New Delhi's latest tactical gambit will help outflank Pakistan — and by extension, even blunt the emerging Pakistan–Turkey defence axis. Let's break it down.
First, the Taliban is no longer the mad Mullah brigade of shock jocks obsessed with public displays of S&M as it was in the 1990s. Instead, the new crop of Taliban leaders like to project themselves as world-facing pragmatists. While they are deeply authoritarian and while they still cling to Islamist governance, they've moderated enough to be indistinguishable from the other Islamic regimes in the Gulf or Central Asia. If India can do business with the Gulf countries, there's no reason for it to turn its nose up at Kabul.
More importantly, there's been a major rupture between the Taliban and the Pakistani ruling establishment. Pakistan had long nurtured the Taliban. Islamabad expected that a Taliban victory in 2022 would translate into a pliant, pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul. However, the reality has been starkly different. The Taliban is pursuing a Pashtun nationalist agenda, refusing to be seen as Pakistan's puppets.
This is a major opportunity for India.
India's approach is no longer driven by dogma. It doesn't want to preach democracy to the Taliban. Not rewarding the moderation risks Taliban's isolation, reverting to type and falling back into the Pak sphere of influence. So, as one policy expert pointed out, India will 'engage without embracing. Influence without investing too deeply. Create options, not dependencies."
By making quiet diplomatic inroads with the Taliban factions less beholden to Pakistan — particularly those from the Kandahar-based leadership and segments resentful of ISI's control — India can: divide Taliban loyalties, secure intelligence assets on the ground, deter Afghanistan from serving as a terror springboard into Kashmir, and most importantly, make Pakistan look over its shoulder as Delhi sows uncertainty along the Durand line – the de-facto Pak-Afghanistan border.
There's also another huge benefit. Which is to neutralise the emerging Turkey-Pakistan Nexus that could, in theory, sharpen India's security dilemmas.
An India tilting Afghanistan allows Delhi to make inroads into Turkic Central Asian republics through the Iranian Chahabar port. These countries all lie in what Turkey has always considered its own backyard. Most were part of the Ottoman Empire. But after its collapse, they were subsumed under the Soviet Union. In a post-Cold War era, these nations have opted for independence on the back of anti-imperialist movements for self-determination rooted in a local culture. Today, they no longer see themselves as Russian or Turkish satellites. Delhi is aware of the scope these republics offer in containing Turkey's ambitions.
Thus, India's engagement in Kabul indirectly weakens the Pakistan–Turkey strategic convergence. It's like killing two birds with one stone.
Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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